Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China [Illustrated] 0231141165, 9780231141161

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EXOTIC COMMODITIES

FRANK DIKOTTER

Exotic Commodities Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China

wy

Columbia University Press New York

qi

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York © 2006 Frank Dikétter

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dikotter, Frank. Exotic commodities : modern objects and everyday life in China / Frank Dikétter. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-231-14116-5 (alk. paper) 1. Material culture—China. 2. China—Social conditions—1912-1949. I.Tidle. DS721.D528 2007 951.04—de22

2006049027

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I acknowledge with gratitude grant RES-000-23-0237 from the Economic

and Social Research Council (ESRC) which allowed me to carry out the research for this book.

A number of people have generously shared their ideas and suggestions

with me and read and commented on draft versions, in particular Borge

Bakken, University of Hong Kong; Ian Brown, School of Oriental and African Studies; Christopher Hutton, University of Hong Kong; Bill Jenner, Aus-

tralian National University; Kingsley Bolton, University of Stockholm; Alfred

Lin, University of Hong Kong; Angus Lockyer, School of Oriental and African Studies; Joseph P. McDermott, Cambridge University; Veronica Pearson,

University of Hong Kong; and William T. Rowe, The Johns Hopkins University. 1 would also like to thank Don J. Cohn, New York;Vivian Hsieh, Taipei;

Ho Tsui-ping, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei; Li Hsiao-ti, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica; Keith G. Stevens, Lon-

don; Carolyn Wakeman, University of California at Berkeley; Wang Fan-sen,

Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica; Zhou Zhaoxi, Chengdu,

as well as members of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, in

particular Chang Jui-te, Chang Ning, Chen Yung-fa, Huang Ko-wu, Hsiung Ping-chen, Wu Jen-shu and Wang Cheng-hua. I am particularly indebted to Zhou Xun and Lars Laamann, whose

help on the project as ESRC Research

Fellows was immensely invaluable. 1 am also grateful to the publisher in London, Christopher Hurst, for his

careful editing of the text. Special thanks are due to Jack Birns, who was a

photographer for Life magazine based in China in 1947-8:he has kindly allowed me to use many of his photos, the majority never previously published. Readers interested in more of his work will enjoy his Assignment: Shanghai

published by the University of California Press. The ESRC is not responsible

for any of the views expressed here, and I bear final responsibility for all errors and omissions.

London, July 2006

ED.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

page v

Illustrations and Credits

ix

xiii

Conventions 1.

Introduction Material culture in modern China The fictions of ‘authenticity’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘acculturation’

The limits of ‘emulation’, ‘consumption’ and ‘representation’ Things and people

Worship of the tangible The sources PART

2.

I DISSEMINATION:

NETWORKS

AND

MATERIALS

The Domestication of Foreign Goods Exotic commodities in late imperial China

Export commodities in late imperial China Copy culture and the Movement for National Goods

3.

The Dissemination of New Objects Retailing the modern Recycling the modern Exhibiting the modern

The graphic revolution

From Water to Wheel Motors in waterland Highway to heaven

Rickshaw China

On your bicycle Cars to die for

The ubiquitous omnibus

Riots at the station

5.

Flying chariots Changing Cityscapes Cities

97 103 109 110

vil

115 121 125

Factories

Schools Offices

Electricity, Telephone and Water

133 133 144

A nation electrified

Water from the dragon’s mouth

Electric words, wonder of all wonders PART

7.

I] APPROPRIATION:

PEOPLE

148 AND

OBJECTS

Dwelling

The hidden powers of domestic objects

155 156 158 164 166 167 177 182

Clothing and Grooming

189

A whiff of modernity

202 205 213

The permeable house survives

The solid house spreads A glass world Locking up

Changing interiors

Kerosene, torchbearer of modernity

Cotton, the fabric of everyday life From bound feet to leather shoes Trinkets for the poor, watches for the rich

219 220 228 232

Seeing and Listening

241 242° 251 255

The camera and the second I

Magic lanterns and moving pictures

Singing machines: the gramophone and the radio

Conclusion

261

Notes

269 341 375

Bibliography Index

viii

191

Eating and Drinking

Eating modernity Eating out Drinking cultures

10.

153

Prowse

eR

ILLUSTRATIONS AND

CREDITS

Itinerant trader and repairer of umbrellas, 1900s ‘Woman buying used clothing from a pile on the street

Farmers bottling water at a local well in Baoji, Shaanxi province, January

1941 Huimin department store in Tianjin, 1940s Goods pour onto the pavement in this busy Hong Kong street, 1940s A merchant with second-hand goods spread on the pavement

A family recycling pieces of cloth on a sampan, Shanghai, 1940s

The Great World amusement centre covered in advertisements, Shanghai,

1948

Advertisement by Lobowl Medical Company, ¢. 1918

10. Airplane on a matchbox 11. Advertisement for aspirin by Bayer 12. A steamroller under a traditional archway, 1930s 13. Highway from Chengdu to Chongqing, 1930s 14, Two ladies in a rickshaw, 1926 15. Couple in pedicab followed by beggar, Shanghai, 1948 16. Group of pedicab drivers clustered at lunch break with 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22,

paired, 1940s

a tyre being re-

Calendar picture by Hang Zhiying (1900-47)

Villager leaning against his bicycle, May 1946

A horse-drawn carriage with heavy car tyres, Shanghai, 1947 A taxi company in Shanghai, 1935

Public bus travelling along a road near the Yellow River front in 1941 A crowded bus gets some help in starting at the bus terminal in Bishan,

Sichuan province, 1940s

23. Photo taken from Broadway Mansions, showing the Garden Bridge over a crowded Suzhou Creek in the corner and the Bund on the right, 1940s 24. Canal boats discharge cotton in front of a cotton mill in Shanghai, waiting for high tide, 1931 25. A crowded train 26. A train arrives in a crowded station 27. Interior of cargo plane used in passenger evacuation from Shenyang

(Mukden), October 1948

ix

Exotic Commodities

28. The cargo hatch ofa C-46, about to receive a child passenger, Taiyuan, Shanxi, 1948

29. Guanghua University on the outskirts of Shanghai, built in 1928

30. Bank on a busy road, Kunming, 1940s

31. A main street of Canton, reconstructed after the war

32. Huge ship being built in a hangar, Shanghai, May 1912 33. Factory in Taiyuan, Shanxi province

34. Young girl tends a bank of spindles in a modern cotton factory in Hong

Kong, 1940s 35. Egg processing plant in Jiangsu province, separating yolks from whites 36. Two young women engaged in the manufacture of fire-crackers, 1940s

37. Tailor shop where sewing machines are used to make cotton padded

clothing for the residents of Bishan, Sichuan province, 1940s 38. Women sewing uniforms in a factory in Shenyang (Mukden), January 1948

39. The banking district in Chongqing, with clock in the middle ofa square, 1944.

40. Children attending a primary school in Longzhuan village, Yunnan province, 1941 41. A Chinese typewriter, 1940s

42. The Editing Office of the Commercial Press of Shanghai, early 1920s 43. Reception of post office in Yunnan, complete with telephone, telegraph

and typewriter, pre-1911 44. Aerial view of Shanghai at night, with the Garden Bridge in the foreground, 1940s 45. Nanjing Road and its department stores illuminated at night 46. Yet King restaurant at night, Canton, 1940s.

47. Gambling joint in Macao lit up at night, 1940s

48. The entrance of a shop surrounded by billboards and brightly lit by a va-

riety of light sources, Shanghai, 1948

49. One-man

shoe factory in Bishan, complete with electric light, Sichuan

province, 1940s

50. Drum Tower, Beijing, with electricity and telegraph cables, 1920s

51. Packaging for the Great Dreadnaught 52. Farmer pouring water into bucket from a gas tank strapped onto a wooden cart used to collect water from fresh springs and sold on the town’s mar-

ket, Lindong, 1947

ww #o

. Squatters queue for running water, Shanghai, 1948

. The house ofa wealthy merchant with stuccoed walls, modern lawns and traditional stone lions, rockeries and pavilions, 1931

Illustrations and Credits 55. Row of motley shacks for refugees on the banks of a river in Shanghai, standing in contrast to the concrete houses of better-off urbanites, 1948

56. Qi Baishi with his two grandsons in front of his Beijing home protected

by iron security door, 1940s

57. Sun Baogi, acting premier in 1914 58. The reception room ofa wealthy merchant in Shanghai combining both local and foreign elements, 1931 59. A refugee from the war-torn north lives on a sampan in Shanghai, lighting her stove in order to cook a meagre meal for her family, February 1949

60. ‘Woman amid kitsch statues on sale in Shanghai 61. A man lights a kerosene lamp in a small village 62. Family of squatters gathered around a kerosene lamp on a casket 63. Qi Baishi painting in his study in Beijing, kept company by his cat; note the clocks, lamp and spittoon 64. Street vendor sells glass mirrors as well as other small amenities, Shanghai, 1948

65. Henry Pu Yi, photographed in February 1934 66. ‘Weaving of Turkish towels with home-grown cotton spun in a foreign mill on a loom at home, 1931

67. . Group of students in China in the 1900s

68. Shoppers at clothing store in Bishan, Sichuan province, 69. Shanghai street vendor selling shirts, 1948 70. Two men in business suits walk past a beggar in rags

71. 72. 73. 74, 75. 76. 77. 78. 79, 80.

mandarin jacket, Shanghai, 1948 ‘Two young ladies in the 1900s

1940s and a coolie in a

Chinese women in fashionable cheongsam dresses, 1937 Street vendors with stack of hats, Shanghai, 1948

With leather shoes comes shoe-shining Advertisement for rubber shoes Advertisement for olive soap Darkie Toothpaste Children in a Shanghai orphanage brushing teeth and washing, 1940s Man with large spectacles

Moscow Barber Shop in the French part of Shanghai, with cheap specta-

cles on sale on the street 81. An ice cream vendor in Beijing, also supplying bottled soda, cold fruit

juices and chilled watermelon, early 1920s

82. Candy shop with jars, bottles and packaged sweets in Bishan, Sichuan

province, 1940s

xi

Exotic Commodities

83. Open-air restaurant in Shenyang (Mukden), January 1948

84. Dried fish on public bench 85. Advertisement for a thermos bottle

86. A coolie drags a heavy cart loaded with the personal possessions and their owner atop, the thermos bottle ready

87. Label for Cherry Cola

88. Portrait studio in Shanghai, 1940s 89. Two northerners posing inside the studio

90. Hand-painted photograph of Y. C. Kuan in front of his home, late 1930s, by F Kao, Beijing

91. Wedding portrait, tinted by hand, 1920s 92. Group photograph with splendid display of hats, gowns and shoes, 1920s

93. Peepshow, 1940s

94. A peepshow in Chengdu, early 1900s 95. A camera show in Chengdu, early 1900s

96. Members of a Chinese women’s orchestra, ¢. 1915

97. Recreational room for staff at the Anshan Steel Company, 1930s 1, 57, 67, 71: Chusseau-Flaviens, George Eastman House; 2, 5, 8, 15, 16, 27, 28, 33, 34, 36, 38, 47, 53, 55, 56, 60, 62, 63, 64, 69, 70, 73, 74, 80, 83, 84, 86, 88: Jack Birns, Time and Life Pictures; 3, 21, 40, 44, 46, 48, Carl Mydans, Time and Life Pictures, Getty Archives; 4, 13, 43, 97: Number Two National Archives, Nanjing; 6, 45, 50, 89, 90, 91, 92: Frank Dikétter, Personal Collection; 7, 22, 23, 30, 31, 37, 39, 41, 49, 68, 78, 82, 93: Office of War Information, National Archives, Washington, DC; 9, 11, 75, 77: Liang Jingwu et al. (eds),

Lao guanggao (Old advertisements), Beijing: Longmen shuju, 1999; 10, 51,

76, 85,87: Zou Xuchu, Lao shangbiao (Old trade marks), Shanghai: Shanghai

huabao chubanshe, 1999; 12: Ellen Catleen, Peking studies, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1934; 14: Topical Press Agency, Getty Archives; 17: Song Jialin, Lao yuefen pai (Old calendar pictures), Shanghai: Shanghai huabao chubanshe, 1997; 18: George Lacks, Time

and Life Pictures, Getty Archives; 19, 52: Mark

Kauffman, Time and Life Pictures, Getty Archives; 20: Hulton Archive, Getty Archives; 24, 29, 54, 58, 66: White Brothers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; 25, 26, 79: China Inland Mission, School of Oriental and African Studies; 32: Bain Collection, National Archives, Washington, DC; 35: Carpenter

Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; 42, 81: The National Geo-

graphic Magazine; 59: Bettmann, Corbis Archives; 61: Library of Congress,

Washington, DC; 65: Central Press, Time and Life Pictures, Getty Archives;

72: Keystone, Getty Archives; 94, 95: Fu Chongju, Chengdu tonglan (Guide to Chengdu), 1909; 96: Hulton-Deutsch Collection, Corbis Archives.

Nii

CONVENTIONS The symbol ‘$’ and the term ‘dollar’ refer to Chinese dollars before 1933 or

Chinese yuan after 1933; the two were approximately equivalent. The value

of copper varied in relationship to silver, and in the 1930s one silver dollar

could generally be exchanged for 300 to 330 coppers. China suffered huge

inflation in the 1940s, and prices bore little relation to actual value. Haiguan taels, used to calculate the value of imports, corresponded to US $1.20-1.40

during the late nineteenth century, and to US $0.60—0.80 for most of the

early decades of the twentieth century.

The terms ‘grams’, ‘feet’ or ‘metres’ refer to European units unless indicated

otherwise. Much confusion was caused in China by the lack of uniformity

in standards of measurement. The unification of weights and measures was only undertaken by the government in 1930, although it was carried out in

different periods by different provinces and municipalities, and a variety of standards remained in use for many years.

Pinyin romanisation is used throughout, except for names and terms better known in a different spelling (Canton rather than Guangzhou, Taipei rather than Taibei) or where they appear in published works using alternative conventions. Beijing was renamed Beiping after the capital moved south to Nan-

jing in 1927. Contrary to general usage, and in the interest of clarity for readers who are not specialists of modern China, the spelling Beijing is used

for the entire republican period.

xii

‘Lobjet est toujours plus important, plus intéressant, plus capable (plein de

droits): il n’a aucun devoir vis-a-vis de moi, c’est moi qui ai tous les devoirs 4 son égard.’ Francis Ponge, La rage de l’expression, p. 10

‘He wore a brown silk gown and over it a short black silk jacket, and on his head a billy-cock hat. “Ts it not strange,” he said, with his charming smile, “that we Chinese wear this gown because three hundred years ago the Manchus were horsemen?” “Not so strange,”I retorted, “as that because the English won the battle of

Waterloo Your Excellency should wear a bowler.”” W. Somerset Maugham,

On a Chinese screen, p.8

XV

INTRODUCTION MATERIAL CULTURE IN MODERN CHINA ‘The Chinese have eagerly acquired all the technical discoveries of the foreigners; machine guns and trench mortars, flying machines and wireless telegraphs, thermos bottles and cinematographs, hair-cutting machines and fountain pens.’ So noted Johan Gunnar Andersson while travelling through China in 1928.' A local observer writing a few years earlier went further,

pointing out how in his country ‘residences as well as public buildings are being built in the latest European style, together with modern fittings and fix-

tures for the interior. Foreign cooking, foreign wines, foreign games, foreign clothes, foreign customs - almost everything foreign is becoming fashionable’.? In his examination

of the interaction between

China

and Europe

E. R. Hughes concluded: ‘Such things as bicycles, thermos flasks, and electric

torches are found in many villages, together with soap, matches, cigarettes and

some tinned foods... if they are useful they are adopted; if they are not useful they are ignored. This book maps the everyday changes in the material landscape of China

from the middle of the nineteenth century to the advent of communist rule in 1949. It shows that, far from being indigenous, the material culture of broad sections of the population was already inextricably intertwined with global trends by the end of the nineteenth century, whether by the yarn of their clothes, the iron of their tools, or their lamps and the oil in them. If things foreign were often displayed to indicate social status by modernising elites, many also found their way into the daily lives of ordinary people. Abundant evidence presented in this book shows how new commodities rapidly became part of the texture of everyday life, from electric fans and photographic equipment in the palace to rubber galoshes and enamel wash-

basins in the farmhouse.

Introduction

From exotic spices in medieval Europe to manufactured goods in the

Trobriand Islands, ‘foreign’ often denoted ‘superior’, if only because exotic

goods came from distant lands and were highly valued. During the nineteenth

century, however, as elites around the world came to locate modernity in

Europe, things local were increasingly rejected as signifiers of backwardness,

while imported goods from France, England or Germany were embraced in-

stead as prestige symbols: dominant groups in Asia, Africa and South America

believed that modernity had to be brought home in order to propel one’s

country into the universe of ‘civilised’ nations and join a universal march towards a better future. ‘Foreign’ stood for ‘modern’ as Europe was viewed as the

fountainhead ofa new world of progress. In South America republican elites embraced elegant shirts, woollen trousers and frock coats from Paris, while

fine wines, fashion books and illustrated magazines were imported from

Europe, grand pianos being hauled over steep mountain paths on muleback.* In Japan kimonos and parasols were traded for derby hats and horn-rimmed spectacles, while beer and baseball rivalled sake and sumo in an exuberant imitation of life as it was lived in England.> These trends were by no means

confined to Asia, Africa and South America,as a similar lure of the foreign ap-

peared in parts of Europe—a fact conveniently overlooked by some historians of colonialism. In Italy Victorian porcelain, including the new toilet bowl

from Mr Crapper, as well as entire carriages and coaches, were imported,

closely followed by English nannies. White flannels, English saddles and the riding coat, bastardised as redingote in France, all became common among

European elites keen to identify with the forces of progress. In Germany

the habit of sending English shirts to London to be laundered and ironed

was upheld by many until the bombing raids started under Nazi rule, as all

over Europe ‘people wanted the best, and the best was English’.° Foreign, in

Europe and out of Europe, was no longer merely exotic: to buy foreign was to be modern.

Worship of the foreign could nonetheless be fraught with ambivalence. In

China, for instance, political elites gradually identified ‘foreign’ with ‘impe-

rialist’ in the first decades of the twentieth century. Many ordinary people, on

the other hand, were pragmatic enough to differentiate between the practical

borrowings of things foreign and the rhetorical denunciation of imperialist

powers, as Virgil Ho has illustrated in the case of republican Canton.’ A common feature of regions which were already used to living near a centre of power to which tribute had to be paid is that their relative liminality often

allowed them to adjust, adapt and adopt the foreign more easily. This obser-

vation is true of Japan, which borrowed many material objects and social

to

practices from China, and of Siam, which welcomed things Indic with the

Material Culture in Modern China

Buddhist revolution before rapidly switching to a more eurocentered vision

in the second half of the nineteenth century.* This book argues that dominant groups, by virtue of their closer familiarity with the foreign, most conspicuously started to appropriate foreign objects by the end of the Qing, but ultimately ordinary people, thanks to their distance from the centres of power, were the least inhibited about acquiring goods which were perceived

to be useful. Working men and working women, by small and often severely constrained choices on how their hard-earned money should be distributed, incrementally changed the material landscape of modern China. When more

and more people make small adjustments to material culture, from the acquisition of a kerosene lamp to the use of cheap cement, the cumulative effect over the course of a century (1842-1949) is great. These changes are charted

here for the very first time.

THE FICTIONS OF ‘AUTHENTICITY’, ‘HYBRIDITY”

AND ‘ACCULTURATION’

‘When I was young we used oil lamps for light and travelled in sedan chairs,

but today nuclear plants generate electricity while the airplane has shrunk the distance between regions, Xu Shiying (1872-1964) exclaimed towards

the end of his life. Born in a small village in Anhui province under the Qing

and dying in the bustling metropolis of Taipei almost a century later, he was acutely aware of the huge transformation in material life which shook modern China.” Yet foreigners who were disturbed by the human propensity for

cultural bricolage often ignored these sweeping changes: in J. G. Cormack’s

Everyday Customs in China, republished as late as 1935, modernity was con-

spicuous by its absence." Elisabeth Enders, writer of a series of books on modern

China, believed

that foreign

influence

was a ‘negligible surface

scratch." She travelled through the same places along the Yangzi during

the early 1920s as Gretchen Fitkin: where the latter found smoking factory

chimneys, busy industries and model

towns, the former excluded

the mo-

dern from her account to focus on the ‘inner China’ which had remained

‘unchanged for many centuries’.'?A similar attitude can still be found today: throughout his otherwise exquisitely written book on everyday life in mo-

dern Shanghai, Lu Hanchao elegantly airbrushed the ‘modern’, from ciga-

rettes to the factory, out of history in order to create a seemingly flawless

picture of life ‘beyond the neon lights’, which appears to mean ‘authentically local’. His recovery of an urban past concentrates on residential houses while

entirely overlooking industrial buildings: no sweatshops appear in his Shang-

hai, let alone factories and plants, where most of the ‘everyday life’ of ordinary

Introduction

people was spent.'> However, in the homes of factory workers alarm clocks,

enamel washbasins, rubber galoshes and oil lamps had already transformed material culture and social practices by the early 1930s, all but ignored by historians in their nostalgia for a past before the ‘intrusion of the West’. And

where exactly was ‘beyond the neon lights’ in Shanghai, a city which took to electricity with such enthusiasm that many locations were illuminated with

neon adverts and artificial lighting, from streetlamps and domestic lighting to headlamps of cars, trams and boats?"*

A refusal to engage with the presence of the modern has been one way to

preserve the fiction of a more ‘authentic’ China to be discovered by romantic

traveller and nostalgic historian alike. This was the reaction of Albert Gervais’

travel companion on arriving in Shanghai:‘We could see in front of us the tall rectangular silhouettes of the neighbouring buildings, pierced with an infinity

of little points of light.A gramophone playing in a near-by house brought us

the syncopated rhythms of a negro dance. The noise of klaxons and the horns of the tramway punctuated with brief notes the dull hum of a great city at work. Morel did not move, but I saw his gaze reach beyond the glittering lights of the vast town and plunge into the half-shadows of the world of lost illusions. “China, That” he said at last. “I expected something else...””"> The

journalist Hallett Abend, who would become a seasoned China-watcher, was disgusted when his first sight of the country in 1925 was a flat mudbank and

a high signboard advertising chewing gum: no pagodas, temple bells or spice-

laden breezes.'° The temperance missionary Christine Tinling also regarded

Shanghai as a ‘gateway’ outside the ‘real China’:‘One must pass beyond it and

leave behind the elegant stores, the street-cars and the automobiles, before one can glimpse the real China, or become attracted to her spirit of hoary antiquity” However,

she complained

about

the incessant flow

of cars, trams and big

electric buses in Canton."’ Change, in other words, was simply not ‘Chinese’.

Gerald Yorke, also in search of the ‘real China’, even delighted in ridiculing

local people who wore new clothes: when he encountered a road engineer

in modern dress who complained about the heat, he enjoyed telling him how cool he himself was in his Chinese silks.'* And some conservative elites

themselves, of course, also rejected things foreign: Yushi, a scholar who served

as an envoy to the northwest of the empire during the 1870s and was an ardent promoter of neo-Confucian orthodoxy, openly declared that he hated

“Western things’ wholeheartedly, refusing to have his household invaded by foreign objects; he even used home-grown cloth rather than imported yarn

to make cushions for his bed. His contemporary Liu Enpu, a Qing official active at the end of the nineteenth century, also thoroughly detested imported

goods, although apparently he had a hat rack made of scrap iron imported

The Fictions of ‘Authenticity’, ‘Hybridity’ and ‘Acculturation’ from Europe: contamination

conservative family."”

was difficult to avoid, even in the bosom

of a

William Martin looked at the matter differently: rather than try to find

authenticity beyond the neon

lights, he described even

Nanjing Road

in

Shanghai as ‘thoroughly Chinese’ with its banners decorated in golden letters,

its acetylene lighting and its blaring loudspeakers.” Peter Fleming took a

different tack by opining that ‘Shanghai is not Chinese; Canton is’ Accord-

ing to him, the aura of modernity which marked the thriving capital of the south was all the more significant since it was entirely home-grown.” Both authors understood that modernity was neither imposed by imperialism nor

a mere surface phenomenon without consequences, but a new repertoire of possibilities which were mobilised and transformed by a host of distinct local factors. The endless circulation, domestication and recycling of objects with

the advent of a global economy has frequently offended the guardians of cultural barriers: the notion of ‘hybridity’ has been used to perpetuate the illusion of ‘authenticity’. Nathaniel

Peffer observed

in his China: The

collapse of a civilization, published in 1931, that when a farmer goes to ‘market-

towns lit by electric light, sees rice polished by machinery and looks at shops

storing canned foods or bicycles or machine parts or imported soap or socks

or toothpaste, the remaking of his life has begun—not only his own life but the

society in which itis laid?” While he was right in observing the speed with which

global flows transformed everyday life in republican China, he was wrong in unsympathetically identifying these changes as a process of ‘hybridisation’ by

which the farmer ‘ceased to be Chinese’.” The notion of hybridity was best

encapsulated for Peffer by furniture, which indiscriminately mixed both cul-

tures, creating a ‘mongreloid furniture that is of no hemisphere but blends the hideous in both’, becoming the material expression of a more insidious form of

social chaos and moral anarchy in a cultural twilight zone.” Modernity, for him, was an alien element which destroyed a fragile and delicately balanced system. He also used the term ‘hybridism’ to describe returned students from abroad,

which he claimed had a smattering of ‘Western’ education and no ground-

ing in Chinese culture:‘They were hybrids—neither foreign nor Chinese." Indiscriminate mixing was also deplored by A. E. Grantham

in his Pencil

speakings from Peking: ‘The very style in which hideous woollen caps, frightful foreign boots, shoddy American overcoats are worn simultaneously with

Chinese silks which have preserved the old elegance, though even they have

lost the old beauty of colour; the European-planned buildings, with all the

vulgarity of the West added to the present indigence of the East; the listlessness

of khaki-clad officers stumbling over cumbrous swords, no doubt imported

Introduction

from abroad by some dishonest dealer in discarded equipments, all indicate helpless groping in a maze of antagonistic tendencies, utter bewilderment at

the swiftness of the changes convulsing the world. In the endless drift of people and things across the face of the earth, however, exchange of genes and goods has always been the norm, ‘purity’ being an invention of relatively recent vintage. The notion of ‘hybridity’ nonetheless continues to be deployed eagerly in cultural studies today,” despite the decline in respectability of racial theories: the term was first used by physical

anthropologists in the nineteenth century keen to describe ‘mixture’ of ‘pure races’ as inferior, mongrelised ‘hybrids’.” Michael Bakhtin was one of the

first to transpose the term from biology to culture by describing the ‘mix-

ture’ of two social languages as ‘hybridisation’. The linguist Keith Whinnom similarly argued in 1971 that it was satisfactory because ‘the biological and linguistic processes of hybridization are closely comparable if not mechani-

cally identical’ Such deliberate parallels are not surprising, since the fields of biology and linguistics have overlapped ever since their appearance in the nineteenth century: race and language were virtually synonymous in Darwin's time, for instance in the use of the term ‘Aryan’.”” However, while the term

‘hybrid’ appeared in linguistics with reference to lexical borrowing, it is no

longer considered to be adequate to describe the complex and diverse ways

in which individuals construct their languages. Despite the decline in respectability of the notion of ‘hybridity’ first in biology and now in linguistics, not a few practitioners of cultural studies have resorted to it to perpetuate

essentialist understandings of human interaction. As we shall see, ‘hybridity’

replicates simplistic binary oppositions and, more important, rides roughshod

over the perspectives of historical agents, who did not necessarily see a clash

in the juxtaposition of different objects: in contrast to Yushi and Liu Enpu, who rejected all things foreign, new and old often mixed without any com-

plexes in other households. Kenneth Lo, who grew up in early republican Fujian, for instance remembered that ‘In Lo Lodge the old blended naturally with the new and we were not aware of any cultural conflict.” Evidently a social spectrum existed with very different attitudes along the way, ranging from outright rejection to fervent adoption of foreign imports, but many

ordinary people were far more concerned with the actual uses of particular

goods than with their presumed origins. More recently the notion of ‘acculturation’ has been used to portray the changes induced by a global economy in solely negative terms. Social scientists critical of the ‘intrusion of the West’ have interpreted the global

circulation of commodities as the result of a market system which has no re-

gard for the needs of local people. Serge Latouche, in The Westernization of the 6

The Fictions of ‘Authenticity’, ‘Hybridity’ and ‘Acculturation’ world, has argued that the rise of the West to world domination has brought widespread social, cultural and material destruction, as ‘oppressed people’ reject eurocentric modes of development: globalisation has led to acculturation,

as a stable, tradition-bound regime of production is followed by a disoriented

response to a new global mode of production.”' ‘Traditional Russia’, argues

Theodore von Laue in The world revolution of Westernization, was destroyed

by imported gadgets, whether grand pianos or fine liquors. The idea that a global economy inevitably leads to the destruction of local identities, as a homogenised consumer culture ruthlessly displaces previously autonomous

cultural experiences in its subjugation of the world, has great appeal for those who equate globalisation with Westernisation. But local peoples have always creatively incorporated products and social forms for purposes other than those intended by their producers, as Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz demonstrate in the case of Papua New Guinea.* Marshall Sahlins too notes that local culture does not necessarily disappear under the impact

of rapid change, as global homogeneity and local differentiation develop to-

gether: he refers to this process as the ‘indigenisation of modernity’, a vision

articulated around the arresting image of lokua, small fish living in reef ponds cut off from the sea at tidal lows but periodically replenished by ocean waters.

This book comes armed with empirical data to question theories of glo-

balisation which emphasise the alienation of local cultures. It uses instead the concept of appropriation to account for the emergence of material mo-

dernity in the specific case of China: ordinary people operated from within a social universe in which things were used and circulated in culturally specific

ways. Material modernity was not a set of givens imposed by foreigners but a repertoire of new opportunities, a kit of tools which could be flexibly appro-

priated in a variety of imaginative ways. The local, in this process of cultural

bricolage, was transformed just as much as the global was inflected to adjust to existing conditions: inculturation rather than acculturation accounts for the

broad cultural and material changes which marked the republican era in China. A host of factors—to be examined in this book—influenced the different choices made by a variety of social groups in this process of appropriation, from taste, price, novelty and perceived usefulness to quality, availability and marketing. Poor pullers of rickshaws, those foreign-derived machines that enabled one man to do the work of two chair-carriers, used medical syringes

to inject new opiates fabricated by virtue of the tools of modern chemistry, while homes in Shanghai's shantytown were erected with iron cans from Standard Oil. As much as the potato and tobacco were considered ‘foreign’ in the seventeenth century but had become part of ‘tradition’ by the late

Qing, a whole range of imported goods became inextricably enmeshed in

Introduction

the warp and weft of everyday life in republican China, from the mansions

of the wealthy to the shacks of the poor. This book thus adds an empirically

grounded case study to the comparative analysis of material culture, emphasising the creative appropriation by local people of global commodities.

Michel de Certeau, in an influential book on the practice of everyday life,

noted that while ‘mass culture’ might tend towards homogenisation, ‘ordinary

culture’ displays a fundamental diversity of situations, interests and contexts

despite an apparent uniformity of objects: pluralisation, he noted, is born from ordinary usage.”® His essay argued that the products imposed by a domi-

nant economic order can undergo numerous transformations by the ways in

which ordinary people make use of them. Indians in South America may have

been unable to fight their colonial subjection, but they nevertheless often transformed therituals, representations and laws imposed on them into something quite different to what their conquerors had in mind: ‘They subverted them not by rejecting or altering them, but by using them with respect to ends and references foreign to the system they had no choice but to accept.”

He turned Michel Foucault upside down, showing how, at the everyday level, ordinary people are not so much subjected to an insidious form of discipline,

but capable of resisting it by everyday acts of appropriation: Michel de Certeau analysed the ways in which consumers created the network of an anti-

discipline. Invaluable as his approach may be, his notion of ‘resistance’ against a ‘dominant social order’ overstates the case: rarely can the world be divided into an oppressive ‘system’ from above and ‘resistance’ from below. Even in the case of colonialism in Africa, to quote the philosopher Kwame Appiah, ‘to speak of “resistance” in this phase of colonial culture is already to overstate the ways in which the colonial state was invasive.”*” Moreover, while de Certeau underlines that users are never passive, his focus is nonetheless on

moments, practices, strategies or operations rather than on human beings in

specific social situations: uses rather than users are invested with the power to generate change. A critique of the fictions of ‘authenticity’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘acculturation’ thus leads us to emphasise instead the circulation of commodities between

cultures and their creative appropriation by users in a variety of rapidly chang-

ing social contexts.As Kwame Appiah has observed, there is no fully autoch-

thonous, echt-African culture awaiting salvage, and the postulation of a binary opposition between a unitary Africa against a monolithic ‘West’ is the last of the shibboleths of the modernisers that we should learn to live without. In

his analysis of a sculpture representing a Yoruba man with a bicycle, which

he uses to explore how pan-Africanism and postmodernist theory have failed

to come to terms with cultural bricolage and the ceaseless circulation of cul-

The Fictions of ‘Authenticity’, ‘Hybridity’ and ‘Acculturation’ tures, he underlines that the African artist who carved it cared little that the bicycle was the white man’s invention: ‘It is there because someone cared for its solidity; it is there because it will take us further than our feet will take us;

it is there because machines are now as African as novelists—and as fabricated

as the kingdom of Nakem.”* This book shows that there is no exclusively Chinese material culture either:it was all but impossible to distinguish ‘native’

from ‘foreign’ by the time the communists seized power in 1949. THE LIMITS OF ‘EMULATION’, ‘CONSUMPTION’

AND ‘REPRESENTATION’

Appropriation, domestication, inculturation: these notions all undermine the

diffusion thesis, or cloud-to-dust theory, which locates agency exclusively in the elites who are claimed to have first embraced particular objects or prac-

tices before they trickled down the social ladder. While it is undeniable that individuals from a variety of social backgrounds could attempt to surpass each

other by means of imitation, as we have seen in the case of elites in Asia and

South America, the notion of emulation can be insidious: it is found not only

in the social sciences but also in the source material, which was produced

more often than not by educated elites who viewed the great unwashed as

unthinking automata. Liang Zhangju,

critic of imported goods in the early

nineteenth century, thus observed: ‘People frequently change their minds as

soon as they see a new object. If one person admires something, soon every-

one else will take toit. At first an object is valued by a high official or a noble lord, eventually passing and concubines.” The terms of status through of emulation, the poor

down to their servants, and further to courtesans idea that certain social groups identify themselves in conspicuous consumption in a hierarchical system for ever imitating the rich, was proposed in 1899 by

Thorstein Veblen in his classic The theory of the leisure class,” although the assumption that all historical agency is reserved for social elites was rather

common, as can be gleaned from the comment by Liang Zhangju. Emulation is a popular notion because it furnishes an integrative framework of analysis. Like all totalising explanations, it reduces human and historical complexity to a single variable: it gives a clear motive for the reasons why goods multi-

plied and spread down the social ladder and across the entire globe. The

emulation model of consumption, in which the poor invariably follow the trends set by the rich and appropriate their goods in a never-ending quest

to move up the social scale, has even been applied to the international order

in development theory: an expanding bourgeoisie in developing countries has ready access to foreign goods, and emulates the buying habits of more affluent

Introduction

societies.*' The image of the blue-eyed doll in the hands of the poor Creole

in Belize has been used to exemplify the alienation involved in this global

system of social imitation, as local cultures are wiped out to make room for a global capitalist order.””

No distinct social formation, however, prevailed in the appropriation of

things modern, as material culture was constructed in a multiplicity of points

in the social field and anchored in a variety of cultural locations. Different individuals also varied markedly in the actual uses of particular goods,

sometimes subverting the purposes for which they were intended by their

producers. Mass production of the mirror in the republican era, to take but

one example, consolidated rather than displaced cosmological conceptions

about spiritual forces, as cheap mirrors were placed outside the door to keep malign spirits from entering the house. Moreover, not all goods move from top to bottom. An excellent example of a move up the social hierarchy can be found in the history of tobacco: it was first smoked by sailors before it was

more widely used by the middling classes. Even if particular social practices or

material uses can flow up rather than trickle down, it is crucial to understand the importance of resignification and differential use: the same object can be assigned different meanings and different uses by different social groups, even if the object itself imposes a limit on the possible uses. The syringe, for instance,

was welcomed in republican China as a symbol of medical chic by the rich in Shanghai, while the poor used it to inject cheap morphine when opium, now

on the black market, was no longer affordable.** As Colin Campbell's fine critique of the notion of emulation shows, goods can be desired by different social groups for their own sake rather than for any prestige which may accrue to them. Behaviour which is imitative, finally, is not necessarily also emulative: a farmer's wife may copy the curtains seen in an aristocratic house without

thereby desiring to become a lady or excel her social superiors in fashion. On the eighteenth century in England Lorna Weatherill adds:‘There is no evidence that most people of middle rank wanted to be like the gentry, although

they may have wanted some of the new goods for their own purposes.’* As the comment by Liang Zhangju exemplifies, social betters did of course live in

fear of being overtaken by the lower orders, particularly in times of increased

social mobility and economic opportunities, and historians should be careful not simply to reproduce his set of assumptions about motivation and meaning

while ignoring particular situations and needs. More important, as in almost

all economic explanations produced by social analysts in Europe over the last

two centuries, the spectre of sin lurks just under the cool surface of social

theory: envy, that overriding subject of Christian concern, is the norm which lies behind the alleged drive to imitate one’s social superiors, either explicitly 10

The Limits of ‘Emulation’, ‘Consumption’ and ‘Representation’ in the case ofThorstein Veblen’s Theory of the leisure class or implicitly in Neil

McKendrick’s book The birth of a consumer society: can such a loaded theory have analytical value outside the Christian world?

religiously

The very term ‘consumption’, as Joy Parr points out, carries with it the prodigal and rebarbative connotations it was given by religious authorities when it came into use in English in the fourteenth century: it meant to waste, devour, use up to the point of exhaustion—early inflections which continue to inform its use in debate about political economy to this day. ‘Consump-

tion’, moreover, is a term which introduces a normative distinction from

‘production’, just as ‘demand’ is seen to face ‘supply’. Yet for the historian interested in the social uses of goods, both production and consumption frequently overlap: the loom in the factory ‘consumes’ yarn just as the chopper

in the kitchen ‘produces’ a meal.” Gender permeates discussions of consump-

tion, at least since Adam was forced to leave paradise: production is a male

virtue, consumption a female vice. Amanda Vickery has shown how prejudice

against the female consumer is widespread in the Christian world, since social commentators have long associated man with the spiritual and woman with the material. Socialist and feminist analyses have inherited this puritanical strain, either dismissing consumption as female, parasitic and pointless, in contrast to the creative and useful culture of production, or denouncing fashion as an emblem of female dependence in a patriarchal cage.** Consumers, in this book, are seen as producers: users generate meanings and produce interpretations for the many objects they appropriate.” Consumption is appropriation,

in other words a social activity by which objects produced by others become one’s own by subjecting them to personal meanings and differential uses.

Another popular approach in cultural studies, one which has made its

contribution but has now passed its peak,is to focus not so much on users and

usages but on ‘representation’. Objects, however, are polysemic, infused by

human beings with multiple interpretations and personal experiences. Historians who take material culture seriously move beyond discourse analysis to try to find ways in which to tease out the complex and often contradictory ways in which material objects were understood and appropriated by actual users in specific social contexts: objects do not have lives of their own, but

are granted lives by their users, lives that often diverge considerably from the intentions of their producers. Advertisements, a popular source for cultural

historians in search of modernity,” reflect marketing strategies pursued by producers, while the challenge for the historian of material culture is to be able to get closer to the users whose social practices endowed material objects

with meaning. There is a gap between the assumptions of advertising and the

experience of consumers: in advertisements for fitted kitchens in England

a)

Introduction today, for instance, the young are always shown with modernist forms and the

ageing with the nostalgia style, although in reality the nostalgia style based on

oak is new, desirable and predominantly bought by young people; the earliest

kitchens in the 1950s were generally modernist and are still preferred by the old.*!' As cultural studies have become mired in a linguistic dead end, cultural history can benefit from a turn towards sources and topics which examine the

complex interplay between cognitive images and social usages.

This interplay has been elided in a number of recent cultural studies

which attempt to capture the ‘experience of modernity’, or the emergence ofa ‘modern human consciousness’, on the basis ofa small number of texts

produced by a canon of famous writers. ‘Modernity’ is viewed here to be exclusively an affair of the mind, to be explored via the writings of a few

literary giants: from classic contributions such as: Marshall Berman's Alll that

is solid melts into air to minor sinological studies such as Janet Ng’s grandly titled Experience of modernity, a dozen great minds seem to constitute a sufficient basis from which to extrapolate about millions of lesser ones.** Charles Baudelaire, from Walter Benjamin to Ulrich Baer, is a favourite in European studies, while there is seemingly no end to the ways in which Lu Xun can be

recycled in the China field. However, if social history has taught us anything at all, despite its many limitations, then surely it is that a ‘history of great men’ has limited explanatory power. Common sense dictates that the acquisition

of a kerosene lamp to fight the dark and of a cheap mirror to repel malign spirits was a far more widespread ‘experience of modernity’ for hundreds of millions of ordinary farmers in China who might only rarely travel beyond their village than the musings about the nature of time and space among a few self-absorbed writers. Objects, moreover, do not exist outside of culture, as the term ‘material culture’ elegantly indicates. An interdependent and mutual relationship between people and things is thus at the very core of the

modern world which we inhabit: to discard the material is to miss the human.

Culture is not the affair of great minds, but the glue which enables relationships to be constructed between subjects and objects: in the words of Paul Graves-Brown, ‘Culture is the emergent property of the relationship between people and things.’* THINGS

AND

PEOPLE

While ‘emulation’ and ‘consumption’ can be religiously loaded notions with

limited value for an analysis of material culture outside Europe, even such

seemingly neutral terms as ‘commodity’, ‘gift’ or ‘object’ can be inflected

by Christian understandings which are inappropriate for our purposes, as

Things and People Igor Kopytoff has demonstrated. Not all objects, as he shows, can be traded. Kopytoff defines a commodity as a thing that has user value and can be sold

or exchanged for a counterpart. Cognitive order is imposed by the human

mind on a world of chaos by classifying its contents: an endless stream of

singular things is made intelligible by carving out, through discrimination

and classification, distinct areas of homogeneity. Between two poles a tension

inevitably arises—one in which things are seen to be so singular that exchange is all but impossible, the other one of extreme homogeneity in which

everything is exchangeable: commoditisation is a process by which things

become exchangeable for other objects. Objects can move from commoditi-

sation to singularisation, all the more in complex societies where individuals or groups devise innumerable schemes of valuation that conflict with more

widely recognised commoditisations. Old slippers can become so linked to a sense of person that parting from them becomes unthinkable. Old beer cans

and comic books suddenly become collectibles, thus ‘moving from the sphere of the singularly worthless to that of the expensive singular’.**

However, Igor Kopytoff’s key point is that in Europe and the United States the universe of people is conceptually separated from the universe of things, since the former is defined as the preserve for singularisation and the latter as the realm for commoditisation: as the following section shows, there was no

such distinction in China, since even the labour of a child could be sold by

parents. Slavery, for instance, presented an increasingly acute moral problem in modern Europe but almost nowhere else. Clashes over abortion can appear to be very Christian-centred, since they concern the precise location of the line that divides persons from things. Continuous moral concerns are expressed in Europe about the commoditisation of human attributes such as labour, intellect, creativity, human organs, female reproductive capacity and human ova. From Marx to the Pope, human capital is defined as more than a mere commodity, while trafficking in human attributes carries special opprobrium.

Advances in reproductive technologies today continue to spark debates about

the socially constructed line between the human and the commodity. The notion of singularisation also undermines the distinction between ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’, so dear to many anthropologists. Marcel Mauss was the first to suggest a separation of the gift on the one hand, seen to be inalienable because it contains a part of someone’s spiritual essence, and the

commodity on the other, described as alienated since it is merely purchased

and therefore remains anonymous and interchangeable: economic relations

(production) and social relations (the market) have become separated in mo-

dern societies, a view which appears to have caused much anxiety among social thinkers unable to transcend the religious environment in which they

3

Introduction were raised, from Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss

to Herbert

Marcuse and

Jean Baudrillard—although anxiety seems distinctly less pronounced among

the majority of ordinary people disparaged by these high theorists as ‘mass

consumers’. Not only does the notion of a gift, somehow embodying the ‘spiritual essence’ of the giver, strike a cultural outsider as religiously specific

and thus highly implausible as a basis for a global theory about material cul-

ture, but most commodities are singularised as soon as they are purchased: the very act of appropriation imbues manufactured objects with personal qualities. The purchase ofa new chair, for instance, is not only carefully planned,

but comes to bear the emotional as well as the physical imprint of its owner.

To this observation we should add that the creative act of appropriation in

itself blurs the boundary between object and person: things are not merely

mastered, they are often incorporated, becoming a ‘symbiotic extension of the person’s own embeddedness’, in the words of Don Ihde.*’ The interaction be-

tween a car and its driver becomes so dense that feeling rather than thinking can be enough to execute otherwise complex operations, for instance parallel parking: the car or the pencil become extensions of the self, while a dwelling can be lived as an exterior skin. The same can be said about a multitude

of objects incorporated into the daily lives of users, from the room which can

be navigated in the dark, the switch which can be located at night, the exact

position of each letter on a typewriter which can be found without even a glance, or the distance between fork, plate and mouth: appropriation enables

objects to become extensions of the self. And

to incorporate.

WORSHIP

OF

THE

to eat, of course, is quite literally

TANGIBLE

This book argues that the social restrictions on commoditisation were rela-

tively weak in late imperial and modern China. In a country where goods were scarce but people plentiful, few things remained outside the realm of exchange. Not only would families roam the treeless hills of north China in

search of a few twigs or shrubs, but everything was constantly recycled in a culture of thrift and poverty. Few objects were seen to be so singular as to be

beyond commoditisation, except for rare items such as the official insignia of power. Christians were often struck by the very pragmatic attitude adopted by

local people towards material goods: Dyer Ball observed how ‘every China-

man seems born with the instinct of acquisitiveness’, as even the smallest

object had a price in a country marked by poverty. Three centuries earlier

Friar Gaspar Da Cruz noted how ‘there is nothing lost in the country be it

never so vile... even the dung of men yields profit.* Worship of the tangible 4

Worship of the Tangible extended to intellectual capital: by the end of the Qing even examination

degrees and official titles were open for sale. Muscle was the most commonly

owned commodity in late imperial China, and it was frequently exchanged

for goods and services, whether food, shelter or clothing. Transactions in human capital were widespread, because poor families often had nothing but

children to sell. At the top end of the social scale slave girls, concubines and secondary wives were commonly purchased: large families were seen as a sign

of social status, which could be raised by reproduction and acquisition.

The extent of commoditisation was reflected by a sophisticated system of exchange until the early republican era. Sometimes seen as rather cumber-

some and backward in comparison with a monetary system based on a single

currency, the existence in imperial China of a varied mass of copper cash,

bronze coins and silver dollars, many minted locally and differing in weight and fineness, reflected the complex and distinct functions of money and the importance of commoditisation: a huge and diverse supply of coin made

possible long-distance transfers, tax collection and everyday transactions to

a much larger extent than in early modern Europe. The arrival of new exchange technologies in the second half of the nineteenth century—improvements in production, retailing and banking—allowed commoditisation to spread further, all the more as the dividing line between the human and the

commodity, so significant in Europe, remained comparatively weak in China

among most social groups.The use of contracts was also pervasive, contrary to the common myth that property rights were ill-defined and poorly enforced by the state. Anything and everything, from children to shares in temple associations or the right to collect taxes, could become marketable, regardless of the social status or level of literacy of contractors. Even the dead could sue or be sued as they came armed with contracts asserting their ownership over grave plots.”

An abundant supply of cheap labour also existed in other parts of the

world, Southeast Asia in particular, but religions promoted by local states, for

instance Buddhism in Thailand and Christianity in the Philippines, provided

a counterdrive to the onrush of commoditisation.A variety of religious ap-

proaches existed in imperial China, Buddhism being particularly important in parts of the empire, but state orthodoxy attempted to keep these under strict control. However, this does not mean that things were not singularised. One

might even argue that in the absence of a clear demarcation between ‘people’

and ‘things’, based on the Christian notion of a soul, ‘things’ have long had a

spiritual dimension in China. An illustrated glossary published in 1915 and used by children to learn hundreds of common words starts with the term

‘heaven’ (tian) before moving on to ‘people’ (ren) and ‘things’ (wu), but these

Introduction

‘things’ encompass animals (called dongwu, or ‘moving things’), vegetables and

minerals.” A common saying points out that humans are ‘the wisest of all

things’ (wanwu zhi ling), again underlining the lack ofa clear division between

‘people’ and ‘things’, as if all material bodies were endowed with a spiritual

dimension. As we shall see, ordinary people often marvelled at new things,

whether cameras or bicycles, and viewed them as magic objects: the attribution of magical qualities to material objects was not merely inflated rhetoric, but part of a social cosmology which animated things with spiritual value.

A sense of enchantment characterised the relationship between people and

goods, one which can still be found when walking through popular markets in many parts of the world."!

Worship of the tangible, love of the new and enjoyment of consumption indicate a pragmatic attitude, possibly linked to a cosmology which accepts

the inevitability of change. New things can be acquired and loved but also thrown out or destroyed once deemed to have outlived their usefulness: the

illustrated glossaries mentioned above were often burnt for fuel once they had been memorised by the children." This observation even extends to

gods and deities: when a family decides that a household statue has become ineffective, it is taken back to the god-carver who will dispose of it, usually

by burning. No person in his right mind would ever dream of buying a

second-hand image for his altar—foreign tourists excepted. Not much of

a ‘second-hand market’ appears in this economy of the new, as we show in

the following chapters: such was the desire for the new that expensive items

purchased by the rich were discarded as soon as a newer commodity reached the market (the radio is a good example), while the cheaper goods purchased by the poor had a relatively short life-cycle and were literally used up.To this day the goods discarded by the well-to-do have limited appeal for the less privileged, who also prefer the new even if it is shoddy: as affluence spreads,

the rubbish piles up. Illustrated glossaries, commonly used by children to this day, also reveal another dimension of the relationship between people and objects in China where, in contrast to abstract Greek philosophy, words, notions and concepts

were explained from an early age onwards by reference to objects. Glossaries

provided illustrations of things to explain the world: in the republican era a telegraph pole could stand for the notion of rectitude, while a car represents

speed.A baby’s face could be rubbed with silk to explain the yin aspect of life,

while a rough piece of leather would be used to instil an understanding of the yang principle. On the other hand, language covered things in a web of

symbolic meaning, giving a touch of magic to ordinary objects and further

complicating the distinction we make between the animate and the inanimate:

16

Worship of the Tangible homophones in particular generated clusters of meaning around common

things, the ‘bat’ (bianfu) signifying ‘happiness’. Christians were often surprised by the number of objects to be found in temples, where they were used to represent a thought, for instance money being placed in the bowels of a

Buddha or a mirror in his eyes, meaning respectively plenty and reflection:

every thing spoke a silent language.* Temples, of course, were venues for merchants to sell their goods. And gods, too, wanted recognition in the most material of ways: they were given statues, temples, inscriptions, images and even formal government titles, as long as they performed the miracles expected of them, whether preventing epidemics or securing good harvests. When the gods lost their powers, and statues displayed on family altars became ineffective, they were discarded: a pragmatic attitude towards material objects thus even extends to sacred objects.” THE

SOURCES

One of the principal methodological challenges for this project has been the disparate nature of source materials.As Arnold Bauer notes in his wonder-

fal book on material culture in South America, goods, commodities and things

are in thousands of books, prints and pictures, although few historians have

tried to explain why people acquire the things they do.™ No particular set

of sources contains in easily accessible form the information

required to

investigate the social lives of things modern. Scouring a few magazines for advertisements may be a convenient research strategy for the postmodernist in a hurry, but a user-centred approach needs to take into account sources which are scattered over widely different genres and tend to be extremely uneven in quality. In decreasing order of quantitative importance these sources

are textual, visual and artefactual.

Textual sources tend to dominate the available material on the past, and

cover a variety of different genres. Economic journals like the Qianye yuebao (Financial Monthly) can offer basic information about local price variations,

although few will yield insights into the social uses of such objects as flashlights, cars or bicycles. They also provide quantitative information which can

help to assess the relative significance of a particular commodity in everyday

life: one toothbrush on sale in Canton in 1900 is not a significant fact, but

100,000 could well be, all the more so if these figures can be correlated over

time to indicate a historical trend. Trade returns and customs reports contain

detailed information about consumption patterns in specific regions across the country: trade representatives often spent many years in distant outposts

and published informative reports not available elsewhere, in particular for the 7

Introduction

last decades of the nineteenth century. Comprehensive journals written by the first Qing envoys abroad after 1860, on the other hand, are replete with qualitative insights which reveal how the first official visitors to Europe and the United States were dazzled by a different world dominated by gas lamps,

elevators, cars and tramways. They allowed readers to have a first glimpse of

the outside world that would remain elusive even to highly educated scholars

interested in foreign affairs until the 1890s. Equally, the many sociological surveys conducted during the republican period contain snippets of information about a variety of social groups who used modern objects. Lou Xuexi’s overview of Beijing, for instance, is a gem, containing exhaustive entries dedicated to all sorts of goods, from false teeth, textile umbrellas and rubber galoshes to spectacle lenses.” Some of these surveys were conducted at the village level, despite the difficulties encountered by research teams: as Fei Hsiao-tung and

Chang Chih-i noted when researching an agricultural community in Yunnan

in the 1940s, the appraisal ofa family’s use of goods was extremely difficult, as virtually no one maintained written records and the local economy was

largely self-sufficient.” A wealth of information can also be extracted from

literature by foreign visitors, some of whom spent considerable time work-

ing in China. Travel literature as a genre is scattered and uneven in quality,

although Frances Wood has already made exemplary use of it in her pioncer-

ing reconstruction of the daily lives of foreigners in the concessions.”! Some of these accounts take us to the grassroots: travellers like Edwin Dingle walked across the west of China in 1910 equipped with little more than an aneroid and the keen eye of an amateur anthropologist.”” Other foreigners took their readers inside the houses of their hosts and described their interiors in great detail, from Reginald Johnston, tutor of the last emperor, to Innes Jackson, who lived in Wuhan and made many local friends. Another invaluable source is lapidary folk verses called ‘bamboo branch poems’ (zhuzhici): they were less concerned with the expression of personal feelings than with the witty observation of everyday events, and some verses even gave the price of a pair of shoes, showing how a pragmatic attitude towards the material even pervaded poetry.” I call them ‘bamboo verses’, and use a number of collections from different cities to elicit information

about local changes in material

culture. Dozens of biographies and memoirs, finally, bring us even closer to

the pulse of daily life, and they form an indispensable part of the sources consulted

here. All

these

sources

present

very

different

methodological

challenges, but a hallmark of the book is precisely the use ofa wide variety of sources, however inaccurate or tainted each may be when taken separately.

Some of the sources usually mined by historians of material culture in

modern Europe are either extremely rare or altogether absent in the case of

The Sources China: probate records or household inventories, which are vital for social historians working on the seventeenth century, are rare even for the republican era. In general, textual material on modern China—whether printed or archival—is relatively thin compared even with small countries like the

Netherlands or Switzerland, although republican China witnessed a print revolution and the spread of a sophisticated bureaucracy which kept detailed

records of its activities.’ However, even the quantitative analysis of large series of documents such as probate inventories or trade statistics, as historians

of Europe have pointed out, poses particular methodological problems and

can be misleading. They say next to nothing, for instance, about the particular meanings and uses of objects, the joys and sorrows of possession or the private associations that gave these objects their special meaning: as T. H. Breen has

argued, they reveal a list of ‘decontextualised things that have lost their mean-

ings’ precisely when historians should be looking at the creative specificities

of particular social groups and historical periods.”®

Visual evidence is useful but relatively sparse and just as open to interpretation as the material which can be collected from textual sources. Studio

photographs, as we shall see, are invariably posed, and might not even provide

us with a snapshot of a person's best attire, since clothes could be on loan for the occasion. Advertisements can illustrate the appearance of specific objects,

since in a market replete with copies and dominated by illiterate consumers, they had to provide precise visual evidence of the commodity on offer. Arte-

factual evidence is even harder to come by, as the laws of survival of material goods are often haphazard: the greater availability of particular objects like

brass irons to press clothes may tell us more about production than about actual use. Moreover, while thousands of local museums and historical societies in the United States offer a panoply of commodities to be examined by the historian of material culture,’”* and while virtually every small town in

Japan has a museum for daily life where unwanted goods which crowd the storage room find a permanent home, everyday things considered to be ‘mo-

dern’ in China have been thrown out after 1949, either as a consequence of

communist campaigns or because, for a long time, only ‘traditional’ objects were

considered to be valuable collectables. Even if flea markets have appeared in

cities like Shanghai and Beijing, their poverty in comparison to similar venues in London, Paris or Bangkok can only reduce the committed collector to despair. No doubt this poverty of material from the past is also due to factors other than politics, for instance attachment to the new, contempt for the old and disparagement of the second-hand, as this book attempts to explore. Subtle yet vital regional variations, in particular between the north, the coast areas and the south, can only be captured by consulting a wide range

Introduction of material. While it would be pointless to try to cover every single region, the book attempts to include as many examples of local diversity as possible. Canton, Nanjing and Beijing appear regularly to illustrate the different urban settings in south, central and north China, while provincial capitals of the

interior like Kunming, Chengdu and Lanzhou bring us deep into the hinter-

land. An urban bias is inevitable, although frequent incursions are made into the countryside, from small villages in the humid south to peasant hamlets on the northern plains.

Not all things modern can be discussed systematically in a single volume, and

our text has been substantially reduced in size from the original manuscript. The item of material culture most obviously ignored here is modern weap-

ons, even if guns became ubiquitous by the end of the empire. I have also avoided detailed analyses of money, paper and cloth: a great level of expertise would be required to conduct an in-depth analysis of the various types of cloth which were imported—shirtings (dyed, figured, brocaded and spotted),T cloths, cambrics, lenos and balsarines, drills, jeans, sheetings, chintzes, flannelettes, lastings, crimps, velvets (and, of course, velveteens), lawns, mus-

lins—and none is attempted here.A hundred other objects could have been mentioned, all fascinating in the ways that they were understood and used in

China, from chewing gum to the X-ray machine—had there been no limit

on the length of the book and to the patience of the reader.

The material is organised thematically according to divisions common in the history of everyday life, with separate chapters on living, clothing and

eating, but it also moves from large historical trends and structures down

towards the user and consumption. Part I is concerned with the structures and networks which regulate the production and consumption of material artefacts. It starts with a chapter providing the historical background on the

widespread importation of foreign goods in late imperial China, arguing

that a long-standing tradition of manufacturing goods from foreign patterns, the use of component parts produced by individual workers in assembling complex objects, the spread of small enterprises in an expanding market from the sixteenth century onwards, and the availability of cheap labour in a rapidly growing population all facilitated the domestication of foreign goods, as

desirable objects from abroad were copied at low cost to satisfy the demands

of a large but relatively poor population. Chapter 3 looks more closely at the dissemination of these objects, whether by small portable stalls carried on the backs of itinerant merchants in the hinterland or gigantic stores placed at the heart of trading cities along the coast. This chapter also shows that parks,

20

Introduction museums, schools and even prisons devoted space to the display of new goods

in an educative mission of enlightenment. The visibility of modern objects

was also enhanced by a graphic revolution that brought images of the modern to every home in the shape of posters, calendars, advertisements or cigarette cards. Machines were disseminated by machines: steamers, trains, cars and planes were not only new artefacts in their own right, they were used by people to create larger networks of objects, as Chapter 4 examines. By the end of the republican period, cities like Canton, Shanghai and Beijing had become huge accretions of material objects, and they were the nodes at the centre of these new networks: Chapter 5 briefly evokes the emergence of the modern city and the material landscape of the school, the factory and the office. Not only did these social spaces often structure the first encounters with things new,

but they also emerged as key sites in the dissemination of material culture.

Chapter 6 looks at the gradual appearance of a grid of modern utilities in the cities, including electricity, the telephone and running water. Throughout Part I the emphasis is on usage and meaning, showing how

individual users understood objects in their own terms and used them for their own purposes, often other than those intended by their producers. Despite much larger political, economic and social variables, ranging from the

economic nationalism promoted by political elites to the presence of a global

economy dominated by foreign powers, users remained central in shaping market preferences. Ordinary people made limited choices about how their

money should be distributed, and however constrained their options may have been, they incrementally changed the material landscape of modern China. This becomes even more evident when we move away from larger structures such as transportation networks and public utilities to look in Part

II at how the everyday lives of individuals from very different social back-

grounds were transformed. Part II starts with a chapter on the house and its

objects, ranging from the glass used for windows to simple but widespread

utensils like the kerosene lamp and the mirror. Chapter 8 revolves around the everyday presentation of the self, examining how the body was clothed, groomed and embellished thanks to the many new artefacts of modernity:

by the end of the republican period even ordinary women could afford a dab of rouge and a Turkish towel. Food is often seen as the aspect of life least permeable to foreign influence, but as the following chapter demonstrates,

every aspect of eating and drinking was diversified by the inclusion of the country in a global economy which hugely expanded the existing culinary

repertoire. The final chapter concentrates on the mechanical reproduction of sound and image: the camera, the cinema, the gramophone and the radio

appealed to individuals of very different social backgrounds, transforming the

Introduction

ways in which people experienced sight and sound. Debunking the myth of a ‘hostility toward alien things’ which is claimed to have slowed down China’s

inclusion in a global economy, the chapters amount to a detailed analysis of how a very pragmatic attitude towards material goods prevailed, as most consumers bought the new and discarded the old without too many misgivings.

While this study does not claim to be more than an impressionistic portrait of

modern China, built up by small touches of the brush, the image that emerges

is one of active borrowing, creative bricolage and adaptive imitation. As the

book shows, globalisation may be effective in dispersing commodities around

the world, but it has not created cultural homogeneity: on the contrary, it has

enabled ever more complex cultural expression by diversifying the everyday

ideas, practices and objects of innumerable people, even if such differentiation

te

has increasingly taken place within a globally shared repertoire.

PART I DISSEMINATION: NETWORKS AND MATERIALS

2 THE DOMESTICATION OF FOREIGN GOODS EXOTIC

COMMODITIES

IN LATE

IMPERIAL

CHINA

The lure of the foreign The exotic is often seen as desirable: in medieval and early modern Europe the exotic East provided the wealthy with luxury objects, including fabrics,

carpets, ceramics, furnishings, jewels and ornament. Fine porcelain was a sign

of sophistication among aristocrats and merchants in Renaissance Italy, while

shops in early modern Paris sold ‘objects of Lachinage’ as curiosities. Trade in Oriental goods developed dramatically with the expansion of maritime trade and the founding of East Asia companies in Europe in the early seventeenth

century: spices, tea, porcelain and silk would become everyday necessities

within two centuries. While the changes in material culture brought about in modern Europe by the new objects, colours, patterns and finishes of objects of the East have been the subject of abundant research, little is known about the impact of material goods from Europe on China. Earlier periods in the history of China, in contrast, have been researched

in much greater detail. In The golden peaches of Samarkand Edward H. Schafer showed how the exotic pervaded the Tang: ‘The Chinese taste for the exotic

permeated every social class and every part of daily life: Iranian, Indian, and Turkish figures and decorations appeared on every kind of household object. The vogue for foreign clothes, foreign food, and foreign music was especially prevalent in the eighth century, but no part of the T’ang was free from it.? Even before the cosmopolitan culture of the Tang, Buddhism had already altered the material world of China. Objects such as monastic clothing, alms bowls, rugs, the rosary and the sceptre were not only of value to monks, but

also became increasingly important to farmers, scholars and emperors. The

chair, often taken for granted, arrived from monasteries in India to conquer

China, while the spread of sugar and tea was profoundly enmeshed with the

The Domestication of Foreign Goods influence of Buddhism. From monumental statues still standing in parts of China to evanescent traces of material culture such as a dissolving lump of

sugar in the monk’s bowl, India was a major source of foreign influence on

material culture from the first century Ce onwards, introducing a host of

objects big and small? When

we turn to late imperial China, however, historians have written

about a xenophobic rejection of things foreign. John King Fairbank, doyen

of Chinese studies in the United States, believed that ‘hostility toward alien

things’ characterised the Qing.‘ A sentence from emperor Qianlong’s letter

to the King of England in 1793, in reply to a request from the English envoy

Lord Macartney for an opening of trade, is often quoted to illustrate this point: ‘Strange and costly objects do not interest me. As your Ambassador

can see for himself we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange and

ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures’? The theme of a rejection of the foreign has usually been exemplified by the empress

dowager’s support of the Boxer rebellion and their effort to ‘destroy the foreign’ in 1900, and in other tropes of traditional historiography stretching from the Sanyuanli anti-foreign movement in 1840 to the boycott of foreign

goods in 1925-6. So entrenched is the view that the Qing empire lacked in-

terest in foreign products that historians have developed a variety of theories to contrast Europe to China, ranging from ‘faulty marketing’ and ‘xenophobic culture’ to ‘status competition’.® These views are not grounded in substantial empirical work, and even a cursory overview of primary sources reveals a more complex picture. As an exasperated Chinese scholar exclaimed in the early nineteenth century, ‘The

lavish engravings on dwellings, the refined embroideries on garments, the magnificence of all utensils: what was considered a luxury in the past is now

viewed as perfectly ordinary, and only things foreign are considered to be su-

perior. Whether house, boat or sedan chair, none is without glass panes, while

clothes, tents and curtains are made of wool and camlet... foreign porcelain,

foreign lacquer, foreign brocade, foreign cloth, foreign bunting, foreign otter, foreign paper, foreign paintings, foreign fans: a quick enumeration would

not be sufficient to name them all. In the southern provinces even foreign

coins are used, coming mainly from Japan, Holland and England.” Nor was

infatuation with the foreign restricted to the wealthy. As Chen Zhongyu noted with alarm, the entire population, from servants and footmen down to prostitutes and slaves, admired the ingenious and exquisite goods imported from abroad.* In contrast to eighteenth-century Europe, where exotic im-

ports were perceived as luxuries, relatively common objects found a receptive audience among all social categories in the region around Canton after the 6

Exotic Commodities in Late Imperial China opening of several ports in 1842.’ Chen Zuolin noted how many goods in

demand during the Daoguang era were foreign: ‘Multi-storied buildings are

called foreign houses, decorated sedan chairs are called foreign sedans; there

are foreign crepes and foreign hats, while hanging lamps are called foreign

lamps; chafing dishes [huoguo] are called foreign pans, the slender ones which are ideal for soy sauce being called foreign autumn oil pans. Bright colourings are called foreign red or foreign blue. There is nowhere on either side

of the Yangzi where foreign is not considered superior.” Duan Guangqing (1798-1878) further testified that by 1857 ‘everything produced by Western-

ers is used all over the empire’."'

While some of these observations gleaned from literary notes (biji) deplored

foreign influence on material culture, a more widespread discourse portrayed

‘ocean goods’ (yanghuo) as intricate and exotic. Qu Dajun (1630-96),a scholar

who compiled a compendium on Guangdong province, thus explained that ‘ocean goods’ (yanghuo) came from overseas, in contrast to ‘Qiongzhou goods’

(qionghuo) from Qiongzhou and ‘Cantonese goods’ (guanghuo) from eastern

Guangdong. In an exoticising genre which rapidly became popular, he mar-

velled just as to the exotic

at the clocks, nautical maps and astronomical equipment in Macau, he wondered at the physical appearance of foreigners.'? Early visitors Portuguese enclave invariably praised the intricate craftsmanship and appearance of ‘foreign goods’, just as Europeans were fascinated by the

technical wizardry and fine skills that went into ‘Oriental’ commodities. Qian

Yikai, in a book published before 1709, was enraptured by the looking glass,

the magnifying glass, the telescope and the chiming clock.!” Wang Shizhen

(1634-1711), a famous contemporary, mentioned the same magic objects,

expatiating on the ‘ingenuity’ of small timepieces in Macau." ‘Ingenious’ or ‘exquisite’ (gigiao): the term became inextricably linked to foreign goods, and

also appeared in novels of the early Qing punctuated by exotic objects. The

cannon, for instance, either imported from foreign traders or produced locally

under missionary guidance from the seventeenth century onwards, made a

regular appearance in novels as a symbol of devastating power devised by

clever engineering. The telescope was mentioned in descriptions of warfare, and was seen as an ingenious device for spying in a number of novels." The mid-eighteenth-century Dream of the Red Chamber was replete with foreign objects, from glass bowls imported via Canton, displayed on expensive wooden furniture,'* to full-length mirrors'” and the ubiquitous clock.

The lure of the foreign in late imperial China is further attested by arte-

factual evidence at court level. Foreign objects were desirable enough to figure prominently at the court of emperor Yongzheng (r. 1723-35), who

8

had dozens of pairs of spectacles and even took to wearing a foreign wig in

The Domestication of Foreign Goods

the last years of his life.’” During the eighteenth century Qing palaces filled up with all kinds of European bric-a-brac, while court favourites hoarded hundreds of clocks and watches.” The palace at Jehol was filled ‘with every kind of European toys and sing-songs; with spheres, orreries, clocks, and

musical automatons of such exquisite workmanship, and in such profusion, that our presents must shrink from the comparison’, noted the ambassador

Lord Macartney in 1793.2! By the end of the Qing, the Throne Room alone contained eighty-five clocks, including jewelled and gold clocks, clocks with

chimes, clocks with running water, crowing clocks with singing birds, clocks

with figures that appeared at every hour and moved around the dial, and clocks with musical-box attachments. The bedroom of Cixi had fifteen timepieces,

all running and ticking.” Parts of imperial space itself could be modelled

on the West. Built under the guidance of the court Jesuits in the eighteenth century, the Yuanmingyuan summer palace incorporated an orangery, a maze

and pavilions in an architectural style which imitated classical and baroque

European features, although it lacked ornamental human figures. Tapestries, furniture, clocks and mirrors completed its ‘foreign’ appearance inside.” Trade in foreign objects Trade statistics should normally allow the historian to get closer to the variety and quantity of foreign objects imported in late imperial China, but they can be misleading. In the case of early trade from 1514 to 1644 between

China and Portugal, no statistics are available on imports, although clocks and

woollen goods were probably important. The East India Company, which

dominated trade between Europe and China from 1719 until its dissolution

in 1833, has left behind far more documentary and statistical information,

which has been analysed at length by Hosea Morse and Louis Dermigny.

Three categories of goods were exchanged against the silk, porcelain and tea bought by the company, namely luxuries, metals and fabrics (wool and linen). Luxury objects consisted mainly of window glass, clocks and coral, but

these represented only a fraction of all transactions. Metals—the lead used for tea chests in particular but also iron and copper—were more popular.

The amount of wool and linen could vary from less than 20 per cent of all

total imports to over 90 per cent: a quarter of a million pieces were imported annually between 1789 and 1809, even if their use remained confined to wealthy elites.” However, many of these articles were sold to China at a loss: the East India Company expected to make a profit mainly from the return journey, contrary to other trade routes in which exports from England were considered vital.

One reason why an analysis of trade by the East India Company is problematic

Exotic Commodities in Late Imperial China is that private merchants were more often than not in charge of the imports

of goods from India into China: for instance, opium was shipped to Canton independently of the East India Company by Parsee and English merchants. Private merchants, rather than the Company which was content with a monopoly over tea exports from China to England, were the more dynamic element in the China trade, and they sold a variety of goods besides opium—

notably lead, skins, prussian blue, window glass, cambrets and watches.

The trade in clocks, to take but one example, could be quite impressive,

and William Milburn noted in 1813 that ‘Some years ago immense quantities

of clocks, and other valuable pieces of mechanism, were annually imported

into Canton:** John Henry Cox, a free merchant and the son ofa renowned

clockmaker, went to Canton in 1782 specifically to sell watches and mechani-

cal toys, including ‘snuff boxes concealing a jewelled bird which sang when

the lid was opened’, all manufactured in England and Switzerland for export

to East Asia. William Anthony, Hughes Williams, Francois-Justin Vulliamy,

Josias Emery, Recordon et Dupont in Clerkenwell or Birmingham, Piguet

and Meylan in Geneva, and Jaquet-Droz and Leschot at La Chaux-de-Fonds

all specialised in the production of sing-songs for the Canton trade.” The

extent of trade independent of the Company was revealed when Shy Kinqua,

one of the most prominent merchants in Canton, went bankrupt in 1794:

among his assets of halfa million pounds was a large amount of watches, clocks and mirrors purchased from the private trade and valued at more than

£70,000.

However, as the local authorities clamped down on the illegal trade in

opium

at Canton, a huge contraband

trade developed after 1821, which

further obscures the importance of foreign imports.A whole range of articles besides opium were traded illegally, either because they had been prohibited, for instance Canton or As early as stood at just

silver and saltpetre, or in order to avoid the duties the monopoly on certain imports of the East Asia 1801 the official amount of camlets imported by the under 12,000 pieces, but as many again were illicitly

payable at Company. Company brought to

China by private traders on English, American and Danish ships.” Smuggling developed even further with the flourishing of private companies like Jardine Matheson in the early nineteenth century: as Michael Greenberg discovered while working on their papers in Cambridge, an abundance of ordinary,

legal articles of import were smuggled, escaping both the sight of the official and the gaze of the historian. The fact that so many goods were outlawed

tends to make them less visible in the primary sources. Chen Zuolin, quoted above, noted how a variety of ‘foreign pans’ were extremely popular, even

if they were repeatedly banned, a prohibition which was still in force by 20

The Domestication of Foreign Goods the mid-nineteenth century.” When

in 1741 a ship arrived in Macau and

iron pans and kitchen utensils clandestinely brought ashore from Manila were

discovered, a crisis unfolded between the local authorities and the captain:"' one can only speculate that a large number must have been smuggled for

them to be described as ‘popular’ in the 1820s. To compound the problem further, historians have exclusively focused on trade at Canton, but foreign goods were also sold extensively in Xiamen

(Amoy) from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. Already by the 1720s companies dealing in foreign goods (yanghuo) were the most numerous among

the authorised firms in the coastal city of Fujian, and in Zhangzhou alone

over half of the rich households engaged in overseas trade for their livelihood,

often unimpeded, if not assisted, by court officials and local governors.?? Even

if we acknowledge that many of the articles classified as ‘foreign goods’ came

from Southeast Asia, the fact remains that a huge number of junks engaged in a trade which has escaped the view of most historians—including the ones

which shipped iron pans from Manila.”

Finally, a focus on imported luxury goods, appealing to a small percentage

of a population which remained largely rural and poor, can be misleading when attempting to trace changes in material culture. Flints, to take but one

example, were shipped to China in hundreds of tons every year for over a century. They have scarcely been noticed by economic historians because of their low value, most being carried as ballast and sold at a loss, but by the middle of the nineteenth century they were common throughout the

country: like the imported matches which in turn would replace them after

the 1860s, inexpensive objects thrived in a market dominated by the poor

rather than luxury products reserved for the privileged. Another example is the cotton yarn which started to become popular in the 1820s: it too would

literally transform the warp and weft of everyday life after 1842, as we see in detail in a separate chapter.

The imitation of foreign objects

The key reason why foreign imports remained relatively few throughout

the Qing is that successful imports were immediately subjected to fierce competition by local imitations. Prussian blue, the ‘foreign blue’ mentioned by Chen Zuolin, was initially a favourite item of export to China until it be-

came unsaleable,as local entrepreneurs discovered a process for manufacturing

a substitute dye.** Large amounts of iron were imported into the country, and

the ‘iron pans’ admired by Chen Zuolin were no doubt copied by ironmon-

gers in villages along the coast. Even more telling is what happened to the many clocks which sold so briskly in Canton before 1800. Sales declined

30

Exotic Commodities in Late Imperial China drastically after the turn of the century, although they were still very much in

demand: according to Zhaolian (1780-1833), known for meticulously check-

ing his sources, wealthy notables in Canton scrambled to obtain a foreign clock in the early nineteenth century.”A number of contemporary observers

pointed to the appearance of local imitations. Liang Zhangju (1774-1849)

thus reported the production of clocks in Sichuan, Fujian, Guangdong and

Zhejiang.” The same point was made by Qian Yong (1759-1844), who cited

the example of an horologist who manufactured clocks with twelve carts for each hour and a mounted horseman displaying the characters for ‘noon’ on a scroll suspended from the figure’s outstretched hand.*

In his detailed history of watches in China, Alfred Chapuis also notes

how a great number were made in China between 1740 and 1820: they may

have been rather crude in comparison to the fine pieces made in Fleurier,

and some may have used imported mechanisms, but they demonstrate how

even technologically advanced objects were immediately imitated locally.” This observation is confirmed by Staunton, who travelled in China with Lord Macartney in the 1790s: ‘His Excellency was visited...by mandarines

of rank [to listen to the concerts given in the ambassador's private quarters]. Among these visitors was the chief director of the Emperor's orchestra, who constantly attended, and was so much pleased with some of the instruments,

that he desired leave to take drawings of them. He declined accepting them

as presents; but sent for painters, who spread the floor with sheets of large paper, and, having placed the clarinets, flutes, bassoons, and french horns upon them, traced with their pencils the figures of the instruments, measuring all

the apertures, and noting the minutest particulars; and when this operation

was completed, they wrote down their remarks, and delivered them to their employer, who said it was his intention to have similar instruments made by

Chinese workmen, and to fit to them a scale of his own.A few Chinese had already, it seems, adopted the European violin; but it was not yet in common

use.’ Lord Macartney added:‘They can copy an European picture with great exactness." Successful imports,as Gary Hamilton has noted, were ‘constantly subjected to competition with native products produced in imitation of the imported item.” A relatively low intake of foreign goods, in contrast to Russia, the Ottoman

Empire, South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, was not an

indication of a ‘lack of interest’ in things foreign, let alone ‘hostility toward alien things’, but a measure of their success, as they were quickly appropriated

and made as local products. The ability to copy foreign goods was based on a long-standing tradition of making products after models furnished by foreign

merchants for export, as the next section shows.

3

The Domestication of Foreign Goods EXPORT

COMMODITIES

IN LATE

IMPERIAL

CHINA

China is often portrayed as an unwilling participant in the global commerce which developed with technological changes in ship-building and new know-

ledge of navigation after 1450. However, as new sea routes provided a quicker and safer alternative to overland trade and the volume of commerce grew

phenomenally in the following centuries, regional specialisations appeared

not only in Southeast Asia (spices), India (cotton fabrics), Africa (slaves and gold) and the Americas (silver, furs, sugar and tobacco), but also in China (silk and porcelain). This new system of intercontinental trade was dominated by

China until about 1750: new industries emerged in the seventeenth century, characterised by the factory system and a division of labour, while new

goods were developed in response to overseas markets. The Pearl River delta in particular became the centre of an export industry which designed and

manufactured ceramics, silks and other luxury goods for markets in Asia, the

Middle East and Europe. This position was reinforced after emperor Qianlong closed all other trading ports in China with the exception of Canton in 1757.

As waves of foreign merchants arrived with new goods, the industries of

the Pearl River delta and further north specialised in adapting these to local

materials and manufacture. Export ceramics, mass-produced in the kilns of

Jingdezhen, Dehua and Canton, were designed specifically for the demands of overseas markets; these included, for instance, Southeast Asian kendi, Japanese

imari wares and Dutch coffee pots. Decorations had local symbols interlaced with Arabic, Latin or English motifs. This export culture went so far as to

copy fanciful chinoiserie designs for European markets, in contrast to other

global manufacturing centres such as Ahmedabad in India where textiles with

Indic designs were produced in a range of qualities, for sale in a diversity of markets.** While it is true that porcelain was, in financial terms, relatively unimportant to the China trade, silk and tea being the dominant exports,

their sheer variety shows how adept local manufacturers were in copying foreign goods, including bidets, chamber pots, shaving mugs, toothbrush holders, salad bowls, bon-bon dishes, fruit baskets, leaf dishes, pepper shakers, cream pitchers, butter plates and umbrella stands.**

While historians have focused on the economic exchanges with Europe, a

similar pattern was at work in the trade between the Qing and Southeast Asia.

Dozens of large junks annually shipped porcelain, cotton goods, copper and

brass utensils, fans, umbrellas and lanterns to Siam. Many of these goods were

patterned after samples sent with commission agents from Siam, for instance

8

marble tiles, griffins, peacocks and Buddha images, and posts and balustrades

Export Commodities in Late Imperial China carved from stone. The market in Siam was even invaded by imitations of

Swankaloke crockery ware, some of them made to order and imported to make up for the scarcity of older specimens after the destruction of Ayudhya in 1766. With the gradual decline of the junk trade after the Nanjing treaty

of 1842, the rise of the steamer would further boost trade between China and

Southeast Asia: here too, we can see a distinct continuity in trade patterns from the eighteenth century to the present, as Southeast Asia continues to

be provided with large quantities of everyday necessities from China, from

plastic washbasins to cheap flashlights.” Historians have observed how in the nineteenth century existing centres of trade in Asia were gradually replaced by a colonial economy dependent on the supply of raw materials to Europe and the importation of machinemade goods from Europe. However, the manufacturing centres of the Pearl

River delta proved singularly resilient, even after Hong Kong came under

British rule. In fact, as we shall see, the amount of imports from abroad would remain relatively low in the century following the lifting of trading restriction

in 1842, while the imitation of foreign goods in labour-intensive factories would become a key characteristic of the economy in republican China. As Matthew Turner has underlined, what is remarkable about the Pearl River delta, Hong Kong in particular, are the continuities rather than the disruptions

in the history of manufacturing. In Hong Kong in 1863 dozens of locally produced goods were manufactured for export, including glass bottles, brass

buttons, metal handstoves, brass lamps, porcelain tableware, tin toys, artificial

flowers, straw hats, leather shoes, fabric umbrellas, billiard balls, rattan chairs, ivory combs, bone puzzles and lacquer trays: a century later artificial flowers

would be made of plastic, and new products such as radios and flashlights would lengthen the list of export commodities, but the continuities were

unmistakable.” Hong Kong was not unique: the catalogues of goods displayed by Chinese

factories at international expositions show the extent of export manufacture.

Tak Shang, a merchant based in Canton, thus exhibited silver menu card

stands, buckles, umbrella handles, pepper stands, table-napkin rings, coffee

pots, silver pin trays, cocktail shakers and mother-of-pearl fruit stands, among

others, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904; hundreds of other products were offered by other merchants, from toilet brush backs, soup plates

and salad bowls to office furniture. As S. Wells Williams noted in his Chinese

Commercial Guide published in 1863, some furniture made in Ningbo with scenes and figures inlaid in ivory was exported, but the cabinet-makers in

Canton had been far more successful with their copies of patterns furnished from abroad.” Not only did the advent of a new economy shaped by imperial

33

The Domestication of Foreign Goods powers fail to turn of machine-made the exact opposite from Europe, the

the late Qing into an empire dependent on the importation goods from industrial Europe, but it actually consolidated trend, namely the importation of unprocessed materials United States and Southeast Asia to fuel China’s export

trade. The furniture shipped abroad from the maritime provinces was made of redwood and ebony from Siam, while feathers and ivory were bought abroad

to make fans, balls and jigsaws for export to Europe and Southeast Asia. As John Davis noted in 1857, ‘the great industry and ingenuity of the Chinese

causes them to turn nearly all raw produce to good account’, an observation which would remain true in the twentieth century.”

The production of ceramics for Europe was dominated by the imperial

factories at Jingdezhen, which had over 1,000 kilns and 70,000 workers

churning out up to 50,000 pieces a day: ‘tens of thousands of pestles shake the

ground with their noise. The heavens are alight with the glare from the fires,

so that one cannot sleep at night.*! Labour was divided between different studios in charge of decoration. Each piece of porcelain went through many

hands, as painters specialised in different motifs, for instance birds, animals, mountains or rivers.*? Cheap labour in imperial China was essential in com-

peting with foreign commodities, but as the example of porcelain indicates, a high division of labour also allowed the empire to export more than 100 million pieces of porcelain to Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries without sacrificing quality, affordability or speed of manufacture.

Lothar Ledderose has shown how manufacturers used complex systems of mass production to assemble extraordinary objects from standardised parts,

from the terracotta soldiers used to guard the tomb of the First Emperor in the third century BcE to the construction of pagodas from as many as 30,000 separately carved wooden pieces in the eleventh century: ‘These parts were prefabricated in great quantity and could be put together quickly in different

combinations, creating an extensive variety of units from a limited repertoire

of components.** The use of highly standardised components produced by different workers and assembled in a huge variety of more complex objects

was based on the idea that the universe consisted of 10,000 categories of

things: instead of faithfully copying nature, it was nature’s ability to produce limitless numbers of objects from basic components which was mimicked

in imperial China. Even images of deities were carved in a production line, starting with the dedication of the block of wood, the first cuts by the master carver with an axe, followed by lesser workers whose individual skills varied from arms and legs, faces and armour to head-dress, while the final touches by

the women of the carver’s household completed the painting before adding

whiskers and beards. As such statues were relatively inexpensive, it was not

Export Commodities in Late Imperial China too great a burden to replace them every five to fifteen years should the need

arise: even on the altar new was better than old. If Jingdezhen was a massive imperial enterprise which successfully brought

porcelain to many a bourgeois table in Europe, family enterprises in farming communities were even more common, contributing to the widespread production and circulation of small commodities in late imperial China. An output system was encouraged from the sixteenth century onwards, as silver

from Japan and the New World allowed farmers to produce handicrafts in their

spare time to supplement their incomes: households—however much they fluctuated in composition, from the nuclear family to several generations living under one roof, and whatever the strains they sustained—were accustomed

to producing commodities for local markets, and the use of women

and

children outside a paid labour market was widespread. Cotton, for instance,

spread in China from the fifteenth century onwards thanks to a household-

based system of production which brought money to producers and more affluence to farmers, who used their spare time to spin and weave. To this day, even as new factories crowd cities like Shenzhen, entire villages continue to

specialise in producing particular commodities from within households. One

advantage, which is noted throughout this book, is that micro-enterprises

could thrive in the absence of substantial capital: brokers and traders were required to distribute household products, but no large capital, urban managers or great entrepreneurial skills were required to allow its replication in other parts of the country. A huge demographic expansion (the population doubled to 300 million in the second half of the eighteenth century alone) fuelled household enterprises, expanding the market, increasing regional

specialisations and prompting greater circulation of goods and people, first

in the form of massive internal migration in the eighteenth century, and

after 1842 towards the rest of the world. Even in remote villages local people came to rely heavily on everyday necessities produced in other parts of the

country, as contemporary observers like Wang Huizu (1731-1807) pointed out.® A large-scale, long-distance and well-organised trade already existed in the early eighteenth century, bringing daily necessities intended for popular consumption to the population of entire regions along the coast. In South America, by contrast, very few ordinary people were paid in money even by the middle of the nineteenth century, and the majority of the population did not have the sources of earnings necessary to pay for foreign goods.” One crucial change would further contribute to the local imitation of foreign goods: the Nanjing treaty in 1842, which marked the end of the first Sino-British war, introduced extremely low tariffs. Nationalist historians in China and their foreign counterparts have habitually represented the

The Domestication of Foreign Goods country’s inability to set tariffs as a sign of semi-colonialism.** Low tariffs

have been described as ‘the most far-reaching economic

consequence of

the nineteenth-century treaty system’, as global market forces found their

way into the lives of hundreds of millions of farmers in China. However, as

Thomas Rawski underlines, the easy access allowed to foreign goods, often

only subject to nominal tariff until the 1930s, did not so much stunt as assist the growth of the economy: free trade, in China as in England, Japan or Hong Kong, stimulated competition with imported goods, created new economic

opportunities, introduced new technologies and more resources into the economy, catalysed new local enterprises and attracted industry to coastal

cities like Shanghai and Tianjin.” On the evidence of abundant economic

statistics, and as this book confirms on the basis on qualitative evidence, local businesses, fired by foreign competition, used simple technologies involving

low investment to concentrate on goods which were cheap, simple and often inferior to expensive imports, thus responding to the needs of the vast masses of relatively poor people in China. Innovative enterprises appropriated foreign know-how in management, production and retail: they closely followed the lead of foreigners in the production of a huge number of items, ranging from chemicals and machinery to matches and cigarettes.” The appearance of enclaves under foreign administration in a number of treaty ports further ac-

celerated the circulation of ideas, goods and people: Jack Gray has underlined

how the shipyards, public utilities and factories established in foreign conces-

sions were training grounds for workers, managers and entrepreneurs alike: many went on to establish their own companies in the republican period.” A long-standing tradition of manufacturing goods from foreign patterns,

the use of component parts produced by individual workers in assembling complex objects, the spread of small enterprises in an expanding market from

the sixteenth century onwards and the availability of cheap labour in a rapidly growing population: these different factors would facilitate the domestication

of foreign goods from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, as desired

objects from abroad were copied locally at low cost to meet the needs of a

large but relatively poor population. COPY

CULTURE

AND

THE

MOVEMENT

FOR

NATIONAL

GOODS

Copy culture

Early modern England was marked by an extraordinary proliferation of new

goods: not only did intercontinental trade vastly expand with the arrival of products from India and China (tea, porcelain, cotton), but import substitution

created a context in which innovation could thrive. An aggressively national-

Copy Culture and the Movement for National Goods ist stance towards the global economy led to the use of import tariffs to repel foreign goods, and to efforts by private entrepreneurs, the state and patriotic societies to establish foreign forms of manufacture in England. ‘Copying and imitation had few negative connotations at this period’, John Styles notes in a remarkable article, and cheaper adaptations of costly objects were widely available. In England and in the Netherlands many manufacturers produced

copies in response to the popularity of ceramics from China, although these

imitations were invariably changed to adjust to a local market: silver teapots rather than ceramic ones common in China and Japan became widespread among the wealthy, while a wooden handle had to be added to the silver cups which were too hot to be held on their own. Silver may not have been an ideal substance, since it is highly conductive of heat, but it did not break, it could be melted down and reworked and, most important, it was socially

prestigious among the upper classes: in the act of appropriation the object

which was being copied was altered almost beyond recognition.” Not only

was early modern England a period of rapid product innovation, but it also

saw the rise of branded goods distinctively packaged in order to promote

product identity. Under constant threat of piracy, new commodities had to

be visually unique. Well before the end of the nineteenth century, when

advertising is supposed to have spread, proprietary medicines were extensively

advertised in newspapers, broadsheets and woodblocks in attempts to ward off

cheaper imitations.”

Nor was copy culture limited to early modern England. In the United States during the nineteenth century objects from Europe were considered

superior, as the wealthy filled their mansions with glass cabinets full of bibelots and statuettes while the walls were covered with oils and pastels.

Bologna cupboards, Venice bookshelves, Ravenna chairs and Louis-Quinze tables showed

both

taste and status. On

the other hand, those who

could

not afford the genuine article were happy to buy plaster ornaments, copy furniture, reproduction paintings, ersatz products like linoleum patterned to

look like marble, wood parquet or mosaic, or hollow concrete blocks cast in

metal moulds to resemble stone and asbestos shingles: ‘at every level of society individuals sought an elevation of status through the purchase and display of goods whose appearance counted for more than their substance’, and these

goods were invariably imitative of European styles: Classical, Renaissance,

Baroque, and often a mixture of all three. The machine made possible this

factitious world in which sham imitations were proudly promoted by the

producer and happily embraced by the consumer: machines churned out cheap mechanical replications to feed a genteel culture of imitation which pervaded all levels of society.

The Domestication of Foreign Goods Cheap imitations of foreign goods were also made in Japan, and they started to surface in China during the last decades of the nineteenth century. In the 1890s a trade fair of goods made in Japan appeared in the market town of Shashi, displaying Japanese beer designed to compete with imports from Milwaukee and St Louis, Japanese matches meant to outdo the Swedish

matchstick, Japanese oil lamps, Japanese crystal wares, Japanese clocks, and

Japanese carpets imitating German designs like Hanau and Wurzen in the most minute detail, although they were made of cotton. Even Chinese products

were copied, including paper suitcases imitating local pigskin equivalents.

In China too, as in England, the United States and Japan, imitation did

not have a negative meaning. Study by duplication was the accepted method

in calligraphy, as copies of past masters were seen as models to be carefully

imitated, by scholar and emperor alike. Replication of prized artefacts also had a long history, and the notion of fangzao, or fangzhi, ‘to copy’, ‘to imitate’,

‘to model’, was closely linked to craftsmanship in jade’ and the careful copy-

ing of rare antiques during the Qing. It was also used to describe the local manufacture of new technologies during the self-strengthening movement which appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century: special schools were opened in coastal cities to study foreign languages while new technologies from Europe were copied in a number of arsenals, factories and shipyards.

In the Nanjing Arsenal, managed by Halliday Macartney, fuses, shells, friction

tubes for firing cannon and small cannon were produced by 1867.The much larger Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai launched the first locally-built steamship

a year later: like the watches produced a century earlier, the mechanism inside

was foreign, but the boiler and wooden hull were constructed at the arsenal.” Although most of these large and complicated objects were not competitive in the medium term (the Jiangnan ships were obsolescent by the European

standards of the 1870s, and much of the fleet would be sunk by the superior ships of Japan in the 1894-5 war), the pursuit of foreign technology during the self-strengthening movement allowed the notion of fangzao to move from the field of local art to that of foreign imports.

While the self-strengthening movement collapsed during the Sino-Japanese

War of 1894-5, the notion of imitation became the cornerstone of a strategy

of economic warfare against the West proposed by a number of reformers.

The term fangzao was used specifically by Zheng Guanying (1842-1922) in a vision of import substitution outlined in his Warnings to a prosperous age (1893). The lifting of trading restrictions after 1842, he claimed, had resulted in a flood of foreign goods devastating the countryside. If opium and cotton

were the main culprits, a thousand goods were used by foreign powers in

their economic assault on the country, including ‘foreign silk, foreign satin,

38

Copy Culture and the Movement for National Goods foreign wool, foreign velvet, foreign flannel, foreign camlet, foreign blankets,

foreign rugs, foreign felt, foreign handkerchiefs, foreign lace, foreign buttons,

foreign needles, foreign money, foreign umbrellas, foreign lamps, foreign

paper, foreign nails, foreign pictures, foreign pens, foreign ink, foreign colours, foreign leather cases, foreign porcelain, foreign toothbrushes, foreign soap,

foreign matches, foreign oil.” While the promotion of trade by the govern-

ment, the greater use of natural resources, a reform of the tax system and the

establishment of specialised schools were all weapons against the commercial encroachment of foreign powers, the imitation of manufactured commodities was a key to increasing exports and decreasing imports: ‘We should buy machinery and produce cloth, felt, wool, yarn, velvet, foreign shirts and trousers,

foreign socks, foreign umbrellas and other goods... we should make glass implements and fine copper, copy foreign watches, all absolutely similar, but

better and cheaper in order to compete with all these necessities.”"The notion

of ‘replication’ (fangzhi) or ‘imitation after a model’ (zhaoyang fangzao) was at the very heart of Zheng Guanying’s strategy of trade war (shangzhan). He was not alone; Chen Chi (d. 1899) also viewed import substitution as a key to regaining economic sovereignty: ‘We must use machinery in order to copy

foreign goods [ fangzao yanghuo], only then can we recover our economic

rights [liquan].72

The movement for national goods

Zheng Guanying and Chen Chi belonged to a reform movement which

would fail with the palace coup by the empress dowager in 1898, but the notion of a commercial war with imperialist powers and resistance against economic encroachment grew in the early years of the twentieth century, as increasingly nationalist voices pointed at an onslaught of foreign goods. Just as the abolition of extraterritoriality was a spur to reform the legal system, the quest for tariff autonomy incited nationalist elites to wage an economic war against foreign powers: as tariffs could not be imposed to restrict imports, it was attempted instead to promote national goods (guohuo) by denouncing

the use of foreign goods (yanghuo) as ‘unpatriotic’. ‘Chinese people should

buy Chinese products’: this was the message behind a movement which

attempted to substitute foreign imports by locally produced commodities.

Economic nationalism held that the influx of imports and the alleged loss of sovereignty seen to be reflected in the growth of foreign participation in the

economy threatened the very life of the nation: the objection was to foreign

manufacture, not to the foreign designs which could be patriotically copied in China.

39

The Domestication of Foreign Goods

During the boycott of American goods in 1905, for instance, a number of

voices proposed to replace imported goods by local ones. Su Shaobing thus

believed that ‘people must be encouraged to copy [ fangzao] [foreign goods],

as superior imitations [ jingliang fangzao] will replace American goods.” After

the collapse of the Qing in 1912, modernising elites established associations with the sole aim of promoting national goods as a substitute for foreign imports, for instance in Shanghai, Suzhou, Anging, Changsha, Fuzhou and

Harbin. Local associations mushroomed in other cities in the following years, attracting political support and encouragement from the government.” The movement for national goods was spread by public meetings, public speeches and the publication of specialised journals like the National Goods Monthly

(Guohuo yuebao): hundreds of thousands of propaganda items were distributed between 1912 and 1915.” Handbills, advertisements, speeches, lectures, rallies, boycotts, exhibits and even museums were dedicated to publicise the notion that it was the responsibility of every citizen to buy ‘national products’ in the first decades of the twentieth century: material culture, in the view of

nationalist elites, had to be defined in terms of product nationality, as every commodity was branded as either ‘Chinese’ or ‘foreign’.’”* Close imitation of foreign goods figured at the very heart of the movement for national goods, and the need to make superior imitations as a ‘weapon against imports was stressed ad nauseam by countless participants in the movement.” Exhibitions, organised throughout the republican period to

promote economic nationalism, even conferred prizes on the best available

copies. The Nanyang Industrial Exposition (Nanyang quanyehui) of 1910, the

most important exhibition of the late Qing, is a good example. Organised by

governor-general Duanfang,it was monumental in ambition and huge in scale,

meant to demonstrate the government's commitment to modernity.” A key concern of Duanfang, however, was not so much to bring native produce to the world as to encourage ways of competing with imported goods:‘In recent years our country’s industry and commerce have not been competitive. Native products have been crude and foreign goods have flowed into the interior’

His approach was endorsed by the Regent and Grand Council, which an-

nounced in August 1909 that commodities should be collected and exhibited for study and ‘improvements in manufacture’.”” A multitude of things were exhibited at the fair, all prominently displayed in glass cabinets to promote a

copy culture which aimed to reproduce foreign goods as exactly as possible: as the Shenbao commended, the majority of exhibits were imitation (fangzao)

products." Emulation was also encouraged between different regions: fifteen provincial governments participated in the exhibition, each region eager to

display the advances made in modern manufacture. The hall dedicated to 40

Copy Culture and the Movement for National Goods goods from Zhili province, for instance, displayed photos of railways, model

cars and model steamers, all ‘entirely managed by our nationals and sufficient to inspire great pride’. Other items on display included perfumes, tooth pow-

der and scented soap, their ‘sweet fragrance greeting the customer’, models of public parks, public schools and public offices from Tianjin which made ‘Shanghai look ashamed’, cement bricks and tiles, textiles produced by the inmates of several rehabilitation centres, telephones, printing machinery and surgical instruments." Goods were not only displayed: catalogues listed the contents of every

exhibition hall to guide visitors and provide information for those who could not personally attend the event. Detailed reports were published on all the items displayed in the exhibition in order to encourage improvements in production. Some of the reports were veritable guides to manufacturing and management procedures, providing local producers with detailed instructions on common mistakes to be avoided when emulating foreign imports. Producers of glass, for instance, were enjoined to aim at a transparent yet solid product by paying particular attention to the chemistry of the various ingredients: Boshan glass, the pride of China, was thus considered to be attractive but in-

sufficiently transparent in comparison with imports. The

latest discoveries in

the production of cement, to take another example, were carefully reviewed

with a view on making an economical yet reliable substance, the output of the Qixin cement factory being closely scrutinised.” From imitation gauze and imitation glassware to kitchen cabinets and children’s chairs copied from foreign models, the close modelling of goods on foreign patterns was hailed as a key to success." The real winner, however, was a big clock made by the

Xiangsheng Store from Guangdong province: 'It looks so exquisite that from a distance I thought it was made in the West.

The West Lake Exhibition of 1930, to take an example from the middle of

the republican period, was also gigantic in size, although the artefacts on display

were a world apart from the 1910 Nanjing exhibition: every technological

breakthrough of the last two decades was represented, from dental cream to neon lamps. The organisers went even further in the careful assessment of every article on display in their ‘Research and Reports’ publication. Watson’s lemonade, for instance, was considered to have a sufficiently tight cap, and an adequate quantity of gas which did not leak out over time, and was there-

fore classified as a ‘superior product’ (shangpin). The fruit syrup produced by the Sincere Company in Shanghai was also considered to be tightly sealed, although some deposit was found in the bottle: another ten producers of lemonades were thus assessed, each word carefully chosen in order both to impart praise and to identify defects."* Thousands of products were

4

The Domestication of Foreign Goods meticulously appraised by special committees, which even made detailed comparisons

between

the different types of internal combustion

engines

(Double Piston, Junkers Diesel, Semi-Diesel), their consumption of oil per

horse-power and the compression in pounds per square inch. Long tables were published listing all submitted goods with detailed comments, while prizes were given to the native copies which rivalled foreign goods most successfully: nineteen different brands of matches were thus listed, each one

painstakingly assessed in terms of ease of use, quality of the flame, the exact

period of burning in seconds, resistance to humidity and the quality and appeal of the package, all being classified on a scale ranging from A to C (+ or -).”” In the section on cosmetics, literally hundreds of tooth powders, dental

creams, face powders, rouges, scents, perfumes, hair lotions, hair pomades, hair waxes and scented soaps were listed—all ‘made in-China’.

Consumer preferences In his detailed analysis of the politics behind the movement for national goods, Karl Gerth concludes that economic nationalism was not only important in

shaping market preferences, but successful also in ruling out any alternatives to buying local commodities.’ The very opposite is true: if we move away from a top-down approach which relies heavily on normative texts produced

by a small number of nationalist elites and take seriously the vast number of

ordinary people who constituted the market, it becomes clear that the movement did not so much shape as trail behind consumer preferences. Consumers were those who welcomed a whole variety of foreign goods in the late nineteenth

century, prompting

anxious

elites to worry

about

the

economic

conquest of China by the West. Insatiable demand for cheap alternatives to the more expensive manufactures from Europe also made consumers turn

to imitations from Japan. The demand for imported goods was such that

manufacturers in China could only be competitive by offering similar articles

at a cheaper price. As the authors of the Newest Home Encyclopedia noted in 1921, imported goods were all the rage as those consumers who could afford it would ‘discard the old and cherish the new’ (qijiu lianxin), so much so that manufacturers were obliged to imitate (fangzao) new artefacts in order to keep up with demand: it was not so much the state which tried to ‘resist’ foreign imports with the movement for national goods as ordinary people who forced local industry to make more affordable copies of coveted imports.” ‘National’ goods, moreover, were frequently discarded if judged to be inferior in quality: the history of the movement for national goods is replete with examples of producers who went bankrupt because their products failed

to compete with imports and were judged by consumers to be inferior. Many

Copy Culture and the Movement for National Goods manufacturers found it difficult to buck a trend which valued the foreign and deprecated the local, since national goods were considered by many to be

shoddy (guohuo buhao): the founder of China's first factory to produce elec-

tric light bulbs thus described the republican period as an ‘era in which the

worship of foreign goods was relatively widespread’.”' As Cao Juren noted after imports flooded the market in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, in 1911 without

much hindrance from the movement for national goods, the local population

failed to see why opposition to imports was important, while terms such as

‘imperialism’ and ‘capitalism’ carried little meaning. Cao Juren himself had a simple philosophy, no doubt reflected by the many: if it was new, then it was

good, whether foreign or local.”

Trade statistics show that this attitude was still widespread almost twenty years later: the British consul in Shanghai noted that with the cessation of the anti-Japanese boycott in 1929 the competitiveness of Japanese cloth had become keener than ever, while attempts to revive the movement did not appear to affect the trade to any marked extent.” More detailed evidence confirms this trend, for instance the fact that importations of Japanese shirtings rose more than tenfold in Canton in 1930 with the lifting of the boycott.”

In Sanshui black sateen drills from Japan became popular among the poor

during the anti-Japanese boycott in 1928 precisely because they were cheap.

Where imports of foreign piece goods were seriously reduced, it was as a con-

sequence of a drop in the value of silver and a rise in price of foreign imports: Shanghai-made goods were bought instead.* In more complex situations the local economy had already become so enmeshed with foreign imports that protectionist movements provoked widespread discontent. In Canton, for instance, a military-backed government introduced a new tax on luxury

goods in July 1927 and a 100 per cent increase in customs tax on all imported

commodities. The new policy was attacked by the public, while merchants responded with a stream of denunciations.A conference was held in the main hall of the Canton Chamber of Commerce, overflowing with angry delegates

from many different guilds complaining about the new rules; 20,000 shop

owners and store keepers marched through Canton in early August, halting in front of the provincial government to picket the building.* More generally, the majority of working people may simply have ignored the movement for national goods. As we see repeatedly in the following chapters, price ruled the market in China. While this book does not set out to

analyse the economic history of republican China, a variety of sources show

that advantageous prices, rather than economic nationalism, were the key

factor in substituting local equivalents for imported goods. Boycotts in particular, and economic nationalism in general, no doubt contributed to the 43

The Domestication of Foreign Goods price differentials between foreign and local goods, the introduction of hi

import tariffs in 1931 being a good example, but long-term factors, such as

a constant supply of cheap labour, labour-intensive manufacturing methods,

and above all a willingness to adapt foreign designs closely to local purposes,

were ultimately far more decisive.

Finally, while the movement for national goods no doubt facilitated the spread of cheap imitations, this did not imply that imports decreased: import statistics indicate how incessant pleas to buy national products were simply

ignored by many consumers, showing how little evidence there is for the claim

that the movement enjoyed ‘popular support’.”” With an ever-expanding flow

of goods in the republican period, cheap copies could only enhance the social

status of the more expensive imports.As more consumers took to the cheaper

goods produced by local manufacturers, elites were keen to embrace the latest foreign gadgets in an effort to differentiate themselves from the masses. Already

in the 1920s, for instance, as commodities previously considered luxury items

were increasingly produced locally, the wealthy turned towards specialised

shops dealing exclusively in de luxe articles from Europe: thus, to take but one example, the rich and famous could admire lavish interior displays of fancy statuettes and marble statues from Italy, fine perfumes from Guerlain in Paris, exclusive clocks and watches from Switzerland, or dolls and toys from France

at the Compagnie Sino-Européenne in Tianjin.

A two-tier economy Copy culture was characterised not only by keen emulation between local

and foreign products, but also by ruthless competition for a market share by manufacturers based in China. Consumers ultimately benefited from constant

product innovation and the ceaseless lowering of prices, although copy culture could also confuse them: conservative attachment to a particular brand was

their response. Brand names were already widespread in late imperial China, as

simple words, images or even numbers were assigned to a variety of commodi-

ties—some being quite basic such as rice and tea, others regional specialties

such as Jingdezhen porcelain or Shaoxing wine—in order to increase product recognition.” When imitation products first arrived in the last decades of the nineteenth century, buyers could be fooled into mistaking the copy for the

genuine article. The arrival in Hainan in 1882 of Japanese matches of inferior

quality, made to resemble in size and label the unrivalled Swedish product, led to both being excluded from the market: Austrian matches thrived instead.'"’

Loyalty to a particular brand with clear labelling was a means of avoiding

shoddy imitations. The very year that Hainan was inundated by qualitatively

poor imitations from Japan, buyers in Pakhoi developed an attachment to

44

Copy Culture and the Movement for National Goods

specific brands like ‘Beehive’ from Trieste, ‘Globe’ from Vienna, ‘Butterfly’ from Schiittenhofen (Germany) and ‘Tandstickor’ from Sweden." People in China were ‘the world’s most loyal consumers’, noted Carl Crow, a profes-

sional advertiser based in Shanghai." Trade representatives, advertisement consultants, commercial agents, all repeated how the trademark was all-important: ‘They

are conservative and do not readily desert a brand that has been

tried and found satisfactory” Each chop—a name probably derived from

the copper roller or the stamp used to brand bales of cotton goods and cotton yarn in the nineteenth century—had to have a distinctive visual identity, in particular in a country where literacy was not widespread. If articles of trade

were shipped in boxes, the box had to bear the label, as dealers would sell out

of a package and valued the chop.'* Money changers even chopped the silver

dollars they sold to customers to guarantee their value.'’> Any change in the chop could be disastrous, since it led to customers abandoning the brand."

Proprietary brands, in consequence, were firmly entrenched in China, users

sticking to their favourite brand despite the existence of cheaper alternatives.

As early as 1902, a foreign trade representative noted how ordinary workers had switched from the water pipe to the cigarette in Yantai (Chefoo). They

each had their own favourite brand and could not be induced to change, even

if a better article was offered at a lower price."” Despite the confusions caused by copy products from Japan in the late nineteenth century, deception was not necessarily intended: a gap was filled

in the market with cheaper varieties of prestige items. In a country marked by opposition between the poverty of the many and the riches of the few,

luxury imports were used by elites as visual evidence of social status, while cheap imitations satisfied the demand for new products among ordinary

people: both were included in a culture which worshipped the tangible and

craved the new. This two-tier economy closely corresponded to two types

of demands identified by foreign traders in the cloth industry as early as the mid-nineteenth

century: there was a luxury demand

from the well-to-do

who required greater quality than local industries could offer, and a price demand from the poor for whom durability was a primary consideration: ‘The lighter and cheaper the fabric the more readily it finds a market, and really good honest fabrics hang on hand for want of purchasers’ Cheap and shoddy goods met the demands of the poor." Customs reports, trade returns and diplomatic observations all emphasised

how the country was a price market. The American diplomat Charles Denby

stressed in 1906: ‘Above all, he wants cheap things; but when he takes a fancy to an article he will buy it at all hazards, until he commences to counterfeit

it!"” Concern with price would often override concern with quality, even if

The Domestication of Foreign Goods the cost in the long term would be higher: ‘The buyers do not look beyond first cost, so wearing quality is not a very important element in their choice’, explained Julean Arnold, trade representative for the United States and undisputed expert on the market in China.'" Even before Nanchang was opened up to foreign trade, a selection of foreign goods and imitation articles could be found in the local shops, including Manchester cottons, lamps and bathroom articles of the cheaper kind, clocks, gramophones and mechani-

cal toys. Georg Wegener, a traveller from Germany, was unimpressed, judged

most such goods as of inferior quality, and yet made an important observa-

tion: ‘In general, everything was complete rubbish: European rubbish and

those from Japan even more so. This is not surprising, since it is a well-known fact that world markets are first conquered with inferior goods.’ He explained this situation by the fact that China was a poor country where affordability was the principal criterion." Where the majority were ready to save a cent on an inferior shirt, the few insisted on spending as much as possible: both were cost-conscious. The nature of luxury demand was such that there was a preference for high-priced

goods: for instance, ‘Almost any price can be secured for a car which takes his fancy.''? Copy culture allowed price demand and luxury demand to exist side

by side, transforming the extravagant into the ordinary over time, gradually turning the luxury surplus into a daily necessity: a market dominated by a

large number of relatively poor people forced producers to come up with cheap goods. There is little evidence in the sources of mysterious forces like ‘capitalism’ creating a variety of ‘desires’ in order to ‘push’ consumers to buy.

The best that retailers and producers could expect was to find rather than to create a demand: as foreign trade observers never failed to note, just about everything was needed and scope for ‘arousing their interest’ in new goods

was rather limited, although when people were offered ‘an article that fills

a want and is easily disposed of, the demand for it increases by leaps and

bounds."? While the two-tier structure presented here could no doubt be far more complex in particular situations, for instance in the cities along the coast, the overwhelming social reality was the presence of a large mass of poor

people. Carl Crow provided an example of the co-existence of expensive

imports and cheap substitutes in the 1930s. Shops in any town in the Yangzi valley sold small batteries used in electric flashlights. Ifa customer asked for a foreign brand it would be offered, but if the price was felt to be too high, a

locally produced battery with a similar name and virtually identical packaging would be sold instead.'"* Even foreign advertising agents with long experience of market conditions in China believed that the production of cheap

imitations which could easily be distinguished from the original import was

46

Copy Culture and the Movement for National Goods not the same as the counterfeiting of well-known brands by manufacturers in Japan: Japanese counterfeits aimed not so much to produce a cheaper variation of the import for buyers who could not afford the original, as to create such confusion that the genuine could not be told apart from the imitation." Copy culture, in short, produced a two-tier economy which was at the heart of social differentiation: the rich and cost-conscious acquired imported goods

to signify wealth and status, while the poor and cost-conscious were restricted to buying local imitations.

Cheap imitations were also increasingly exported to the poor of the world. As we have seen above, the Qing exported a stupendous amount of porcelain made to order for foreign markets in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While manufactured goods produced by industrial Europe dominated global

trade in the nineteenth century, by the 1930s China started to reclaim a growing part of international commerce. Import substitution was a central

characteristic of the market in the republican period, but manufactured

commodities were also exported, first to emigrants abroad and then more generally to the regions with a considerable emigrant presence. Cotton socks and stockings, cotton towels, cotton singlets and cotton shoes with rubber

soles, for instance, were exported in sizeable quantities from the late 1920s

onwards from Canton in response to keen demand from overseas Chinese.''*

138,000 tons of yarn were imported into China in 1912, but twenty years

later 158,000 tons were exported from Shanghai alone.''” In some cases

continuities in design and manufacture could stretch over several centuries: the metal spittoons made by Lucky Enamel Factory in Hong Kong in the 1940s were directly inspired by designs for cuspidors drawn in the Netherlands and sent to Canton in 1763 to be produced and decorated for export

back to Europe: they were now made for a local market but also exported to other parts of the world in response to a demand for cheap goods.'"* This chapter has questioned the notion that things alien were rejected by a xenophobic China, showing how the intricate craftsmanship and exotic

appearance of ‘foreign goods’ were widely praised just as the technical

wizardry and fine skills behind Oriental commodities were appreciated in early modern Europe. Nor was the country hermetically closed from the

outside world, as a thriving maritime commerce allowed a range of goods,

from cheap flints to expensive watches, to be imported. Unlike other parts of the world, for instance Africa and South America, imports were not restricted

to elite consumption but were often made available to much larger sections

of the population.A growing number of objects from abroad was copied at 7

The Domestication of Foreign Goods low cost to address the needs of a large but relatively poor population, a trend sustained by a long-standing tradition of manufacturing goods from foreign

patterns, the use of component parts produced by individual workers in assembling complex objects, the spread of small enterprises in an expanding market from the sixteenth century onwards, and the availability of cheap

labour in a rapidly growing population. A nationalist movement of import

substitution in the first decades of the twentieth century further encouraged

copy culture: economic

nationalism eased the transformation of ‘foreign

goods’ into ‘national goods’ within less than half a century. A relatively low intake of foreign goods, in contrast to Russia, the Ottoman Empire, South

America, Africa and Southeast Asia, was not an indication of a ‘lack of interest’ in things foreign, but rather a measure of their success, as they were quickly appropriated and transformed into local products.

48

1. Itinerant trader and repairer of umbrellas, 1900s,

3 THE DISSEMINATION

OF NEW

OBJECTS

Shops were the principal vectors for the dissemination of things modern, whether small portable stalls carried on the back of itinerant merchants in the hinterland or gigantic stores placed at the heart of trading cities along the coast. And even if many commodities remained beyond the reach of the poor,

they were rarely out of their sight: exhibitive culture put on show material

modernity, as parks, museums, schools and even prisons devoted space to the display of new goods in an educative mission of enlightenment. The visibility of modern objects was also enhanced by the graphic revolution, which brought images of the modern to every home in the shape of posters,

calendars, adverts and cigarette cards. Rather than a ‘rejection of things alien’,

modern China was characterised by a fervent adoption of foreign imports at all social levels, from the farmer who bought new tools recycled from kerosene tins to the wealthy merchant who could follow the latest craze by mail order. RETAILING

THE

MODERN

Itinerant traders

All manner of goods were delivered to the door in imperial China: even in the small villages of the north, they were usually carried in baskets, swung from a shoulder pole or carted on wheelbarrows, occasionally in donkey pan-

niers. Each hawker had his own peculiar chant or cry to advertise his wares,

while mechanical sounds such as rattles were more common

in the cities

(figure 1). With the easing of restrictions on trade in the nineteenth cen-

tury, foreign goods which were small enough to be taken by hawkers spread furthest: to the local fruit and vegetables, cloth, crockery, baskets, coal, meat, toys, candy and nuts sold by itinerant traders, ironware, cigarettes, soap and

lotions were added, reaching even the small household in the hinterland.' In

The Dissemination of New Objects the 1930s vendors thronged the streets of Shanghai offering every possible

item from socks, handkerchiefs, towels and soap to female underwear (fig-

2. Woman buying used clothing from a pile on the street.

ure 2).? Not only did the number of small objects traded from door to door increase, but the very tools of the itinerant merchant improved.When kerosene emerged as the illuminant of choice in the late nineteenth century, tin containers became as common as the reed boxes, rattan hampers, bamboo trunks, wicker creels and twig baskets of tradition (figure 3). Peddlers ingeniously stacked empty tins and carried up to twelve on a bamboo pole on their way to market in the capital.’ The kerosene traded by Standard Oil and Asiatic Petroleum acquired a large market: it was supplied in tall, rectangular, silvercoloured and sealed tins which found great popularity as containers, one being carried on each end of a pole through the rice fields. Besides the peddler and itinerant craftsman, the tinsmith and the blacksmith also camped near the hot water shops or public mills of a village; they too contributed to small incremental changes in the material landscape of day-to-day rural life. A closer look at the blacksmith shows how he was an

essential link in a global economy of recycling, forging tools for China out of the discarded iron from Europe. Until roughly the middle of the nineteenth century, needles and nails made from local iron were preferred in the countryside since they were less brittle and liable to break: nails could be used two

or three times, a considerable advantage in a country of poverty.’ But gradual

changes appeared in wealthier regions, and in Jiujiang in the 1870s nails were

already forged from the iron bands used to hold together cotton goods from Manchester, while fish-hooks were made from the old hoop-iron taken off bale goods." In Zhenjiang ‘many a well worn and rusty looking piece of boiler plate may be seen voyaging on its way to the heart of China, to be

worked into a reaping hook or hoe by some village blacksmith.” A wealthy

port open to foreign trade, Yantai by 1880 was aglow with furnaces and reso-

nant with the blow of the hammer on the anvil, as blacksmiths worked till late in the night to transform imported iron into useful utensils.* A decade

later China absorbed much of Europe’s metallic waste, as the cuttings and

clippings of factories, shipyards and railway shops as well as the cast-off shoes of dray and cab horses found their way to the East.’ This trend increased with the gradual opening of the country: by the turn of the century several fac-

tories in Chengdu alone specialised in recycling wrought iron into everyday

items painted in lively colours: they were cheap and hugely popular, includ-

ing lamps, boxes, kettles, bowls and brushes.'” As Rudolf Hommel’s detailed

studies of industry in China show, blacksmiths relied heavily by the 1930s on imported iron to forge, weld, braze and carbonise iron to furnish tools with steel cutting edges: hoes, shovels, rakes, teeth for harrows, cleavers and cutters,

Retailing the Modern

3. Farmers bottling water at a local well in Baoji, Shaanxi

province, January 1941 spades, plowshares, trimmings for mills, scythes, hooks, grates, nails, bolts,

hinges, rings, awls, scissors, pincers, pliers, knives and files.'' However, in the

poor villages of the countryside, cost remained the determining factor: in a

spade, for instance, the edge was made of iron, while the central part which was not required to cut or scrape was still made of wood.'?

The tinsmith too was an important vector in the dissemination of things new. Well into the twentieth century, the single most important material in everyday objects was bamboo, which was ubiquitous from the chopsticks of

the poor to the plaited ceilings of the rich. In Sichuan province, ‘a man can sit in a bamboo house under a bamboo roof, on a bamboo chair at a bam-

boo table, with his feet resting on a bamboo foot-stool, with a bamboo hat

and bamboo sandals on his feet. He can at the same time hold in one hand a

bamboo bow! and in the other bamboo chopsticks, and eat bamboo sprouts."

53

The Dissemination of New Objects Fans, beds, pillows, mats, cradles, toys, pipes, paper, baskets, ladles, umbrellas: being cheap, pliable yet solid and durable, the universal bamboo had endless uses. Its only rival, the kerosene tin, found its way to all parts of China

during the last decades of the nineteenth century. As kerosene conquered

China, the tins in which the fluid was carried were recycled in a thriving

culture of bricolage. Tinsmiths could fashion kettles, pans, lamps and scores of other useful articles which had hitherto been absent from China. Even unskilled hands could turn a tin into a bucket, or open it out to make roofing or lining against rats for a wooden rice chest. Bamboo and the tin could even meet, for instance when plaited bamboo was bound together with strips of tin to make perambulators.'* In Hainan in the 1880s street-side tin-workers made kerosene lamps for about 10 cents a piece, largely recycled from imported oil cans.'> Peddlers in Beijing not only sold kerosene after 1910, but also bought and sold empty oil cans: craftsmen would then recycle them into kettles, rubbish bins, basins or

other household accessories.'* The recycling of tins was called ‘reincarnation

of the kerosene ghost’ by some foundries.'” Small, remote villages were no exception: Liu Junji opened a shop in Xunwu, Jiangxi province, in 1928 and

produced small tin lamps, pots for holding oil, ladles for scooping oils, teapots, wine-filters, small boxes and other household necessities out of kerosene tins: these cost 30 cents a tin and were resold for double once recycled into useful products.'* Periodic markets When itinerant traders gathered at regular intervals at an agreed location in

the countryside, a periodic market emerged: a multitude of farmers, craftsmen and traders, all with their goods on hand, back or cart, swarmed into a silent hamlet which was transformed into a busy scene with wares sold by the wayside or displayed on temporary stalls.'? A bustling market appeared like a transient city in the middle of an otherwise tranquil landscape where

one would normally find nothing but a few sleepy stores on deserted streets. The market was an important backbone of social and economic life in rural communities well into the twentieth century. Itinerant merchants from distant provinces would bring foreign articles and foreign ideas to the local

community, while story-tellers and medicine peddlers spread their tales and

wares through the surrounding villages.A whirlpool of activity swept through the market site, the din of excited voices drowning the usually quiet village:

by high noon buyers and sellers began to leave, and by the evening nothing

but lonely figures packing their remnants remained,as dead silence descended again on the countryside.

Retailing the Modern Periodic markets were a distinct feature of the countryside during the late

imperial era: people, ideas and goods circulated widely and intensively from

the eighteenth century, and even relatively isolated villages would be exposed to a variety of commodities during visits to local markets and seasonal festi-

vals.” The market disseminated new goods in the countryside in the nine-

teenth and twentieth centuries, in particular small, portable items which were easily carried by peddlers. On a street market in a remote town in Yunnan a small assortment of Japanese matches, British trinkets and German penknives

were displayed under an umbrella shade in 1904, as William Geil noticed while travelling through the province.”' At the same time, foreign goods such

as Austrian enamelware, Japanese mirrors and German tinware, traded in the

remote city of Simao, were carried further by a few caravans leaving Kunming,

once a year in November on their way to Mandalay or Moulmein.” Three

decades later even the most isolated hamlet in the hinterland would be ex-

posed to a whole array of manufactured goods. As was noted in the preceding chapter, farmers often produced small goods

in their spare time, and periodic markets were an outlet for local production.

On the periodic market of Zouping in Shandong province, machine-loomed

cloth was essential for the home-made clothes offered by farmers, while other local handicrafts were also influenced by the machine: pliers or carbon-steel

cutting tools were important, as were materials such as nails, wires and sheetmetal. More important, the periodic market at Zouping also offered hundreds

of items from the factories in Qingdao, Shanghai, Tianjin, Japan, Europe

and the United States: over a third of all goods came from distant regions.

Machines facilitated the spread of machines: almost all manufactured goods

arrived on the Zouping market by transportation motivated by powers other

than animal or wind, in this case the steamer and the train. Annual fairs, on

the other hand, brought items hard to obtain in periodic markets, for instance spectacles, musical instruments or expensive clothes: some 100,000 people

would gather for the occasion to worship and to trade.”*

In other regions too, periodic markets offered a multitude of new objects to local communities. In Zhonghechang, a market town of 15,000 farmers

near Chengdu, stalls would spread on market days, selling a variety of goods

by the 1940s—from soap, towels, cream, powder and rouge to spectacles.**

Improvements in transportation were crucial to the dissemination of goods,

so much so that in the next chapter we will look at steamers, trains and

trucks. Pontoons were moored, river banks were bunded and harbours were

built, as a growing number of sea- and river-ports opened to foreign trade, allowing foreign items and manufactured goods from the coast to penetrate further into distant local markets. In the case of Tianjin, for instance, nomads,

The Dissemination of New Objects farmers, merchants, compradors and foreign traders were all enmeshed in

a web of economic relations, as the city became a node for the hinterland, stretching as far inland as Gansu and Mongolia; this position was further enhanced by the advent of the railway, pouring goods in and out of the trade port. At a micro level, however, even minute changes in retailing could lead

to large shifts in trade, since careful packaging was required in order to reach the periodic market. In the late nineteenth century ordinary bales of yarn

from Shanghai were packed like piece goods and weighed 180 kilograms.

‘When yarn from Kobe arrived directly to Yantai in the 1890s, it was very

successful, since it weighed far less and was strongly packed in coarse straw mats, thus being more easily carried by pack-animals: the splitting and repacking needed when handling the larger bales from Shanghai was no longer necessary.” Shops and the spread of new objects Where periodic markets turned into more permanent shops, new commodi-

ties could be purchased outside market days. In Zhonghechang, mentioned above, permanent shops appeared next to the numerous stalls displaying goods

on market days: by 1942 no less than ten dealt in what were called luxury

goods, mainly cigarettes, tobacco and playing cards.” Dating the precise appearance of foreign imports is a futile task, as the preceding chapter shows, but in large cities outside the international con-

cessions the failure of the Boxer rebellion in 1900 in particular resulted in a

wider dissemination of objects associated with foreign powers. In cities like Taiyuan, where a shopkeeper selling foreign matches during the rebellion risked his life, imports appeared soon after its suppression, since the city was

‘full of foreign goods’. Only a year after the defeat of the Boxers, shops in Changsha were generously supplied with goods native and foreign, includ-

ing cottons, kerosene, oil, lamps, umbrellas and timepieces, but also with

‘articles that one would scarcely expect to find in a city where no foreigners

resided’, according to W. Barclay Parsons, namely tinned vegetables and fruit from America as well as English and German beer.” As the capital of Hunan, the province reputed to be the most ‘anti-foreign’ in China, Changsha had several steamers nine months a year bringing machinery, cotton yarn, woven

cottons, kerosene and cigarettes before the fall of the empire; even bread

could be had at some restaurants, while pencils, instruments and maps were

exhibited in several windows; as William Geil suggested, ‘the past dies fast in China’ Located even further inland, Chengdu, Sichuan province, exhibited

few foreign goods in the years immediately following the Boxer rebellion,

although ‘foreign fire’ (friction matches) was popular.”! By 1909 the range had

Retailing the Modern expanded to include hundreds of items, a detailed local study offering a snap-

shot of material culture: alarm clocks, safety lamps, pendant lamps, desk lamps, hand-held lamps, mirrors, cigarette holders, rouge, eau-de-Cologne, scented

soap, spittoons, cooking pots, harmoniums, tooth powder, toothbrushes, socks, handkerchiefs, fountain pens, pencils, pens, erasers, safety boxes, rubber dolls, gloves, spectacles, bicycles, gramophones, penknives, milk bottles, stoves, hats, and forks, among other items.” The

1911

revolution

further eroded resistance against the modern, as a

new mode of governance which repudiated the monarchy and embraced

republican ideals firmly located its source of inspiration abroad. Foreign goods benefited from the aura of superiority projected on to foreign powers, and the official hierarchy of values assigned to material objects was overhauled as soon as the imperial system crashed. Ordinary people were quick to realise that

the informal restrictions placed on imported goods by social elites had been lifted, and they created an ever-increasing demand for the foreign: modern

umbrellas, imported cloth, shoes and hats appeared in mountain villages in the north of Guangdong province months after the 1911 revolution. The only

department store retailing foreign goods in Xi'an just after the Boxer rebellion

had a few cakes of French scented soap and about ten packages of American cigarettes. After the collapse of the empire, shops displayed toothbrushes, cosmetics, condensed milk, underwear, lamps, clocks, spectacles, penknives

and kerosene. By 1918, according to Dong Zhujun, Chengdu was flooded

with foreign goods, from spittoons and washbasins to hand and face towels, handkerchiefs, cosmetics, soap cases, perfumed soap, knitted socks, printed

sheets, paper flowers and face lotions, many being choice gifts for people in the countryside.* But it was not merely the quantity of things modern which

increased so drastically after 1911, but also the manner in which they were

sold: with the rise of the department store, goods were carefully displayed

under glass or in the shop window rather than stacked away out of sight, as

could be the case in traditional shops.

Department stores Department stores were horizontal concentrations of periodic markets, as a

sprawl of stalls and stands along a road was fitted under one roof over several

floors (figure 4). This was particularly evident in the bazaars constructed by the end of the Qing in the imperial capital. The Dongan Market, with four gates on Wangfujing alone, was the oldest and largest of these. Described as

a city in a city, it contained four markets and three large buildings along a central avenue with side roads. Inside the gateway tobacconists, exchange

agents, florists and goldfish merchants hawked their goods to the public in

The Dissemination of New Objects

4. Huimin department store in Tianjin, 1940s. the 1920s, while a fortune teller with a wooden booth offered his services to

shoppers. Hatters, shoe-makers and drapers were spread on the ground floor

of the Zhonghua Market, while teashops, barbers and photographers could be

found on the first floor. The Tongyi Bazaar was composed of four busy streets, each with two-storied houses and stalls in between. A big compound also acted as an amusement resort for the poor, with an open space surrounded by two-storied buildings busy with fortune-tellers, old-fashioned dentists, magicians, acrobats and wrestlers: rich or poor, all flocked to the market for amusement and commerce.” Before department stores appeared in Shanghai, several large shops were already popular by the mid-nineteenth century: founded by Cantonese mer-

chants, they initially sold ‘Cantonese goods’ (guanghuo) but also dealt in ‘foreign goods’

(yanghuo) produced in Canton by local craftsmen. These shops

were known as yangeuang zahuodian, or shops for ‘foreign and Cantonese sun-

dry goods’, showing not only how Cantonese merchants were often at the

forefront in the retailing of foreign products, but also how ‘foreign’ and °C: n=

tonese’ coexisted as categories of exotic and distant wares. Other shops spe-

cialising in luxury artefacts also appeared, selling ‘capital goods’ (jinghuo): these

included not only specialties from the capital Beijing, for instance snuff boxes,

furs and pearls, but also rare handicrafts from Suzhou and Hangzhou. They

too started dealing in foreign commodities in response to market demand in

Retailing the Modern the last decades of the nineteenth century, showing how boundaries between

‘Cantonese’, ‘Western’ and ‘capital’ goods became increasingly porous.” In the last decades of the nineteenth century, however, interest in luxury products from either the south (Canton) or the north (Beijing) decreased, as

not only ‘foreign’ luxury goods but also daily necessities of foreign origin, including ‘foreign fire’ (yanghuo) and ‘foreign oil’ (yangyou), attracted a grow-

ing number of customers. This trend accelerated after the fall of the empire, and several department stores appeared to respond to local demand—in addition to retailers which catered to expatriate communities, namely Whiteway Laidlaw; Hall and Holtz; Lane, Crawford and Co.; and Weeks and Co. The

Sincere Company, called Shanghai’s Harrod’s on account of its resemblance

to the London store, opened in the autumn of 1917, immediately attracting huge crowds: ‘Chinese are stunned by a spectacle hitherto never seen, while

‘Westerners also sigh in admiration. Its trading surface exceeded 10,000 square metres, as thousands of objects were on offer in dozens of different trading

departments. For a short while sales girls were employed, thus breaking a social taboo and heightening the appeal of shopping for male customers.*'

The Wing On’s grand opening in Shanghai in 1918, in the presence of

political leaders and community figures after a two-week advertising cam-

paign, was also a great success: their stock cleared within a few weeks.” The

Wing On introduced new retailing strategies which contributed to a growing clientele. As an emporium offering goods from all over the world, the company vigorously pursued sole agency rights from foreign producers, thus cutting out the middlemen. Its customer service also heralded a new era in

the trading industry: friendliness and politeness were highly valued, and visi-

tors were individually greeted and thanked whether or not a purchase had

been made. To bind its customers further, credit sales were introduced in 1918: five years later the number of credit customers had grown to more than 4,000.**

Another retailing technique which would become popular in Shanghai was the use of gift vouchers (lijuan). Attractively designed to look like crisp

bank notes, they suited a whole variety of customers, as is testified by the amount sold, which increased from about half million yuan in 1935 to well

over a million in 1939." Mail orders and home delivery also expanded sales in

the 1920s, as goods were advertised in newspapers in all major cities, bringing

in orders from customers as far away as Shenyang in the north, Chengdu deep

inland and Fuzhou to the south. Orders for home delivery could be placed over the telephone, suiting the wealthy in Shanghai.’ Other multi-storied

department stores in Shanghai which could rival Macy’ in New York or

The Dissemination of New Objects

Selfridges in London were the Dai-Sun (Daxin) and the Sun-Sun (Xinxin), both teeming with the latest fashion items. Department stores were initially confined to Shanghai and Beijing, but by

the 1930s nearly every large city had several. Carl Crow's standard Handbook

for China, published in 1933, was ecstatic, even if his enthusiasm was fired by a desire to promote trade in China: ‘Few people who have never visited

China realize what fine modern shops are to be found in the principal cities, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hankow and Tientsin. In all of these places there are large department stores with well selected stocks of European and American merchandise, book stores, chemist shops, specialty shops, tailors, etc.“ Where traditional shops were low and open with the living quarters above, new department stores were towers of commerce, castles of trade standing tall above

the surrounding buildings. The main department store in Tianjin, for instance, had six floors and a tower rising four additional stories; at night the entire

exterior of the building was illuminated with rows of electric lights. The store

carried local and imported goods, ranging from American canned sardines to child-size motor cars.A special guard had to hold back shoppers eager to

use the Otis elevator until those inside had made their exit. Entertainment was also provided with several restaurants, three theatres, including one for

movies, a roof garden, a savings bank and an ice cream parlour. The striking contrast between elaborate department stores and traditional single-story

shops, often only a few doors away, was typical of the changes taking place in the whole structure of everyday life in republican China.”

Most department stores were monuments to civility, and visitors could

be turned away if their attire did not match the solemnity of the occasion.”

Despite these measures, country people made their way into department

stores, showing how easily formal rules of decorum

could be subverted by

ordinary farmers—and how shops functioned as vectors for the dissemina-

tion of knowledge about the modern even to those who could not afford to

buy their products. Lady Hosie—who may of course have entirely invented

the story—recounts how two old country people boldly wandered into a

modern store in Shanghai to admire the ‘self-raising room’ which had been

recommended by their son.The farmer wore a bulky winter blouse and baggy

trousers with a pipe stuck into his belt next to a leather pouch with flint and steel, while his wife came dressed in a winter tunic hobbling on bound

feet: in this clash of worlds, the shop-walker in flannel trousers, bow tie and

pin-striped shirt stared in sheer disbelief through his tortoise-shell spectacles,

as the couple walked through every department, marveling at a fairyland

of wonderful objects until tired of the shop and its rituals: they had been

exposed to the full range of modern objects.” Poor people may not have 60

Retailing the

Modern

been able to afford the luxuries on display in department stores, but they could stroll as through a dream, emerging with a material fantasy they would carry back to their village. Department stores were not only sites of dissemination for new commodities, but also veritable shrines to the world of goods, all made visible to

casual shoppers and wandering farmers alike by the use of a variety of display techniques. Open bays, glass cabinets, wooden counters, gallery rails, wax figures, window displays: by the 1930s even oxidised lay mannequins were used to display new materials.” Large posters or small adverts, of course, further contrived to make every object visible, from knitted socks to imported auto-

mobiles, and enhance its appeal. Display techniques evolved rapidly, often

fired by new developments in Europe and conveyed in specialised publica~ tions such as Modern window dressing.*' While department stores pioneered

5. Goods pour onto the pavement in this busy

Hong Kong street, 1940s.

the use of display in Europe,™ visibility was already a key component of

the thriving commercial culture of China. In the south almost every shop had an open front, as stuff poured into the street, where business was often conducted. Just as advertisements had to offer visual evidence of the goods on

display, visibility was crucial in the shop, goods hanging on walls or sitting on shelves. From the end of the nineteenth century onwards glass increasingly

allowed the more valuable wares to be covered in cases: the whole contents of the shop were visible as one passed along the street.** The same principle is

still in evidence in the south of China today: just as shops in imperial China

had no front, fagades entirely made of glass in Canton or Hong Kong offer complete transparency to the passerby; in some cases the front is still missing, as plastic goods in a riot of colours gaily pour out on to the pavement (figure 5). Electricity, as we see in a separate chapter, further enhanced the visibility of the goods, as the Shenbao commented when some of the shops started using

lighting in Shanghai as early as 1882:‘The Meiji watch store only puts on one light but one could clearly see everything inside and outside of the store’ RECYCLING

THE

MODERN

Whether in the market stall, town shop or department store, foreign objects and their local imitations often remained beyond the reach of the poor, despite their increased availability and visibility. In a culture of thrift and poverty, how-

ever, many objects were recycled, and popular markets were a central site for

the dissemination of used goods (figure 6). In the Thieves’ Market in Beijing, for instance, stolen goods were sold between nightfall and sunrise under the light of lanterns, the bric-a-brac spotted by Maurice Dekobra including alarm

clocks, silver spoons, bicycle saddles, sardine-tin keys, field-glasses, an india~

61

The Dissemination of New Objects

6.A merchant with second-hand goods spread on the pavement

rubber syringe and even an old set of false teeth. As Carl Crow noted, some

of the salvage from foreign households found its way to second-hand shops: riding boots, saddles, golf balls and worn collars could be found there, while

some specialised in the odds and ends of motorcars, radiators, engines, steering wheels and old tyres. In Shanghai a few even collected the stray parts from

launches, marine engines, binnacle lights, bells, lanterns and life preservers.**

The dissemination of things modern was facilitated thanks to a widespread practice of recy ling (figure 7): before the fall of the empire used shoes, boots, hats and cotton cloth were collected in Shanghai for a few coppers by traders, and these objects would be sold in other parts of the country.” New objects

were even recycled by their producers: as early as 1878 the Match Production Bureau in Shanghai put up a notice for the collection of used foreign match-

boxes, offering 40 cents per 1,000. In the republican era the recycling indus-

try engendered its own market: in Hangzhou in 1932 over eighty dealers, many from Shaoxing, specialised in old goods (jiuhuo). They used every scrap

of metal or shred of cloth, feeding a market in recycled stuff which reached

well beyond the confines of the province.*” As one ethnologist noted during

a detailed investigation ofa small town of 15,000 people in Sichuan in 1942, eight stands dealt in second-hand goods on market days, the quality being such that ‘only the poorest of the poor would want to buy the little things 62

Recycling the Modern that everybody uses, and not be able to get them new’.”’ Lauding the widespread practice of recycling even the most insignificant trifle, Dyer Ball observed that poverty incited a care for the minute, turning everybody into

a successful merchant."

As affluence spread, however, the amount of rubbish grew: discarding ‘old’ things as much as buying ‘new’ goods was a sign of wealth in a culture of poverty. Either to use up an object like cotton shoes till the very last shred or to acquire recycled objects was a sure sign of poverty from which the wealthy wished to demarcate themselves. Although we lack a history of rubbish (or, for that matter, an anthropology of waste) in China, it might be extrapolated, on the basis of observations on the fate of objects in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan today, that an increasingly large number of people who emerged from

poverty to live in relative affluence in republican China spurned the secondhand market, viewed recycling as a mark of the poor, and enjoyed throwing away objects when they could afford it (a visit to a beach in Hong Kong after the Mid-Autumn Festival will yield several tons of discarded new objects, from umbrellas to mats, while good furniture can be collected from many a rubbish tip).

7.A family recycling pieces of cloth on a sampan, Shanghai, 1940s,

63

The Dissemination of New Objects

Voices of concern about the lack of recycling were raised after 1911,

although these should of course be interpreted with caution: a conservative

discourse about frugality and thrift goes back many centuries in China, where

the Confucian ideal of a self-sufficient economy was promoted by social elites.

They also participated in a discourse of domesticity in which good housewives were able to decorate the house at little expense, mastering a variety

of skills to enhance homely comforts while keeping the purse-strings under

control. In 1917, for instance, an article in the Ladies Magazine suggested that

more people should learn how to recycle clothes, food and drinks as well as commodities considered to be ‘rubbish’ (feiwu). The author even proposed

mounting an exhibition to disseminate practical knowledge about recycling;

schools, it was ventured, should teach students how to turn waste paper into

envelopes or make good use of torn cloth, broken glass and old iron.” A few years later the Family Magazine suggested ways of recycling used cloth, including tiebacks, lampshades or tablecloths.” During the Second World War more articles about recycling appeared in house and home magazines, no doubt responding to shortages of specific commodities during the war. In 1939 Women and Family even proposed the use of old ink brushes for glueing paper or decorating walls. Buttons and lace could be recycled, whereas old cloth could be made into soles for children’s shoes or turned into mops:™ the very need to disseminate advice about recycling in times of war may indicate how some affluent families had moved

away from a culture of thrift. Even empty petrol cans, usually recycled by tinsmiths or iron foundries, were now described as objects worthy of home use: ‘It seems a real shame to throw away an empty petrol can, so why not use it to

make a waste paper basket. There are several ways to decorate the can: if you

prefer the modern style, you can paint a few flowers on the can, or paint your name on it in English... you can also cut some flower patterns from cloth and

glue them on to the can.°> Whether copied in the factory or manufactured at

home, modern goods were also made meaningful and recognisable by a thriving exhibitive culture, as we see next. EXHIBITING

THE

MODERN

Commodity spectacles became common in Europe and the United States

in the wake of the Crystal Palace Exhibition held in London in 1851. The

Crystal Palace, a gigantic iron framework with over a million square feet of glass, housed over 13,000 exhibits to showcase the industrial, military and economic achievements of the empire, as over 6 million visitors marvelled at

an infinity of objects on display from all over the world, including colonies

64

Exhibiting the Modern such as India and Australia. It spawned many imitations: international exhibi-

tions flourished until the end of the century, each trying to outdo the other,

including an Exposition Universelle in Paris every decade until 1900, as well as monumental displays in Vienna (1873), Philadelphia (1876), Melbourne

(1880), Antwerp (1885), Prague (1891) and Chicago (1893), leading to millions

of encounters between humans and things as organisers vied to display the latest technological discoveries. In modern China too, objects were exhibited in countless venues, from

major international expositions held in the cities of the coast to small local

displays in public parks in the hinterland.As we have seen in the preceding

chapter, exhibitions were part of a movement for national goods which aimed to imitate modern commodities in order better to resist foreign imports: exhibitive culture promoted import substitution. Exhibitions aimed to encourage competition among local manufacturers of modern objects. Products were carefully scrutinised by special commissions and ranked in order of excellence,

the top artefacts being awarded special prizes. As John Styles has noted about early modern England, when an onslaught of foreign commodities prompted patriotic associations and independent merchants to copy foreign forms of manufacture closely, a crucial factor in import substitution was the dissemination of information about design and production.” Modern China was no different, and largely thanks to a print revolution the flow of information was highly intensified, as commercial information was spread in newspapers, textbooks, illustrated magazines and even posters. Precise knowledge about design, production, retailing and marketing was made available by local associations and government institutions, as the movement for national goods was supported by all who proclaimed loyalty to the nation. The Nanyang

Industrial Exposition of 1910, for instance, specified in its guidelines and suggestions that items on display should mainly consist of everyday and house-

hold goods, and should not only look appealing but also be useful; items on

display should come with instruction booklets provided by manufacturers,

while seminars should be held during the exhibition to inform and educate

merchants and ordinary visitors about the products on display.*”

Exhibitions were on a monumental scale, bringing together a throng of

people and a mountain of goods. In the civilising zeal with which political elites approached

the great unwashed, exhibitions were

meant

to impart

knowledge of the new and transform a mass of ignorant farmers into an educated nation attuned to things modern. Political elites thus posed as vanguards ofa new material culture indispensable in ‘catching up’ with the rest of the

world. The Nanyang Industrial Exposition, for instance, encompassed several

huge exhibition halls built by architects Atkinson and Dallas from Shanghai,

The Dissemination of New Objects

including a brick observation tower, an Assembly Hall for public lectures about science and progress, Machinery and Transportation Buildings, a Public Health Building,a Hall of Agriculture and other smaller structures, as well as a

fully equipped emergency hospital and three new electric plants.A city within a city, the fairground covered more than 150 acres and was served by a light

railway. More than 200,000 visitors admired objects ranging from matches,

candles and lamps to entire toilets, movable lifts, flying airplanes and even a concrete fountain basin containing a Goddess.“ Regional exhibitions also appeared throughout the first half of the twentieth century, one of the first

being the provincial trade fair held in Nanchang in February 1910: nearly

20,000 tickets were sold within the first few days. Ministries planned exhibits:

for example, the Ministry of Commerce and Agriculture organised an exhibition of national goods in Beijing in 1915, and a delegation from the China National Goods Association travelled from Shanghai to the exhibition and

specifically investigated the quality of local goods, the strength of the materials

used, the worth of the machinery deployed, the speed of production and the methods of packaging; their results were disseminated via the National Goods

Monthly.”

In a global frame of reference in which emulation and competition

led to ever shifting standards, innovations and expectations, museums were established to inspire confidence in the local ability to contribute to the modern: traditional skills and legendary workmanship, organisers believed, could easily be transferred to the production of modern items. In the former Imperial Palace, for instance, new manufactures were exhibited next to antiquities, as if the skills deployed in the production of the latter were comparable to those used in the manufacture of the former. The advancement of domestic industrial production, rather than cultural conservation, was the aim of the Institute for Exhibiting Antiques.”' Museums were also established to promote

knowledge of modern industry and commerce. Already before the opening of the national exhibition in 1910 a science museum in Chengdu became a local

attraction and displayed children’s toys and household items considered to be

‘modern’.”? For a modest entrance fee ordinary people in Beijing could mar-

vel at the whole array of exhibits at the agricultural experimentation grounds

(nongchangjian), revealing the latest secrets of scientific farming,” In 1927 the

Ministry of Industry and Commerce even required that each province and

every city should promote national goods by establishing a museum. Shang-

hai led the movement and was soon followed by other cities and provinces, reaching as far as the remote province of Ningxia in the northwest hinterland

and the impoverished city of Guizhou in the south.” 66

Exhibiting the Modern

Exhibitions of objects were regularly organised in local schools. For instance, the National Exhibition of Children’s Art held in April 1914 displayed articles manufactured in schools throughout the country: hats, shoes, fans, bowls, but also toys such as paper cars and paper steamers were all care-

fully arranged on tables and walls separated from the public by ropes which

guided each visitor through the exhibition hall. All the usual rules distin-

guishing a moral site of educative display from a mere leisure centre applied:

no spitting, no smoking and no loud conversations, and injunctions aimed at instilling in each visitor a sense of respect for the artefacts on exhibit.’ Even prisons displayed manufactured objects: products made by inmates were sent

from all over the country to the Prison Exhibition Hall,a large brick building

constructed in Beijing Central Park and opened to the public during the

summer of 1919, all objects carefully laid out in display cabinets.” Sites of display frequently overlapped: museums, parks, libraries or zoos all participa-

ted in exhibitive culture, as these national spaces were harnessed to tutor the

public in the various meanings and uses of things modern. As Karl Gerth has shown, manufactured objects were also at the centre of parades, parties and rallies organised by the government as part of the movement for national goods.A National Products Movement Week in July 1928, for instance, aimed to expand public awareness of the range of national products and cultivate the domestic market in Shanghai: fliers were scattered from airplanes, slogans posted throughout the city, speeches given and articles written by prominent local politicians and entrepreneurs; even cinemas and radio stations participated in the movement.”’ However, we know very little

about the various ways in which local people actually understood and expe-

rienced the propaganda organised by elites: as we have seen in the preceding chapter, many remained impervious to the message of economic nationalism, as foreign imports showed no sign of abating throughout the republican

period. The majority of customers who could afford a visit to an exhibition

or a museum probably experienced it as an opportunity to socialise and enjoy themselves rather than as a chance to be morally transformed by government propaganda. As the Shenbao noted about international fairs, these were

regarded as a source of amusement in China, whereas most visitors in Europe

and the United States saw them mainly as a business opportunity.” While a

grid of rules about proper behaviour often disciplined exhibitive space, most

organisers were obliged to create spectacles in order to attract visitors.A z00, a race course, distorting mirrors, a lily pond, pavilions, teahouses, restaurants,

a brass band or a firework display at the Nanyang Exhibition in 1910:” all endeavoured to please the crowds, who more often than not shaped these

events by voting with their feet: high cost reduced the flow of visitors to

67

The Dissemination of New Objects a trickle.” In all cases visitors decided which articles to purchase at official

exhibitions, despite all efforts by organisers to persuade them to buy for the nation: in and out of the exhibition space customers gradually shaped the

material environment by parsimoniously distributing their hard-earned cash on the products of their choice.

Whether giant exhibitions at national level or small displays in local schools,

exhibitive events heightened the visibility of modern

objects, made them

meaningful and recognisable, disseminated knowledge about their manu-

facture, offered industrial objects for sale and, as we have seen in the preced-

ing chapter, promoted import substitution. The visibility of new objects was

also enhanced by a graphic revolution which brought images of shoes, pens

or cars to all.

THE

GRAPHIC

REVOLUTION

A graphic revolution allowed images of modern

objects to be carried far and

wide in China." Technological innovations meant that the printed image

reached an increasingly large number of people, as news printing started in

1850 with the North China Daily News in Shanghai, followed by a string of

dailies in English and in Chinese. Book printing by foreign and local enter-

prises also took off in the middle of the nineteenth century, spearheaded by

missionary presses using metal type. Colour printing was first used in 1876 by

the San Wan Printing Office for religious literature, and colour lithography in

1904 by the Wen Ming Book Company. Offiet machines arrived in Shang-

hai in 1915, and they multiplied rapidly to fulfil the demands of the cigarette industry, printing the packages five times quicker than lithography. Engrav-

ing of zinc plates, half-tone and other subsidiary lines of printing also spread,

creating a graphic revolution which brought printed images to millions.” The influential pictorial magazine Dianshizhai huabao, produced in Shang-

hai from 1884 to 1898, thus frequently introduced exotic objects in its cultural imagery.*’ Wu Youru, one of the most popular contributors to a new graphic art inspired by modern perspective, regularly had the female beauties

he depicted interact with things modern, from foreign umbrellas to imported

binoculars. The urban landscape in which his imaginary belles posed was

often marked by the modern, whether elegant telegraph wires on which a couple of sparrows came to rest or the finely crafted electric lamps rising tall above the streets.“ Images such as these were all the more welcome as the written sign was accessible to an educated minority only. But even more influential were the advertisements and calendars which

started to appear regularly in newspapers, flyers and posters alike from

68

the end

The Graphic Revolution

8. The Great World amusement

centre covered in advertisements,

Shanghai, 1948, of the nineteenth century onwards (figure 8).** Standard Oil was one of the first to capitalise on the widespread interest in pictographical material, distrib-

uting calendars (rili, ywefenpai), posters (guahua), picture cards (huapian), Spring Festival pictures (nianhud) and other graphic material in the countryside.“

British American Tobacco operated a vast advertising department which not

only produced newspaper displays, posters and hangers, but also maintained

an entire motion-picture plant, creating both educational and travel films

which were shown in local cinemas in conjunction with advertising for ciga-

Monthly calendars were printed from 1896 onwards, using changes in printing technology: most wer produced by commercial companies as a

rettes,

means of advertising their products, and were given to clients with goods at

the end of the year (figure 9). Customers considered them to be works of art

and used them to decorate their homes: an expert in advertising noticed in

the 1930s that local people ‘see nothing espe ially objectionable in the fact 69

The Dissemination of New Objects that they may advertise a cigarette or a brand of cod liver oil’."* Francis Hsu thus observed in the 1940s that the walls of his ancestral home were adorned with images of modern transport (aeroplanes, trains, steamships and motor cars), rather than with the traditional shanshui motifs."’ Posters of beauties advertising wares were fashionable decorations in cities like Chengdu, where the wealthy would even frame them in glass and hang them next to calligra~

9. Advertisement by Lobow] Medical Company, ¢. 1918

phy scrolls.” Palmolive, for instance, had a picture of two traditional beauties pampering themselves in a boudoir to advertise their cosmetics, including Palmolive Vanishing Cream and Palmolive Toilet Soap, thus bringing a representation of the modern interior to hundreds of thousands of ordinary people.” Besides posters a number of companies also produced small coloured banners for household decoration: as with advertisements, colour played an important part in their success.”” Modernity also came to the village in coloured pictures, sold by vendors over the New Year period, some depicting important political events such as the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5, others thrilling incidents like a naval battle in the north of China.”* Collectable cards were also included in cigarette packs in China from 1904 onwards, a mere decade after this new marketing

technique appeared in Britain.” Called ‘foreign cards’ (yanghuapian), they too

spread images of the modern: the Hwo Cheng Cigarette Co., for instance, included a set of collectable ‘Road Safety Tips’ with cars, buses and motorcycles.* Some cards inflamed the imagination with fancy pictures of aero-

trains, autocycles or rocket airplanes.”* Cards and stamps also furthered a more accumulative approach towards the modern world, as they democratised a much older habit of collecting, ordering, arranging and completing a series of objects seen to be finite in a sea of seemingly infinite artefacts. Where antiques were reserved for the wealthy, cigarette cards and stamps shaped a relationship between collector and object which was accessible to ordinary people. Zhou Jinjue, for instance, became the ‘king of stamps’ (youpiao dawang) on the strength of his personal collection.” Cigarette cards were also collected by children, who would sometimes paste them on the wall above their bed.” Cards could occasionally be exchanged for material goods in new marketing techniques which fuelled the drive to accumulate more things: for instance, the Golden Arrow Cigarettes produced by the China Tobacco Manufacturing Company came with cards which could be swapped for raincoats, watches, suitcases or even radios.” Richly illustrated matchbox covers also spread images of the modern (figure 10), some showing ballroom dancing and badminton,

the Nam Sang Woo company even having a Zeppelin on its label."

10, Airplane on a matchbox 70

Familiarity with new objects was promoted by illustrated glossaries pub-

lished for popular use: zike tushuo, or shizi tushuo, ‘illustrated explanations for

The Graphic Revolution character recognition’, were intended for children but probably also ended up

in the hands of domestic workers, shopkeepers and all those who wanted to

acquire some basic literacy. These glossaries contained illustrations of the most common characters in Chinese as well as brief descriptions of their meaning

and pronunciation.A study of the changing contents of such glossaries shows

how imported goods still classified as exotic before 1900 were quite common

by 1915. The Illustrated glossary for daily use in foreign affairs, published by the

turn of the century, listed some objects that would have been part of the kit of

a foreigner residing in China: all were referred to as yang, or ‘overseas’ , includ-

ing soap (yangzao), matches (yanghuo), pens (yangbi), kerosene (yangyou) and

umbrellas (yangsan).""" By 1915, however, the Citizen’: illustrated glossary not

only listed as daily necessities goods which would have been considered ‘fo-

reign’ twenty years earlier, including pencils and lamps, but also used modern objects to illustrate basic verbs or adjectives: the gramophone illustrated the : oe 3 Bare Pie act of ‘listening’, the bicycle stood for ‘pushing’; the character for straight was explained by a telegraph pole.'” The Illustrated popular education (1916), also intended for consumption outside the orthodox elementary curriculum, was even more replete with modern objects, from trains, cars and airplanes to the harmonium in the classroom and dumbbells on the sports field."

Chapter 2 demolished the myth of a China walled off from the outside world by showing just how much was borrowed and copied in the period before the nineteenth century, while a movement for national goods after 1895 actually intensified the spread of modern

goods by encouraging local producers to

come up with cheap copies. This chapter has further undermined the notion ofa ‘hostility toward alien things’ by pointing out how periodic markets, town

shops and department stores contributed to the selective adoption and rapid dissemination of novel objects, in particular after restrictions on the circulation of foreign goods were lifted with the fall of the empire in 1912. The poor participated in a thriving culture of bricolage which could turn metallic waste from Europe into everyday items painted in lively colours, from lamps and kettles to bowls and brushes. And even if more expensive objects remained

beyond the reach of ordinary people, they were rarely beyond their sight: organisers of public exhibitions enthusiastically promoted material modernity,

as parks, museums, schools and even prisons emulated each other in devoting

space to the display of new goods. The visibility of modern objects was also

enhanced by the graphic revolution, which brought images of the modern

to every home in the form of posters, adverts or cigarette cards, Whether at

the periodic market, in the exhibition hall or in the printed newspaper, new

11. Advertisement for aspirin by

Bayer

The Dissemination of New Objects commodities had become visible, familiar and meaningful by the 1910s to all but the most deprived: what is striking in historical perspective is not so

much the alleged tardiness of the empire in opening up but the speed with

which things modern were embraced, exhibited, copied and recycled. Their

nx 0

dissemination was further eased by the emergence of new networks of transportation, as we see in the next chapter.

4 FROM WATER TO WHEEL As Yang Ching-kun noted in 1944 while studying the periodic market of

Zouping, machines spread machines, since most manufactured goods reached

the farmer by steamer or by train.' Until the end of the nineteenth century, however, transportation in China was slow, being generally accomplished on foot or by cart or boat.A revolution in transportation followed new discoveries in Europe, starting with the steamer in the 1860s and culminating in the advent of aviation in the 1930s. New networks emerged as buses crisscrossed

the countryside and trains linked the cities, the general movement of goods

and people gradually shifting from water to wheel. Large structures were

sponsored by central authorities or local government, which invested ever

larger amounts in roads, railways or rivers, but small yet incremental changes were also made at the micro-level as wealthy farmers took to the bicycle and city dwellers resorted to the rickshaw. This chapter looks not only at how new networks increased the dissemination of manufactures, but especially at how modern means of transportation were experienced by a variety of social formations. While the changes introduced by the revolution in transportation should be quantified, noting for instance how the importance of the bus in the countryside has hitherto been underestimated by historians, an impressionis-

tic appraisal of its qualitative changes to the texture of everyday life lies at the heart of this chapter. If, as was noted in the introduction, objects are polysemic, infused by human beings with multiple interpretations and personal experiences, it is vital to try to tease out the often contradictory ways in which bus,

train or plane were understood and appropriated by actual users in specific social contexts. The rivalry between steamship companies or the politics behind

railway construction have been researched in considerable detail, but we know little about how ordinary people perceived the locomotive or used the steamer. All too often the readily accepted image is one of a xenophobic re-

jection of modern machinery: that image is questioned here.

From Water to Wheel MOTORS

IN WATERLAND

“China is a sponge’, noticed William Martin, with fields flooded in terraces, rivers as broad as oceans, lakes natural and artificial, canals that interspersed every town and people and animals who worked in the mud up to their

bellies. Veined with watercourses, guttered hillsides and bankless wandering rivers, south and central China used water rather than road to convey goods

to market, carry children to school or send the deceased to their ancestral burying grounds until the late 1930s, by which time most cities had built

roads made for use by rickshaws and buses. In this huge waterland, the machine age added new sounds and sights to

the hustle and bustle of water transportation: the port in Shanghai was one of the busiest in the world with, in the words of Innes Jackson writing in 1938,

its ‘river and ocean craft in every shape and form, sails, ensigns, steam, splashing oars, all kinds of cargo from coal to feathers piling in and out, constant move-

ment of every nature from human swimming to the take-off of a seaplane,

and with it the shriek of sirens, the chug of paddles, the curious confused high roar of human voices that accompanies any large-scale activity in the

East.”’ Freighters, tankers and ferries in Canton or Shanghai appeared next to

coveys of fishing boats, while lorchas with European hulls and local batten lug

sails went up the Yangzi.‘ Fast tugs hurried along ‘with

little reverence for the

traditions of the past’, Gretchen Fitkin noticed with regret in 1922,5 while

huge ocean-going freighters discharged their cargo in modern ports. By the

mid 1930s the navigable rivers swarmed with traffic, ranging from junks to modern motor ships: on the upper Yangzi River alone over fifty steam and motor vessels were busy moving goods and people:* even if a few would be wrecked every year,’ they easily overtook the fleets of fishing smacks and traditional junks.

The Yangzi River became the symbol of modern China, while the Yellow

River stood for the old empire, an identification reinforced with the move of the capital in 1927 from Beijing in the north to Nanjing on the Yangzi. In the

1930s foreign residents were struck by how the junks had become fewer in

number on the Yangzi: their slow rate of travel, limited capacity and liability to attack from bandits made

them

useless in comparison

to the modern

steamers, while special high-powered vessels built to battle with the wild currents in the gorges gave additional security when navigating the rapids. Even

ocean-going vessels could travel from the coast up to Wuhan, except when

the water was at its lowest in mid-winter, the lower river being sufficiently large and adequately lit with beacons so that ships could travel day and night.”

Motors in Waterland Canton also rapidly took to the machine age: comfortable inland steamers

plied between the city and Hong Kong or Macau, while ocean liners con-

nected passengers with Shanghai,Tianjin and other cities along the coast. In a

modernity redolent of machine oil, even junks were being fitted with motors in the early 1920s, while launches were put into service on the Pearl River with the introduction of the diesel and gasoline engine.’ The Bund, straightened between 1932 and 1934, symbolised the rise of Canton to power: on the

new Bund stood the Municipal Bank, the Shanghai Bank and, inevitably in an age of commerce, the Native Products’ Emporium. The goods themselves transited via seventy-five wharves which stretched from the Inner Harbour to

the Pearl River Bridge, specifically designed for ocean liners with a tonnage

of 3,000 to 4,000 all the way down to ferries and sampans.'” Even Shantou, relatively modest in size, had a busy trading port with dozens of ocean steam-

ers under foreign flags coming and leaving every day in the early 1920s."!

Inland in impoverished Guangxi province, the number of chartered junks on the Nanning—Wuzhou run decreased from more than 220 to a mere seventyeight from 1922 to 1931, while motorboats jumped from 174 to almost 500." Local people immediately took to the steamer, including official mandarins adverse to things foreign. One of the earliest references to steam in China

appeared in Wei Yuan's well-known geography of the world, circulated in the 1840s: ‘The most astounding occurrence in today’s Western world is steam

power, [steam] engines propelling ships and wagons and resembling in force an unstoppable storm. If used to move ships great benefit, moving [objects] as if they were water or human labour. Personal accounts being among the first in the 1860s to express

and wagons, [steam] can be of flying without the use of wind, soon followed, Guo Liancheng. his amazement when boarding

a steam vessel for the journey from Shanghai to Hong Kong, as ‘the wheel

moves the ship as if by flight’.'* Li Jingshan thought in 1872 that the steamer

‘moves as fast as a bird in the sky’,'> while two residents from Jiaxing eulo-

gised the steamer for being ‘as fast as a horse.'® These were not isolated examples. As the Zhenjiang commissioner reported in 1870, ‘the Chinese are learning to appreciate travelling by foreign

steamers. Not a few of the passengers who arrive and depart hence are officials,

who have so far overcome their bigotry to acknowledge that steamer travelling is eminently satisfactory. They are amazed at the speed at which they journey, at the cleanliness and order that obtains on board, and above all, at

the comparative inexpensiveness of the voyage.” Indeed, a decade later a labourer could travel from Xiamen to Manila for a little over $3.00, and tens

of thousands arrived in and departed from the Fujianese harbour by merchant

From Water to Wheel

steamer every year." Many thousands also travelled to Singapore and Bang-

kok in the early 1890s, a rush of passengers often being witnessed just after the Chinese New Year."’ On a smaller scale, thousands took a river steamer between Hong Kong and Macau every day of the week—excepting Sunday—

as early as 1883.”" On the traffic between Ningbo and Shanghai a foreign

observer noted in 1891 that the hundreds of thousands who undertook the

journey each year were mainly ordinary people, since cheap fares encouraged travel to family and friends: many carried joss paper and other local products for trade.”' Steamers eased the movement not only of people, but also of the

goods studied in this book: before the end of the nineteenth century, local

scholars in Canton observed how coolies and maids imported things modern

from Hong Kong and were astonished that some had even learnt to get by in

English, defeating all prejudice about the ‘great unwashed’.””

The sale of tickets for ordinary travellers was often left to intermediaries.

Anticipating a flexible schedule of fares that would become popular with

low-budget airlines a century later, they would charge according to demand: the greater the rush the higher the price.’ This did not prevent steamers from

being constantly congested. So popular was travel by steamer that accidents

inevitably happened in overcrowded conditions: in 1891, for instance,a China

Navigation ship at Zhenjiang had hundreds travelling in cargo because the

passenger quarters were full; raw cotton caught fire and destroyed the ship,

killing most of the people on board.” In a culture of portable wealth, modern

ships were crowded with passengers boarding with bundles of bedding and wide baskets filled with local products. As on trains, as we see below, swarms

of itinerant vendors would come aboard to sell meat, pears, grapes, lotus seeds, newspapers, eggs and pomegranates.

Just as exclusive carriages with waiters segregated elites from mere rabble

on trains, luxurious cabins on exclusive steamers were a world apart from the crowded decks on motorised junks: the two-tier economy noted throughout this book was particularly pronounced in public transportation. Steamers

plied the lower Yangzi as comfortably as ocean liners across the Pacific. Al-

ready in the 1890s eighteen steamers kept up daily communications between

Shanghai and Hankou. Most were of American make, about 200 tons burden

and luxurious to a fault, travellers enjoying white enamel basins, mirrors, gilding and electric light.** The prestigious President Hoover, linking Shang-

hai to Hong Kong in a two-and-a-half-day voyage, had elevators and played

American music on a phonograph in the lounge. An American steward in

blue uniform served drinks to customers on deck chairs on the upper deck or near the swimming pool. White shirts and shiny black lapels adorning foreign

dresses and shimmering gowns could be seen in the saloon, while the sound

Motors in Waterland

12.A steamroller under a traditional archway, 1930s. of silverware and crystal resonated from the dining room. Napkins, rather than the hot towels usually provided in restaurants, were placed on the lap, as

local travellers unaccustomed to foreign dining routines discovered.”

Below the top, closer to the water, space shrunk for the travellers who

shared three bunks in a cabin and meals served on a portable table with tea regularly replenished; oiled sheets might be used as protection from vermin on steamers plying the Yangzi.”” Removed from all comfort and exposed directly

to the elements, ‘space passengers’ on straw mats lined the deck in front of the

cabins.” Toilets would overflow, the berths were dirty, opium smoke might

77

From Water to Wheel

pervade the air, and the click of majong tiles could keep passengers awake all night.” While most travellers preferred cabin class for reasons of economy, by

the 1900s wealthy local entrepreneurs and government officials also took first class: rich merchants who lived in the Straits Settlements, for instance, occupied most of the superior cabins on the mail steamers plying between Hong Kong and Singapore.” While shipboard space undoubtedly reflected

unequal relations between foreigners and locals on certain steamers in the

early years of navigation, the majority of passengers were poor and cared little about the ‘imperialism’ that so much worries some historians today. Most were attuned to the social hierarchy which pervaded imperial China and had little to say about imperialism, if they knew the meaning of the term at all: for instance, when Gong Debo (1891-1980) travelled by steamboat from Hankou to Shanghai and thence to Japan as an impoverished student, he never mentioned ‘class’ but instead expressed his delight at the speed, comfort and economy of modern travel, which he contrasted to the slow junks which plied the waterways in his native Hunan.’ Whatever the privileges granted to rich passengers in first class, steamers transformed local economies by transporting people and goods further and cheaper, created new ports as distribution points for foreign goods, and contributed to a denser network stretching throughout the country and beyond. Goods and people moved more freely thanks to modern shipping. Even death was an object moved more gracefully thanks to the steamer: coffins travelled widely with new means of transportation, and large international liners would

invariably bear two or three coffins from overseas Chinese; several hundred were sent to Hong Kong every year from all over the world in the 1920s and ’30s, en route to their ancestral villages. HIGHWAY

TO

HEAVEN

‘From one end of the Chinese Empire to the other there is not an instance ofa

toad whose quality would be termed in any other country as even moderately

good. China’s rivers and waterways are her highways, and it is on them that

she relies for means of internal communication. Thus wrote W. Barclay

Parsons, an American engineer, with some exaggeration in 1900.“ Even the

roads leading to the imperial capital were full of ruts, stones, boulders, open cesspools and pits with dark mud.*> Whether in the north or the south, streets outside traditional cities were rarely paved, often consisting of loose dust when dry, turning into mud after a little rainfall; bullock carts and wheelbarrows would lurch along in the sludge during the rainy season. Throughout the

Highway to Heaven northern plains, cart ruts could reach the axle, and a deep road could turn

into the bed of a stream after heavy rain. As farmers sometimes dug in roads to restore the soil to the fields which had been washed away, major thoroughfares could become mere ditches and gullies. Dust was a widespread nuisance

for travellers on barrows, carts, mules, donkeys and camels—all traditional

means oftransportation. Victor Purcell thus complained about the ‘glutinous, adhesive

red dust’ in Hunan

which

seared the eyes, clotted the throat and

caked the hands.” Even in large cities like Beijing mule carts without any

suspension ploughed through the dust at walking pace, and a

trip across the

capital could easily take up an entire day.* The situation was only slightly better in the foreign concessions: even in Shanghai in the 1910s the streets were kept in order by tamping in broken stones and then filling the crevices

with clay. Once the mud had dried, a roller would be used to smoothe the

surface, until the next rainy season would wash out the clay and the road had to be repaired again.” The first macadamised road in the capital was constructed from Xizhimen

to the Summer Palace for the convenience of officials on their way to court audiences. The road followed an old stone thoroughfare which had existed for

centuries, and parts of the original pavement were left on purpose for heavy springless carts.*’ The destruction caused by the Boxer rebellion precipitated an official move towards the construction of modern roads: some of the walls

in the capital were torn down in 1903, the bricks being used to fill the ditch, while a wide boulevard with a tramway was built on the site of wall and

moat. Tianjin, occupied by foreign powers after the Boxer rebellion, had the remains of bombarded walls and gateways removed for making roads and

furnishing ballast for railway construction; the open spaces where the walls stood were turned into public thoroughfares, planted with trees and lit by

electricity. While the destruction of city walls in Beijing and Tianjin was a penalty imposed by foreign powers after the rebellion, other cities enthusiasti-

cally rushed to follow this early example, Shanghai and Canton in particular.’

Canton, for instance, ruthlessly tore down its walls in 1919, coolies carrying away every blue-grey brick from the 8-metre-high wall and its many gates.** Wide avenues appeared instead, the first section of the wall giving way to a

street 25 metres wide. Other roads followed, the demolished walls providing material for paving the streets, its bricks and stones leading to a circular motor-

way. Over the following decade several dozen kilometres of asphalt, concrete and macadam roads were laid, road construction reaching a peak after mayor Liu Jiwen assumed office in 1932.** The

ing of Fords."

streets soon resounded to the honk-

79

From Water to Wheel Nanjing went further: in a fantasy of industrial modernity, a technocratic

elite even envisaged that the ring road would be put on top of the old city

wall, although this plan was abandoned for a more pragmatic approach.**

Zhongshan Road was the new capital's first road, part of a network of high-

ways which were up to forty metres wide. New roads—in Nanjing but also

elsewhere—had five sections which consisted of a centre lane for fast traffic,

two roadways for slow-moving vehicles and two wide pavements. As the traffic in the new capital increased drastically with the provision of a modern road system, police were no longer sufficient to regulate traffic, and traffic

signs with red and green lights were erected on the main thoroughfares.” Cities which gleefully destroyed their walls—symbols of closure in a bygone

era—stood increasingly in sharp contrast with the lonely towns which were

still girdled by walls, aged and dreaming of the past: their crenellated parapets,

overgrown with vines and shrubbery, erstwhile symbols of imperial grandeur, were now seen as indicating backwardness.

By the end of the 1920s reports from all over the country told of new

roads being energetically and enthusiastically built, ‘roads which are levelling the walls and entirely changing the face of old Chinese cities, roads running

along the banks of rivers, winding in and out of villages, even climbing over

mountain passes.” Many were metalled and drained, even more just bad or merely indifferent, some with a surface of mere earth which became impass-

able in rainy weather. However, the quality of the soil could vary greatly: for instance, the sandy earth used in parts of Sichuan contributed to a

relatively

reliable surface. Irrigation ditches on the road out of Chengdu, on the other hand, meant that passengers had to dismount every few hundred yards while two planks were used to bridge the gap. After rain, traffic rarely waited for the soil surface to dry; the result was that many roads were cut up into ruts of

varying depth and width, putting a great strain on springs and passengers.**

On roads which suffered from poor drainage, traffic was generally suspended

in the summer as rain turned them into a quagmire.’” In some cases the use of modern roads was forbidden to barrows and carts which cut into their sur-

face.” Some provinces, Hunan being an example, had examination stations

every 25 miles: the halts were compulsory and petrol was available.*!

The result of these various efforts was that 75,000 km. of roads passable

for cars existed in China by 1935, a figure which increased to some 176,000

km. in 1937.** Even if less than a quarter had been surfaced with untreated

macadam or gravel,™ the results were generally judged impressive, Lady Hosie

remembered how just after the 1911 revolution the fifteen-mile mud-track

from Taiyuan to a temple outside the city took seven hours to cover on

horseback, the animals frequently wading through thick grey mud. In 1937,

xO

Highway to Heaven

13. Highway from Chengdu to Chongqing, 1930s. in contrast, the journey took forty-five minutes on a good road and over a

bridge with iron girders. Emil Fischer was also taken aback by the wide streets and automobile roads which had appeared in Kunming since the 1911

revolution. Writing in the 1930s, William Sewell was startled by the rapid

changes which were taking place, as hundreds of cars and lorries were imported, rickshaws, bicycles and cars replaced wheelbarrows, sedan chairs and

rumbling wooden carts, while even the camel caravans of northern deserts

were threatened by tractors with caterpillar wheels. Cities were being entirely rebuilt, new two-storied shops springing up in place of old and dirty hovels:

“Crooked and narrow ways and winding, evil-smelling alleys are swallowed

up in the fine straight roads, so that a traveller returning after a few months’

absence can scarcely find his home.” Victor Purcell, keen observer of local life and experienced traveller, expressed his astonishment at the ‘remarkable achievement’ of the road system, which had been virtually non-existent in the 1920s; even relatively remote cities like Nanning, Liuzhou and Guilin in

Guangxi province had wide concrete streets lined with trees.*

Roads, like railways and waterways, released labour, increased mobility

and intensified a network linking the hinterland to the global economy. But

they were experienced in contradictory ways by residents, all the more as

most new roads were built by local government on land confiscated from

farmers without compensation.” Damages could be paid in cities: in Wuxi,

for instance, money was offered for each square metre destroyed to make way for the new ring road in the case of solid houses, while owners of straw huts

received nothing at all. Road-planning, moreover, was often carried out

with little concession to topography; graves were uprooted, houses flattened,

walls destroyed. In Canton, bands of labourers could be seen working on new

81

From Water to Wheel roads in the mid-1920s, while private property was demolished for roads and

parks without apparent reparation. Already in the nineteenth century several

of Canton’s city gates and nearby residences had been razed in order to build

roads for horse carriages, ‘many old ladies and young children being driven to tears’.*' In Yangzhou after 1911 some locals resented the construction of new

roads: ‘one can no longer see flowers’, although modern transportation was

also believed to bring prosperity.” A great number of residential houses near

the new throughways of Nanjing were also flattened after being purchased

by a land acquisition committee. Evicted people were given priority hous-

ing in new residences near the Drum Tower and outside Wuding Gate in the south of the city, although in 1929 the mayor acknowledged discontent with

city planning and the dissatisfaction of some at the destruction of houses in the making of Zhongshan Road; in his opinion it was ‘a matter of sacrificing the minority for the majority’.” In Kunming no less than 2,000 houses were

pulled down for road expansion in 1935 alone,“ while in Hankou the city

walls were knocked down in 1907 for a new road, one bamboo verse lamenting the disappearance of old houses.® Massive opposition from local residents

in Changsha, however, led the local government to modify its radical plans for

a high street cutting through popular districts. Yet not all reactions were negative: within months of the completion of Suzhou’ first road in 1896, built by the imperial government to foster local

development, it became a major leisure destination for local people.A year

later splendid facades in modern style were erected on buildings in order to increase business, while the street became a ‘showcase for imported transport

and industrial technology’. New roads were ideal for the social promenade

in which new items carried on the person could be shown off, from leather

shoes to panama hats, unimpeded by water, mud or dust.A playground for the wealthy, a social site of leisure, the paved street or cobbled square was regularly

paced in a ritual of conspicuous display; electricity would permit the evening

stroll. Nor was the promenade reserved for elites: the Bund in Shanghai,it was

observed by a disgruntled foreigner in 1925, was used by a stream of locals

promenading by the water, some ‘of the dirtiest class’, walking on the grass plots and sitting on the seats, including those marked ‘reserved for foreigners

only’.

RICKSHAW

CHINA

The rickshaw was invented in 1868 by John Goble, an American missionary

living in Tokyo.“’ In 1874 a French businessman based in Shanghai imported 300 rickshaws to the city and opened the first rickshaw shop in China. The

Rickshaw China

14. Two

1926.

ladies in a rickshaw,

new vehicle soon caught on, being faster than the sedan chair, much steadier

and also more comfortable to sit on than a horse carriage.A few years later,

they were seen all over the city: "Because it is so cheap, people take the rickshaw for every kind of trip, although the wheel may come off when it goes too fast.” According to the British Consul’s 1879 annual report, there were

already 2,500 rickshaws operating in the city that year, in comparison to 260 horse carriages. The rickshaw also became popular in Beijing, where even members of the imperial family enjoyed an occasional trip.”! A local resident, Zhong Fangshi, noted in her diary in 1900 that in the capital ‘they are everywhere and move at great speed. The

air is full of dust and the noise is so loud

that it hurts my ears.”? By the 1920s and °30s at least 400,000 of them oper-

ated all over the country, about a quarter in Beijing alone.

Although rickshaws were at first imported from Japan, they were often

modified to suit local needs: in Beijing, for instance, local workshops made

rickshaws which deviated from the imported models as the handlebars were

lengthened, the wheels lowered and the passenger seat heightened (figure 14). Even expensive models were altered: originally black, the rickshaw reserved for the empress dowager was repainted in yellow—the imperial colour.” There were many grades of rickshaws, just as there had been many varieties of sedans. Wealthy families often had a private one, known as a ‘chartered

83

From Water to Wheel

carriage’ (baoche). These could be beautifully decorated with ornate name-

plates on the back, some boasting glass lanterns on both sides. An expensive

one in Beijing could thus fetch $120.” In Chengdu the more luxurious rick-

shaws had seats padded with fur cushions in the 1920s and ‘30s, the pullers of

such vehicles being said to run with ‘great pride’.’* Bells were also found on

the better equipped ones, while the poor in Chengdu installed a circled wire on one of the wheels instead: it would hit the spokes and make a constant noise, much to the annoyance of local residents at night.”

The most significant change, however, was the introduction of rubber

tyres. As Lady Hosie commented with great common sense, ‘a wheelbarrow

with a tyred rim progresses faster than with an iron rim. It will be able to do

several journeys more in the day:”’A similar observation could be made about the rickshaw: in Hong Kong the old type of wheel was notorious for wear-

15. Couple in pedicab followed by beggar, Shanghai, 1948.

ing down the roadway, and by 1918 rickshaws with rubber tyres, covers for the seats and backs and improved aprons were introduced.” In Shanghai local

newspapers demanded that rickshaws without rubber tyres be prohibited in 1911, since they were noisy and caused congestion.” Rubber tyres were also

adopted in the hinterland: even in Sichuan in the 1930s, most of the rick-

shaws were rubber-tyred.”’ The Second World War marked the demise of the rickshaw, both in Beijing and in Canton. Due to severe shortages of petrol,

pedicabs emerged to replace buses and cars, eventually displacing the rickshaw as well (figures 15 and 16). ON

YOUR

BICYCLE

The first envoys to Europe were struck by the unprecedented mobility brought by the ‘self-moving cart’ (zixingche). Zhang Deyi attended a demonstration of the bicycle in England in the 1860s:“When the wheel starts to turn, the

rider begins to move his body. He places his hands on the handlebar, tilting forwards and backwards, while glancing right and left. It is very funny.' A few

days later he witnessed a bicycle being ridden ‘as fast as a horse’.” An early

description from Shanghai in 1868 even promised ‘movement as if in flight’,

although a more cautious Ge Yuanxu warned in 1877 that while it was as fast as the wind, the device could not be properly mastered without two or three

months training, hence few were to be seen on the streets of Shanghai.

Charlie Song gave his daughter Ailing a bicycle

on her tenth birthday in

1900: she was one of the first Chinese girls to own one, frequently riding out

to the Bund with her father. The bicycle rapidly conquered other parts of

the country in the following years. In Chengdu, for instance, imported bi-

cycles could be bought for $150 in 1909." Fullerton and Wilson, plodding 84

On Your Bicycle

16. Group of pedicab drivers clustered at lunch break with a tyre being repaired, 1940s. through Shanxi on mule carts in 1909, were greatly surprised when a local

gentleman overtook them on a bicycle.” Some of the early models were still high-wheel penny-farthing types (many were produced in the Kansai region in Japan after 1888), as ‘one wheel stands tall like a tower and the other low;

when it runs dust flies as under a horse's hoofs. It comes and goes without

trouble and can be easily pushed around without much effort.“ We know of

several attempts to build bicycles locally, including a high-wheel cycle built

of wood by the turn of the century. In Chengdu a bicycle was assembled out of copper parts by Wang Huiji before 1907 but was so heavy that it took

four people to carry." Most, however, were safety bicycles (invented in 1886)

which looked like the modern equivalent, with two wheels of the same size

and a crank-driven chain to propel the rear wheel.

By the mid-1920s literally hundreds of bicycles could be found near

the main gate of the Dongan Market in Beijing.” Bicycles carried a license number and were supposed to pay a monthly tax, which was collected irregu-

larly." Even in the small village of Qinghe near Beijing, with a population

of 2,500 inhabitants, forty-two out of 122 stores had one bicycle or more in

1929. Carts were rarely used: not only were they much slower in the delivery

of small parcels, but taxation and seizure by military authorities made them

unpopular.” Numbers soared throughout the next decade in most cities along the coast: in 1934 Canton

had roughly 8,000 registered bicycles, a

few hundred less than the total number of handcarts and freight carts.” In Shanghai, where Ailing Song was one of the few to own a

bicycle in 1900,

over 230,000 bicycles were used in the city by 1948.” In the countryside the

From Water to Wheel bicycle was the only modern means of transportation, and a place like Ding county bought over 200 in 1934.” By the time the communists seized power,

the bicycle was common in all cities, as period photographs clearly show.”

Brand names such as Dunlop or Three Stars were popular. The Dunlop

bicycle had a picture of John Boyd Dunlop embossed on the brand label, the bicycle being known as the ‘Old Man’s Head’ (laorentou). Imported bicycles

were expensive, costing around $150 each, a working man’s monthly salary being around $5 to $10.” As with all objects of desire in an economy of dearth, recycling was crucial: in Chengdu so-called ‘baptised bicycles’ (xizao

chezi) appeared in the late 1930s, consisting of old ones which were repainted and fixed with a new chain, tyres and occasionally even new handlebars. Some

looked brand-new, although most rarely lasted for more than a few years.”

17. Calendar picture by Hang Zhiying (1900-47).

Even recycled machines were divided into grades: the lowest used one coat

of imported paint only, the next had an added undercoat using local varnish, while the top of the range boasted new plating. In damp and humid weather,

which caused bicycles to rust very quickly, good paintwork was essential, lead-

ing to new skills in repair and maintenance: one local repairer in Chengdu

was even rumoured to have restored an old BSA bicycle from Britain to its

original state.” In the early years bicycles were objects of marvel displayed in public parks:

for instance, visitors to the amusement park in Shanghai could take a look at a

penny-farthing bicycle.” Bicycles could be sexy: while a traditional new year print dating from the late Qing already pictured a demure lady on her bi-

cycle," the calendar girl painted by Hang Zhiying twenty years later was

more alluring: with high heels, long legs and a skimpy dress revealing the enticing shape of a full bosom, she sat on a curvaceous bicycle, firmly grabbing the handlebar (figure 17)."? Since bicycles were still relatively rare, pictorials

provided coaching for ladies with clear instructions illustrated by a series of

photographs.'”* These lessons were taken seriously: every afternoon till the sun set young girls would go to Zhangyuan park in Shanghai to practice

riding in the 1910s: ‘{they] smile and gently turn the rubber wheels... what a perfect picture." Visual evidence from the republican era confirms that adverts and instructions were not all image: photos from the 1930s show how

society ladies would head official demonstrations (for instance in favour of national goods) on their carefully maintained bicycles.'"* In the hinterland,

however, bicycles for women remained rare: it was still considered improper

for a woman to ride in public in the 1920s and °30s.'" In Chengdu, as in

other cities in the hinterland, the bicycle often demanded proper attire: it

was not uncommon for those who could afford it to dress from top to toe in

foreign style and ride on a bicycle to a wedding, although ordinary people 86

On Your Bicycle could mock such pretensions."” Slipping on narrow and muddy roads and

falling off one’s bicycle on such occasions became an added danger in wet

weather." Bicycles had certain advantages on the flat plains of the north where the only road in the countryside was often a narrow path, and where a vehicle that could not be lifted by hand was limited in its range. John Logan, who

worked in the northern countryside, saw many bicycles that would find their

way along tracks through the cultivated fields. The bicycle was also handy to drive through the narrow hutongs of Beijing as well as the small and winding

lanes of cities in the south,'” an advantage noted in one of the earlier articles on the bicycle predicting its success in China in 1898." As the scholar Zhang

Xiaowo observed, ‘They can move about easily like a sword through the

crowd, and they can weave through narrow roads without having to worry

about sand and mud." Even in Shanghai, where a network of modern roads enabled trucks to deliver goods, delivery boys often used the bicycles which could weave through traffic congestion.'"” Bicycles were commonly used by the police because cars were not only

expensive but also cumbersome in the old parts of most ‘cities: in Suzhou a

corps of over fifty regularly policed the streets on bicycles.'"* Another profes-

sional organisation that welcomed the bicycle was the postal service, both for

collection and distribution," while the Boy Scouts Bicycle Troupe proudly

paraded on their immaculately polished cycles.'"> Wealthy students were also

common users. As Zhang Yuanxun noted about Beijing after 1911, ‘there are more than 200 schools... although one rarely sees crowds of students walking

on the streets, as there are many bicycles around.""® In the countryside, young students were often the first to come back

home with bicycles, which were found useful by rich peasants and were common in the coastal provinces (figure 18). Local skills modified this foreign

object, as farmers manoeuvred their frequently repaired and heavily loaded

bicycles on narrow muddy roads.''’ The

relative ease with which the bicycle

was embraced in the countryside may well have been due in part to the skill and muscle acquired in the rice-growing parts of central and southern China,

as farmers spent many hours pedalling at the treadmill of the water-wheel to move water from one field to the next. In contrast to anthropologists who

can carry out interviews, historians

have extremely limited information about how users perceived their own

bicycles. However, one may speculate that the bicycle belonged to a category

of object which extended the body: like the pen and the car, it was not only a technological object to be mastered by a set of operations, but also a thing to

be incorporated, a ‘symbiotic extension of the person’s own embeddedness’ as

From Water to Wheel

18.Villager leaning against his bicycle, May 1946, Don Ihde has called it.'"* With the bicycle as with the car, a complex inter-

relationship develops in which object and subject almost merge, as even a tiny shift of the body or the foot on the pedal causes instant changes in the action

of the machine, while information about the road surface or the rate of braking is continuously fed back to the driver by the actions of the object.'"’ This interaction becomes so dense for an experienced driver that feeling rather than thinking can be enough to execute otherwise complex operations, for

instance parallel parking in a car.

Anthropomorphic descriptions are often used to describe this interde-

pendent relationship, as the most technologically advanced objects are pre-

cisely the ones to blur the distinction between animate and inanimate things.

For instance, Deng Yunxiang recalled how he and his friends liked to cycle

to temples just outside Beijing in the spring during the 1930s, feeling ‘like

young ponies, going completely wild on the road’.!® They used to call their

bicycles ‘iron donkeys’ (tieli).'2" As farmers from Pujiang county sharply noticed when seeing the first bicycle in the 1940s, calling it a ‘foreign horse’ 88

On Your Bicycle (yangma), it ‘not only runs very fast, but also does not require feeding like an

ordinary horse’.> 122

CARS

TO

DIE

FOR

Life after death started in a Ford: such was the prestige attached to the auto-

mobile in modern China that paper cars built to scale were carried in funeral

processions in Beijing to transit the deceased to the hereafter.’ If the bicycle was a versatile means of transportation ideally suited to the different

terrains of China, from the rice paddies in the south to the dusty tracks of the north, the car signified social status: expensive and mobile, in public view

yet out of sight, the modern sedan reproduced many of the social roles of the sedan chair. It figured at the top ofa social hierarchy in modes of movement,

which progressed from walking, being pulled in a rickshaw and buying a bi-

cycle to owning a chauffeured car.'** Such was the prestige value of the car that the most expensive brands were preferred, provided they were striking

in appearance and filled with as many accessories as possible: glass or silver

flower holders, cigar lighters, fancy lamps, a mirror across the front of the passenger compartment, silk window curtains and door shades. Colour was all-important: contrary to Europe or Japan, popular taste demanded bright hues. Some dealers in Shanghai even had special arrangements with car makers to furnish every machine in a different colour. Cars in black had to be

repainted, while grey was not in demand either: bright green, light blue and various shades of red and brown were popular.'** Where the horse was often used by the upper classes in early modern Eu-

rope to tower above the lower orders, the sedan chair allowed the privileged

few in the Qing to travel in public while preserving the social distance from commoners commensurate with their station. As the emperor was ensconced

behind palace walls, so the official or courtesan hid behind the curtains of the sedan chair carried by humble servants: concealment—behind a wall, a screen or a curtain—conveyed status. Sedan chairs could be richly decorated to indicate wealth and power, glass panes and fine curtains made of imported camlet becoming more common

in parts of the country in the second half of the

nineteenth century. Even where the mule cart prevailed over the sedan—as happened in Beijing from the mid-eighteenth century onwards—a mattress

would be added on the sitting board, while more expensive versions had

thick cushions with slip covers; a wooden awning with cloth dipped in oil

pasted over bamboo strips would keep out the rain.'* The motorised sedan

often came with a chauffeur, tinted windows and carefully drawn curtains (to

this day even common taxis frequently have dark windows and curtains, not

x9

From Water to Wheel only as protection against the sun, but also to ensure the anonymity which

bespeaks power). Comfortably seated in the back behind safe curtains, one could see without being seen, as the car became an extension of private space, a secure and mobile room transiting through social space with all the accoutrements of wealth and power, the former displayed and the latter hid-

den. The analogy of the car as a moving space was noted by ordinary farmers in Pujiang county, Sichuan, when they first saw a car in the 1940s and called it ‘the foreign house walking’ (yang fangzi zoulu).'”” The shift away from the portable chair to the movable car nonetheless required some adjustments in social etiquette. One of the first automobiles

in China was a Benz made in 1898, presented to the empress dowager Cixi by Yuan Shikai in 1902: decades later Yu Rongling, who served as head maid

to the empress, revealed that the car was apparently never used, since it was considered disgraceful for an empress to sit behind a humble driver.'* On the other hand, the father of the last emperor Puyi was one of the first among the

princes to own a motor car,” while Puyi himself was so infatuated with the automobile that when confined to the Forbidden City in the 1920s, he was content to be pushed around the palace by servants after the gas ran out and

the chauffeur absconded.'®

Many of the wealthy welcomed the car, and some even took to the steering wheel themselves. To take but one example, James Lee, a major player in

banking, insurance and industry, bought his first automobile in 1909:a French

De Dion Bouton with one cylinder, two seats in front and one at the rear,

perched up high behind the chassis of the car. The maximum speed was about

50 km. per hour, and he used it to drive to the celebrations which were held

to mark the forming ofa Republic in 1912, the new national flag flying from a staff on the radiator: he felt it appropriate to celebrate the event in modern

style. When Lee applied for a car license, the Commissioner of Police in the Shanghai Municipal Council informed him that he also needed a driving licence, but as Captain Johnson did not know how to operate a car, he asked

to be taken for a ride before the necessary document was handed over: James Lee was the first Chinese to own a car in Shanghai (the first foreigner was apparently a Hungarian named Leinz who imported a car in 1901).""' He

acquired other cars during his long love affair with the automobile, including

a Delage in 1912, a Sunbeam and, in 1929, his first Rolls Royce. He purchased the first Daimler to reach Hong Kong after the Second World War. James Lee also recalled his electric car in the early 1920s, an ideal vehicle

of American manufacture for use in flat country over short distances with a large battery carried in the back.'™

90

Cars to Die for

19.A horse-drawn carriage with heavy car tyres, Shanghai, 1947. When a car pulled into the driveway of the rich, boys and girls would race

outside in order to admire it and ask to be taken ‘for a spin’ (doudou feng). For instance, Zhang Shunian

(born

1907) was treated to his first ride at the

age of five—an exclusive privilege which caused great elation: the rounded

roof resembled a metal bucket, while the wheels were covered by attractive tyres of solid black rubber. His boyhood memories only retained the sheer

experience of speed: people, trees and houses whizzing past in a blur, the wind

forcing the boy to close his eyes.'™

In the hinterland too the car elicited strong emotions. Ordinary farmers

would invariably run through their fields to flock around the first cars to appear, jostling for a space from which to admire the mysterious cart which

moved without human labour: in the early 1930s the research team investi-

gating the Jiangsu countryside was met by enthusiastic crowds, young and

old alike, every time they reached an isolated hamlet by car.'* When Zhang Lugiu bought the first car to arrive in Chengdu in 1925 it was described by

local people as a ‘monster’ (guaiwn) or an ‘evil spirit’ (hairen jing). Some called the Austin a ‘fart vehicle’ (dapiche) for ‘when

it moves, it produces black smoke

like a fart which is poisonous. These views changed rapidly, as the Austin was

decorated like a wedding sedan chair on an official launch: when it started to move through the crowded streets, the decorations began to fly, transforming it into a coloured cloud, ‘like a speedy fire wheel of the immortals riding on o1

From Water to Wheel the clouds’. Some high officials were invited to take a ride in the new vehicle, which was accepted after some hesitation: although moving through the

crowds with an air of great pride (shengi), they still ordered the local police to stand by in case of an emergency. The ‘foreign house walking’ (yang fangzi zoulu) thus became a popular topic of teahouse conversation in the city, paving the way for the much more enthusiastic reception ofa number of Fords

in 1926.'* A few years later automobiles even started to be used instead of

sedan chairs for modern weddings (xinshi jiehun), as the car became a fashion statement."”

Noise—often positively associated with festive occasions—was important, and in China horns were continuously honked:"* likened to the ‘roar of ti-

gers’,'” revving was also used by the rich to show off their cars,"” triggering feelings of envy and admiration among ordinary bystanders.“' In Shanghai some of the locals believed that the car made a loud noise ‘like the howling

of a ghost’, while an observer in Quxian, a small town near Chongqing,

noted in 1941 that ‘ifa tiger is roaring on the street, it must be the noise ofa

running car."

While the car was the ultimate status symbol, it had a number of drawbacks.

even for the wealthy. Poor roads at first limited its appeal, while the cost and

availability of fuel was also a major problem preventing the spread of motor

transportation. One observer thus calculated that a truck carrying fifteen drums of gasoline from the oil fields in Gansu would use thirteen of them be-

fore reaching a railhead or inland port. During the Second World War substitute fuels were provided, including synthetic gasoline refined from vegetable

oils, alcohol, natural gas, acetylene gas from calcium carbide and charcoal."

Ownership was also discouraged because cars could be confiscated by the military: conversely, the fragile nature of ownership contributed to the auto-

mobile’s aura of power, since good connections as well as considerable wealth were required to maintain one in a politically volatile environment." The

cost of import and the difficulties of upkeep also made motor cars prohibitively expensive in the interior provinces. Even in Beijing they were used only by the very wealthy, as the cost of their operation was exorbitant. The auto-

mobile tax alone was $8 a month, and it was cheaper to keep a private rickshaw man, usually $12 a month without food.'* Since the wealthy were

also likely to have large households, they might still travel by train because

the car was never large enough to hold the entire family, as happened with

the Packard belonging to the Chiang family in Beijing."” As a result of

these constraints, automobiles were generally driven by government officials:

fur-capped servants would stand on the running boards of motor cars with

Cars to Die for

20.A taxi company in Shanghai, 1935. officials going full speed through new streets with shrieking sirens or a large dinner-bell clanging from the roof.'** The use of a taxi could circumvent many of the practical disadvantages of

car ownership while still conveying prestige and status: the first taxi service

opened in Shanghai in 1908, costing $5 for the first hour and $4 per hour

thereafter: for the wealthy elites who could afford it, ‘chasing the wind’

(doufeng) became fashionable—the term became synonymous with ‘going for aride’."” By 1929 there were over 100 registered taxi companies in Shanghai, the majority owned by local entrepreneurs (figure 20). The taxi driver Zhou Xiangsheng thus made a fortune by operating his own service; by 1937 his

company owned more than 200 vehicles with twenty service points.'® The

price of a ride dropped in the 1920s and '30s while the service improved,

as comfort and cost became crucial in a competitive market: even dial-a-

cab services became available, open day and night. According to an official estimate, there were over

13 million taxi rides in Shanghai

in 1934, with

tens of thousands of taxi runs a day.'*! In other cities too, taxis were popular

among the privileged, as they provided an opportunity for social proximity

in enclosed motion. In Chengdu young people preferred them to rickshaws,

mainly because cars could take more passengers: male and female friends could sit together enjoying the fun and the fashion.'? In Hankou intimate

sociality was promoted by the car when young lovers able to afford the fare 93

From Water to Wheel

would find privacy in a taxi ride, although the trip always seemed too short

to ‘express all feelings’.'*

THE

UBIQUITOUS

OMNIBUS

If cars were relatively rare, buses regularly plied in the city and the countryside

by the 1930s. In Beijing a hundred buses ran daily in the early 1930s, easily competing with the camel caravans which were still a common sight relished

by foreign tourists.'* Trams, commonly known as ‘ringing cars’ (tangtangche),

appeared in 1897, although most developments took place in the early 1920s: the stops were colour-coded to help illiterate passengers.'®* In Canton twenty

gasoline buses were already running on new roads in 1921,a service that was gradually expanded; by the mid-1930s a dozen companies covered several

routes with over 150 buses for the entire city.'* In Taiyuan, Shanxi’s ‘model capital’, a considerable bus traffic was carried on the new roads by the early

1920s, guards keeping sharp-wheeled carts off them.'* In other provinces too the use of modern roads was forbidden to barrows and carts, and open only

to the powerful bus companies which had purchased a monopoly." Journeys

could be long. In Anhui, where good roads outside the provincial capital were

rare, buses could take four to five days to cover the 500 km. to some of the distant county towns:'” despite these long travel times, thousands of people

undertook a trek by bus from Anging alone in 1933.'*

In general, buses were more successful outside the city walls (figure 21). The example of Chengdu is telling: only a few months after buses appeared around 1924, one of the vehicles had an accident and knocked down a stele

in the north of the city, resulting in a series of complaints from local elites. Moreover, buses tended to cater to male passengers only, as wealthy ladies

would spurn public transport while working women could not afford the fare. Not only did buses cause congestion in the narrow streets, but rickshaw

drivers raced them when competing for business, a few being run over as a

result: buses were banned from the city shortly afterwards. For long distance

travel, however, buses were both popular and fashionable. Each could take

about twenty people and was often very crowded: in order to get a seat the rich

would often send a servant to queue ahead.'*' Where long-distance buses from

Chengdu were too expensive, trucks transporting goods picked up passengers

for a fee instead; they were called ‘yellow fish’ (huangyu).'?

What did buses in China look like? In the years before the Second World

War only the chassis of many heavy-duty motor vehicles was imported and truck bodies were built to fit upon arrival: trucks often served as both freight

and passenger carriers, although some were specially fitted with conventional o4

The Ubiquitous Omnibus

21. Public bus travelling along a road near the Yellow River front in 1941

22. A crowded bus gets some help in starting at the bus

terminal in Bishan, Sichuan

province, 1940s,

95

From Water to Wheel

bus bodies for passenger use.'** Local bodies had low roofs and the seats had

straight backs and were roughly finished." In Beijing alone ten factories

specialised in the building of bodies for cars, trucks and buses on imported

chassis. Most were made of elm wood on to which iron plates were nailed,

the whole being given several coats of varnish with products from Du Pont

de Nemours. The

interior was finished with lace-bark pine and stuffing for

the seats." Innes Jackson frequently took the local bus around Hankou: it tended to

be overfilled with soldiers and farmers, the window glass broken as often as

not, clouds of yellow dust from untarred roads flying into the eyes and nostrils of passengers, settling on hair, clothing and packages. The engine—thanks to

Henry Ford's ingenuity—‘ground, grumbled, and shrieked for oil and grease’, but never broke down.'® Gerald Yorke also described the buses he used—always crammed to the limit: ‘Our first was a new Morris, our second an old

Ford lacking both a self-starter and a starting-handle, our third a Chevrolet with poor acceleration and a gear lever that had to be held in position by

hand."*” Buses were not only sturdy but also uniquely adapted to the poor roads of the hinterland: in 1930 a road went from Kunming to Anning, Chevrolet buses ploughing into deep ruts which were impassable for cars in the

rain.'* Tickets could not be reserved in advance, and elbows were used relent-

lessly as soon as the bus arrived, fierce struggles breaking out over available

seats. Tickets—shreds

of entitlement—were religiously punched at every halt,

becoming eroded down to a mere scrap by the many perforations on long routes.” However poor the roads and packed the buses, a national network

which partly compensated for the inadequacy of railway transport and allowed merchants and farmers to make journeys unheard-of only a few years before was in place by the 1930s: “With passengers packed like sardines inside and luggage piled dangerously high on top they bump noisily along the highways

in a manner which makes one marvel that any gears and springs can possibly

survive the jolts they receive."

As Dudley Buxton noted in his human geography published in 1929, the

old order was changing rapidly and motorbuses were penetrating as far as into

Sichuan.'”' Peter Fleming, intrepid traveller who did not hesitate to trek off

the beaten path by every means possible, elegantly captured the advantages

of the bus over the train: ‘The bus service, as a Chinese institution, is both conceived and carried out on a far sounder basis than the railway. It requires a much smaller capital outlay, and therefore presents fewer opportunities for

squeeze. A road is quicker as well as cheaper to build than a railway, and the

Chinese talent for delay is accordingly a less operative factor. The running of

%6

The Ubiquitous Omnibus

a bus service, as compared with the running of a railway, is not only easier but offers more scope for individualism, and is therefore better suited to the

Chinese character. Finally, in the event of political upheavals, a bus service

is less vulnerable than a railway because its capital value is much smaller!” Buses went where railways failed to penetrate, giving unprecedented freedom

of movement to millions, as they allowed persons, goods and ideas to find their way into the interior, integrating local economies into a national and global network of interdependence. 23. Photo taken from Broadway In the absence of regular buses, trucks would take passengers, for instance — Mansions, showing the Garden

on * the new road built. between Xi'an * and Lanzhou in- the 1930s. Close to Creek Bridge inover a crowded Suzhou the corner and the thirty people and their luggage—no tickets—would cling, squat or sprawl in close proximity in the back, trying to keep their places as the vehicle would

Bund on the right, 1940s

hurl itself into valleys, swing around hairpin bends and skid in soft patches

on the straight. Some travellers inevitably became sick during the journey,

while tempers could run high among others, a few coming to blows in an atmosphere of constant discomfort and annoyance. Stops were entirely at the discretion of the truck driver, who could recruit passengers to push the vehi-

cle through difficult patches. However tiring the ordeal, it allowed a journey

that would take weeks by cart to be cut to a few days only, an opportunity

eagerly seized by people in all walks of life.» Deng Yunxiang became sick “ z : on his first bus drive on a rough road full of dust, an experience which was

probably quite common:'I felt like a defeated little cock who had just lost all his feathers. 4

24. Canal boats discharge cotton in front ofa cotton mill in

Shanghai, waiting for high tide, 1931.

Trucks also carried goods, competing with caravans of plodding packhorses, camels, mules and flap-eared donkeys for business in the countryside. Modern goods, of course, could find their way into the hinterland by any means, leading to combinations which some foreign observers thought

incongruous, for instance the sight of camels carrying hand-grenades.'”5 In

the cities, however, engine power had clear advantages over animal power: fast

and spacious, truck haulage could even beat the waterways commonly used

for transportation in Shanghai as low water caused congestion. Clogged roads

and free waterways were still in the future (figures 23 and 24).!”° RIOTS

AT THE

STATION

In 1881 a small tramway was constructed near Kaiping to transport coal: a portent of the culture of bricolage which would mark modernity in

China, English engineer C. W. Kinder constructed a small locomotive made

up mainly from parts of old machines found locally. Following Stevenson's inspiration, the engine was named ‘Rocket of China’ and put into service

97

From Water to Wheel

on a colliery track. This little railway was gradually expanded, first to Tianjin

and in 1897 to the capital Beijing, demolishing the myth that local people

would not travel for free or could not afford to travel by train." Over 400

miles of track were laid with foreign capital between 1895 and 1903, while

the government started to build its own lines, constructing over 5,200 miles from 1904 to the fall of the dynasty in 1911. In the first two decades of

the republican era, the lack of strong central government impeded further

rail expansion into the interior, and most of the track remained confined to the coastal region.'* While it is true that the railway services suffered from intermittent if not complete interruption for months on end during

the Beiyang government—commandeering locomotives and rolling stock at

will—a marked improvement appeared in the late 1920s,'” while consider-

able sections were added in the 1930s. On the eve of the Sino-Japanese war, 25.A crowded train.

a 420-km. gap in the Canton—Hankou line was bridged, thus enabling passen-

gers to use a route from Hong Kong via Canton and Changsha to Hankou,

and for a brief period even

to Beijing, Manchuria

and across Siberia to

Europe: known as the Hong Kong-Calais line, it was the longest continuous rail route in the world. By the end of the war, China had just over 2,600

locomotives, 26,000 freight cars and 2,700 passenger cars, about half of which

were unserviceable or almost beyond repair. Rolling stock was a heteroge-

neous mixture of equipment imported from Britain, Belgium, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Japan and the United States.'“’ Inadequate as the railway network may have been, it was hugely popular

with ordinary people, trains being crowded to the very limit (figure 25). Al-

ready in 1892 almost halfa million people travelled by rail between Tianjin

and Guye.'*! Three months after a 30-km. extension was opened from San-

shui to Canton in September 1904, close to 1,000 passengers were carried

daily, jumping to more than 7,000 a year later.'*? Even when tickets could be reserved in advance, riots at the station were the norm, Passengers would fight to get on and off trains even if there was ample room: according to Harry

Franck, a seasoned and sympathetic traveller, locals seemed to have the feeling

that there were always too many people competing for any given space.'** In Kaifeng in the 1930s—as in so many other stations—hundreds of passengers

had to squeeze through one small exit after disembarking, as soldiers systematically checked the luggage: it could take up to half an hour of struggling to get through the door.’ On special occasions extra trains were scheduled

to deal with the crowds: the tidal bore of the Qiantang River in Hangzhou

traditionally attracted large groups on the eighteenth day of the eighth lunar

month each summer. In 1908 extra railway services were introduced for the

festival, trains running thirty-two times a day; although trains were always

oR

Riots at the Station

crowded, passengers looked pleased, many taking a ride for the first time.'** Like motor buses, trains throughout the country were cramped and overloaded, rural trains having wooden, straight-backed narrow seats running

down the whole length of the carriage; they were hard and close together

with just enough knee-space. Trains were also laden to the roof with baskets,

pots and pans, bedding, song birds in cages, and even fowls and ducks.'**

Trains could seem chaotic to outsiders: soldiers could be found sprawling over their narrow seats, dirty windows were often shut, and travellers

frequently spat on the floor: the odour and noise were described by one fo-

reign traveller as ‘horrible’,""” while another noted how the locals ‘are noisy,

chat, spit at random and behave quite raucously, as if at home’.'** The slow

train which stopped in the small villages along the Shanghai—Nanjing line was

always crowded with local farmers going to market, the cackle and squawk of

chickens resonating throughout the third class carriages to the great amusement of travellers.” Foreigners were not alone in dreading third class: Ba

Jin, who travelled across China in 1933, did not enjoy taking trains, and was mostly forced to opt for third class. When passengers opened the window, the

wind would blow coal dust in his eyes.'”” Compartments were crowded, noisy, full of smoke and very stuffy." Local trains often only had two categories of classes, namely ‘goods’, which

was open, and ‘cattle’, which had a roof. Hawkers came on board at every

station, travelling on to the next and sometimes climbing up on to the roof to pass up and down the train when unable to make their way through the crowded carriages or when confronted by the ticket-collector.'”? Even in the

lowest class, an attendant would bring a tray holding a tumbler, followed by a boy with a basket full of paper packets of tea-leaves. An enormous kettle with a long spout would go the rounds, as a stream of boiling water was jetted into

each glass. Other attendants would bustle about the carriage with plates piled

with fried rice, noodles in gravy or thick soups. Boys would pad along to the train side in country stations, selling bunches of grapes, hard pears, sweet and salty biscuits, packets of dried meat and spiced buns. In between eating and sleeping, loud conversations, lots of spitting, noisy eructation and the buzzing of flies would accompany the regular clanking of the train wheels. An

attendant could bring bowls of hot water and face-cloths in the morning

for wiping the face, neck and arms, while teeth were cleaned into spittoons,

before the usual belching, talking, smoking and tea drinking would resume

after a restless night on hard board."

Not only were local trains full to bursting point, but entire doors could

be removed, ‘like so many detachable portions of public property in China’, as Peter Fleming noted on a small local train he was forced to take from

co)

From Water to Wheel

Zhengzhou to Xi'an after missing the scheduled train with first-class carriages

for foreigners. In the depth of winter with one small stove in the middle of the floor, the carriage filled with the pungent, gritty smoke of bad coal every

time it entered a tunnel. In daytime ragged urchins would jump on the train and cling to the couplings between the trucks until detected by a guard; as to

the passengers, ‘sleeping, eating, talking, nursing their babies, hunting lice in

their padded winter clothes, they accepted the prospect of the day’s journey with complete equanimity’.'* Fleming was lucky to be near a stove: a decade

earlier Harry Franck, travelling back from Hangzhou to Shanghai, described

the cars as bitterly cold, his feet freezing." Hallett Abend, on his way to

Jinan from Beijing in the mid-1920s, found a sleeper compartment with a

broken window pane, a sliding door into the corridor that was stuck and the door to the open platform at his end of the car so badly wrenched it stood

half open: the countryside was covered in snow and the cold wind blew straight in from the frozen heartland of Asia." The steam of the train, in some

cases, could of course heat the carriages and mitigate the cold in the middle

of the winter.'” In Manchuria, however, some of the first and second class coaches and sleeping cars were not fitted with steam-heating pipes until 1930:

some of these would either freeze shut in the severe temperatures or give off insufficient heat because too many coaches were attached to an engine to

cope with passenger traffic.'"* Hutchinson’s missionary travel guide published

in 1920 even advised train travellers during the winter months to allow space for extra rugs and blankets in their private luggage.” In the early years trains

could only travel during daytime, leading to long journeys: in 1906 the trip from Hankou to Beijing lasted three days.””

In stark contrast to the local trains were the first-class carriages maintained for the well-heeled. Running throughout the material landscape of republican China were stark inequalities, reflecting a two-tier economy we have noted

earlier: shabby provisions for the poor, extravagant luxury for the wealthy.

Trains on the Shanghai—Nanjing line, for instance, moved without creak or

jolt, carrying many government officials from the office to the delights ofa

Shanghai weekend; carriages were steam-heated.2” A few years later, sleeping carriages on overnight trains to Beijing offered ‘even more comfort than

a Pullman at home, for the separate compartments, in English style, admit of

considerable privacy?” Where windows and doors were sometimes entirely missing in a material culture marked by portability, the windows of the observatory car on the government-managed line from Tianjin to Pukou

were continually polished by a porter. The engine was groomed until it shone

like new and the coaches were immaculate. The sleeping cars were divided into sections of four berths each, a bell being rung to make requests to the

100

Riots at the Station porters. Even on this exemplary line, however, one could easily step from

a model universe into a jerry-built world: the dining car was a mere steel freight truck roughly mounted without springs, with some windows in ill-

fitting frames and a couple of loose sliding doors at either end.” In all cases travel in the 1920s in parts of China could be dangerous, as trains could be

derailed by bandits or fired upon in the night.

Contrary to the usual clichés about a xenophobic rejection of the train, seen to disturb the local fengshui, railways attracted broad popular interest.

The first railway in Shanghai was completed in July 1876, and the company

invited people from different segments of society to take a ride. A number of courtesans came all dressed up for the occasion, wearing flowers, jewellery and expensive perfumes. Along the railway there stood crowds of onlookers

cheering as the train steamed by, admiring its speed in sheer disbelief."* When the train passed through the countryside, farmers working in the fields would stop their work and stare at the roaring engine and the colourfully dressed passengers: old and young, men and women, all rushed to see the train, some gaping with open mouths, children hiding behind the grown-ups.” According to Tu Shipin, ‘many people were even willing to pay the first or second class price for a third class seat. Some people were still trying to get on board

after the train had started to move.” One passenger dedicated a poem to the

event:

Once I travelled on a ship, the ocean felt as smooth as a plain.

‘Today I travelled on the train, and I experienced both ocean and plain.

The locomotive took the lead and all the coaches followed, running with nobody to push us.

Suddenly a black smoke clouded the clear sky, as passengers sat in their carriages

hearing the wind speed by. When passing by the Hongkou district, the watching crowds stood densely like

a wall. Before I knew it we had already moved close to five kilometers.””

Wolfgang Schivelbusch, homing in on the experience of the railway journey among the wealthy in Europe, notes how fear of the mechanical and of accidents was common. Although comparisons between different parts of

the world are always fraught with difficulty, as Schivelbusch has scoured the record for proof of negative reactions among a few wealthy passengers while all but ignoring the diverse experiences of the many ordinary people who most commonly

took the train,”™ similar reactions are nonetheless much

harder to trace in modern

China.A sense of wonder and an occasion for

Ww

From Water to Wheel amusement instead seem to mark the first railway experiences. Lei Diangong

remembered how as a child he was taken for a special outing by train, which

felt like flying’.2”A much earlier account comes from the 1890 diary of Song

Xiaolian, a clerk employed by a gold mining company. The diary contains his impressions of his first-ever journey by rail, from Kaiping to Tianjin:

‘The journey was as fast as lightning, its speed beyond any comparison. But even

during the fastest part of the journey the train remained very balanced. Whenever

I looked out of the window, it did not feel like being on a flying arrow, although

the rural landscapes and dwellings shot past in flight. Within a wink, what was in front of us was suddenly behind! Pure magic!”?""

Travellers not only enjoyed

the speed and economy

of the train (even a

steamer took over half a day from Shanghai to Suzhou where a local train took three hours at most), but sometimes relished time spent on board. Bao

Tianxiao, always travelling in second class, enjoyed most of all the views of the countryside, but also looked forward to taking a nap, reading books and

magazines and observing his fellow travellers.?"'

Even those who could not afford to travel marvelled at the steam and

noise of passing trains. In 1896 the arrival of the generally crowded Tianjin—

Shanhaiguan service in local stations with neat whitewashed stone buildings

was evidently ‘the event of the day’.?”? In some of the small villages along the railway track, train-spotting even became a popular pastime: aged nine, Xia Yan was taken by his mother to the local railway station along with his two

sisters, a wooden bench and snacks. The family would install the bench near the track and delight in the iron of the wheels intermingling with whelming noise made by passing in the modern, for instance Zhang

monster which shot past, the screeching the shouting of bystanders.”"’ The overtrains was captured by novelists interested Henshui in Shanghai Express:‘The normal

sound of a train hurtling down the tracks is something like roaring wind and

pelting rain punctuated by long claps of thunder—incredibly noisy?"

The awe with which the steam train was greeted by ordinary people

contributed to the emergence of the locomotive as a symbol of power. The iron beast represented the machine age, its imposing engine and massive

wheels of pure steel making the popular wheelbarrow look like a throwback

to the middle ages. Its image appeared on the matchboxes and cigarette cards

eagerly collected by young children.”'* Villagers near Hangzhou admired

passing trains for their great speed, referring to the locomotives as a ‘dragon’s

head’ (longtou).2"* Sheng Cheng too, when visiting the Nanjing exhibition in 1910, was taken aback by the giant iron horse riding on rails.2”” 102

Riots at the Station

26.A train arrives in a crowded

station,

By the ruling elites railways were represented as lines of civilisation advancing from the cities to conquer the countryside, bringing in their wake

enlightenment and the awakening of the masses, welding localities into a pow-

erful nation, John Baker, an American adviser to the Ministry of Communi-

cations, described how the train was literally part of a broad educative mission

of enlightenment: ‘An agricultural train, the first of its kind in China, was

inaugurated on the Peking-Hankow line early in the autumn of 1918. It carried samples of improved seeds, modern implements of cultivation, and other educational matter. It was accompanied by trained lecturers, who explained

the principles of selective breeding of seeds and animals and the advantages

of thorough cultivation. The train proceeded slowly from point to point over the whole length of the line. Large audiences were encountered generally,

attracted no doubt by the brass band which was aboard the train also, but being once gathered, benefited by the real purpose of the occasion.?"* Like the bicycle, the bus and the boat, the train allowed people and goods

to be carried at greater speed to more distant places. Wang Fuming has shown that farmers used new opportunities provided by international trade and new transportation to produce on a large scale for outside markets. Thanks to the

railway, enterprising boys as young as fourteen or fifteen left their villages in Hebei province to find better-paid jobs as far away as Manchuria.*"” FLYING

CHARIOTS

Travel by air may have been a privilege reserved for the few, but it certainly captured the imagination of the many: to fly, in China as in other parts of

the world, was to defy gravity. Xue Fucheng, as an envoy abroad during the 1890s, was one of the first to foresee the appearance of aeroplanes, imagin-

ing how such flying chariots would soar above the clouds and sail in the 13

From Water to Wheel

wind: although he wondered how air could be breathed at high altitudes, he envisaged a lucrative trade with people on the moon.”" A decade or two

later, flights of fancy were shared across all social categories. As foreign visitors

noted, aviation had a particular attraction for people in China, as they were

‘fascinated by the world’s great technical discoveries’." Already during the Nanjing exhibition of 1910, a special ‘aviation week’ was organised, complete with models on exhibition and put to the test.” Throughout the republican

period, the airplane brought excitement in its wake, for instance when high dignitaries arrived by plane, as in the case of Xi’an in the 1930s: ‘With two

wings soaring in the wind, it flies over a thousand miles in less than a second.

A real general lands from the sky as huge crowds applaud with joy’? As

one popular booklet on aviation put it, aeroplanes were the ‘crystallisation of twentieth-century science’.?* Fascination with life in the skies was not confined to the realm of imagination: China enthusiastically participated in the growth of aeronautics. A

mere three years after Louis Blériot flew across the English Channel, Zee Yee

Lee not only obtained an aviator’s certificate in England, but also brought

back two Etrich monoplanes equipped with Austro-Daimler engines in 1911. He voluntarily presented the two planes to the government, which he joined

under Sun Yatsen, becoming the first Chinese aviator and the head of the

first government Aviation Department. He later trained pilots in the military school headed by Jiang Jieshi.* Chinese pilots started training in 1913 at the Nanyuan Airplane School in Beijing and in Canton in 1915.2 Not only did the military buy planes, but the civil sector started using commercial machines for mail, cargo and passengers. The first aerial mail passenger

service was inaugurated on 7 May 1920 between Beijing and Tianjin: Captain

Mackenzie made the flight in one hour, cutting travel time by train by two

hours (three days were necessary to travel from the capital to the nearest port

under the empire). Among

the fourteen passengers Sir Beilby Alston, British

Minister in Beijing, lunched in Tianjin, made a few calls in the afternoon and

returned by plane. The director of the department of aeronautics in Beijing, a fellow passenger, ecstatically proclaimed that planes were a ‘civilising device

bringing the remote corners of the globe into closer relationship’.” In 1929 an American company known as Aviation Exploration pioneered China’s first regular airline under a franchise issued by the Ministry of Communica-

tions. Its name changed to China Airways and a contract was signed with the Chinese government in July 1930, providing for the joint establishment of the China National Aviation Corporation which developed a nationwide net-

work of air mail and passenger services. Shanghai, Hankou, Beijing, Canton and Hong Kong: by 1937 the airline company provided a regular service on

log

Flying Chariots

27. Interior of cargo plane

used in passenger evacuation

from Shenyang (Mukden), October

1948,

some 5,000 km. of air routes for 15,000 passengers. In the early years, despite the enthusiasm with which government and private circles alike embraced

aviation, suitable aerodromes, landing places, repair shops and adequate petrol

depots were often lacking.*” A few years later the situation was quite different: where a mere airstrip with two walled compounds had existed in Hangzhou,

the same source observed in 1935 permanent hangars, flood-lighting equip-

ment, living quarters, modern drainage and a state-of-the-art aircraft factory fully equipped with the latest machine tools.”

The Southwest Aviation Corporation,a purely local enterprise subsidised

by the provincial governments of Guangxi and Guangdong in Canton, ap-

peared in 1932 using four Stinson passenger planes on two lines. The Eurasia

Aviation Company, two-thirds owned by the Chinese government and onethird by Deutsche Lufthansa, started a service from Shanghai to Beijing and

across eastern Mongolia to Manchuria in 1931 on German planes; Russian

105

From Water to Wheel airlines then transported mail and passengers on to Moscow, Lufthansa fly-

ing the final leg to Berlin: China’ airlines were by now truly international. A coordinated programme between these companies for the expansion of domestic air routes led to regular services to Xi'an, Lanzhou, Urumchi and

Tchukuchak on the border of Xinjiang: the old silk road had become an air route. Chengdu and Kunming were also integrated into the national network,

as airlines were unable to keep up with ever-increasing demand for service: travel by air was not only faster but actually cheaper than by land, as fares av-

eraged about 10 cents a mile. Even excess baggage was assessed at rates cheap

enough to encourage merchants to explore new markets in the interior and supply shipments entirely by air. Transport by air over areas constantly affected 28.The cargo hatch ofa C-46,

by flood, famine and banditry was comfortable and secure. Freight services

Taiyuan, Shanxi, 1948.

to fly commercial goods and perishable foods across the country: passenger

about to receive a child passenger, grew phenomenally after the war, as planes were block-booked by merchants and cargo rates in 1948 averaged about the same as for railroads and ships."’

Remote inland provinces like Sichuan were thus linked up far more

effectively by the plane than by road or river. In the 1930s an airplane from Shanghai would fly daily the length of the Yangzi, stop at Nanjing, Hankou

and Yichang, resume its way over the gorges up to Chongqing, where it would

deliver mail and pick up passengers before rising over the high hill ranges and speed towards Chengdu: the entire trip took eight hours.** As Madame Jiang

Jieshi put it,“Of all the inventions that have helped to unify China perhaps the airplane is the most outstanding. Its ability to annihilate distance has been in direct proportion to its achievements in assisting to annihilate suspicion and

misunderstanding among provincial officials far removed from one another

or from the officials at the seat of government.?” She would fly to Taiwan a few years later, fleeing the onslaught of communism.

While movement by cart or boat in China around 1900 generally proceeded

at walking pace,a revolution in transportation in the following decades meant

that people from across the social spectrum could move faster, further and

cheaper than ever before. Already by the end of the nineteenth century the steamer became a favourite means of transportation, whether by wealthy

merchants in first class or by ordinary men on the lower decks in search of work abroad. Trains may have been shabbily equipped and poorly heated, but they too were always crowded, passengers spilling over into the corridors

and on to the roof. The most common means of motorised transportation

for ordinary farmers in the hinterland, however, was probably the bus, even if

windows were broken and progress was uneven on the poorly macadamised 106

From Water to Wheel

toads of republican China. In all cases new distribution points were created

for foreign goods, more resources were opened up, much closer territorial

integration was achieved, longer and safer voyages were made possible, and a

denser network was shaped that stretched out far beyond the country to the

rest of the world. While much of the machinery may have seemed woefully

inadequate to some foreigners, new modes of transportation were generally welcomed by a population keen to profit from quicker and cheaper move-

ment. Some owners of houses demolished without compensation may have

been resentful of road building, but overall there is little evidence to support the image ofa ‘xenophobic rejection’ of machinery, a ‘fear of the mechanical’ or ‘cultural estrangement’ in the face of modernity. For people of very

different backgrounds machinery stood for modernity, whether in the eyes

of farmers sitting on benches near the track and taking delight in the iron monster shooting past or among

poets inside the train raving about the

sensation of speed. And if not everybody could enjoy the social promenade on concrete pavements or cobbled squares, most could afford at least a oncein-a-lifetime visit to the big city, node of the new

motorised transportation.

networks spawned by

107

5 CHANGING

CITYSCAPES

If a network of motorised transportation gradually integrated the country, reaching far into the remote hinterland, buses, trains and steamers invariably led

to the city: cities were closely interconnected as the nodes of a new network which attracted and diffused ideas, people and goods. While a detailed analysis

of new cityscapes is beyond our scope in this book, this chapter highlights

some of the broad changes which altered the everyday life of cities before

1949. Cities emerged as huge accretions of millions of material objects, from

chewing gum stuck on the pavement to the soaring skyscraper of steepled

glass. Despite a recent focus on the urban history of modern China, however,

the very materiality of small towns or large metropoles has been elided by historians in favour of an analysis of the forces which produced a new visual

landscape, whether social changes, political movements, policy decisions or economic investment.' How

did the texture of urban space change in mo-

dern China, and how were these material transformations lived at the level of

everyday life by ordinary people? We will also look at the schools, factories

and offices where first encounters with things new often took place. While these social spaces are often seen as sites of production by economic historians, the introduction has argued that the term ‘production’ highlights a normative

distinction from ‘consumption’ which obscures how both activities frequently overlap: the machine consumes yarn to produce cloth. More

important,

this book is interested in the ways in which people generate meanings and

produce interpretations for the many objects they appropriate. While schools,

factories and offices clearly functioned as agents and sites in the dissemination of things modern, this chapter focuses on the ways in which the materiality of

these spaces altered and how these changes were experienced by people from a variety of backgrounds.

19

Changing Cityscapes CITIES

While users are at the centre of this book, the chapters in Part I show how

larger political, economic

and social variables, ranging from economic nation-

alism to the presence of foreign powers, were instrumental in shaping market preferences. Nowhere is this clearer than in the role that political elites played

in rebuilding the cityscapes of republican China. Municipal reform, city building and the provision of social welfare became particularly important after October 1928, as the Guomindang initiated a period of ‘political tutelage’

(xunzheng) and ‘revolutionary reconstruction’ (geming jianshe) which remained

in vogue until the start of the war with Japan in 1937.? Enthusiasm for re-

construction ran high: when mayor Liu Jiwen, in charge of the transformation of the new capital into a modern city, gave a public speech over the Central Radio Broadcasting Station on 7 March 1929, he

insisted that Nanjing should

‘compare favourably with Paris, the capital of France, London, the capital of Great

Britain, Washington, the capital of the United

States, and

Berlin,

the capital of Germany’? Such a bold vision of global emulation entailed

a complete overhaul of the traditional cityscape. City walls were to be torn

down, moats levelled, swamps filled, roads drawn and bridges built. Common

landmarks of imperial cities, such as memorial arches, temples, drum towers,

guildhalls, teahouses and pawnshops, were to be superseded by public parks, libraries, museums, schools and hospitals. Where imperial administration was located in the examination hall, granaries, a mint and the yamen, many hid-

den in walled compounds, modern governance demanded visibly imposing

buildings: the modern prison, for instance, was to be the visual expression of

judicial administration, a cathedral of modernity demonstrating the reach of justice, while the town hall should reflect the power of the state, acting as the seat of a civilising mission which would transform the civic environment.

Nanjing was not unique: modernity was abroad, and many municipal

governments not only strove to ‘catch up’ with the rest of the world, but compared themselves explicitly to cities in Europe and the United States: Hankou was to develop into the Chicago of the East, Hangzhou should

become the Geneva of China, Suzhou

the Venice of China, and Nanjing the

Visions of the modern undergirded a much of the republican era, reaching Modern ideals, of course, were hard countries like England, let alone in the remarkable changes had transformed

veritable building frenzy throughout even isolated cities of the hinterland. to pursue even in relatively wealthy poor provinces of China, yet by 1937 even a city like Lanzhou, where the

Washington of China; Shanghai, of course, was already the Paris of the Orient.

Ho

Cities mayor worked hard to put his city on the map. Located in Gansu province far

from the centres of political and social life, notorious for treacherous travel

conditions by camel, it could be reached by car and by air in the 1930s.‘

The new road came complete with service and aid stations in 1935, and was followed by a railway station a decade later.A town hall was erected and a

modern prison built, while paved roads, public bathhouses, street lamps and potable water were made available to the public. Contaminated water from

wells in the surrounding hills may have caused an epidemic, but at least people

were treated in a modern hospital. Lanzhou was an inland city with less than 150,000 people located on the

edge of the political map, yet it strove to climb its way up an urban hierar-

chy of ‘modern cities’. According to Olga Lang, a contemporary observer,

most provincial capitals such as Lanzhou had libraries, power plants, electric

lights, flour mills, soap factories, asphalted roads, neon lights, telegraph and

telephone installations, modern schools, colleges, hospitals and hotels: half

of Russia’s cities in the mid-twentieth century did not even have a library.* Her observation was corroborated by more detailed research: the Statistical

Secretary of the British Embassy wrote in 1932 that ‘nearly every large city and even many villages are now lit by electricity; modern gravitation water

supplies are gradually being provided; almost all cities have telephone systems,

with many

automatic

exchanges, and almost all provinces have extensive

long-distance telephone services.”*

By contrast Nantong, also with a population of 150,000, was much richer

than Lanzhou: in the beginning of the 1920s the ‘model city’ could boast over 75 km. of modern roads, several cotton and sericulture experimental stations

and schools of instruction, a modern agricultural college supervised by foreign-trained teachers, over 300 schools with more than 20,000 students, two

modern cotton mills with more than 60,000 spindles and 3,000 operators, a

modern cotton-seed oil mill, five modern banks and eight money lenders,

a match factory, a flour mill, a silk filature, an iron foundry, an electric light plant and a direct steamer line to Shanghai and other ports; the city also maintained a Nantoon Chinese Embroidery, Lace and Needlework Shop on

Fifth Avenue in New York thanks to the efforts of mayor Zhang Jian.’ Even

Chongqing in land-locked Sichuan province started pulling down rickety hovels before 1937, replacing them with large concrete buildings, while de-

partment stores, cinemas and banks all appeared in ferro-concrete structures, most of them in cubist style." Xiamen, described by the Encyclopaedia Britannica as ‘the dirtiest city in the world’,’ was transformed after 1928, acquiring

among others four public gardens, nine market places, three cemeteries and a sewage plant, while over 40 miles of roads crisscrossed the city and its suburbs, iW

Changing Cityscapes often in complete disregard of ancient burial places." By the 1930s a popular

ditty identified incomplete modern facilities as a sure sign of backwardness:

‘Electric lights are dim, the telephone doesn’t work, the roads are potholed’

(diandeng buming, dianhua buling, daolu bu ping).

Just as old and new objects often mixed without inhibition, an eclectic

spirit could be found in new architecture."? Contemporary European archi-

tecture was at first used for factories, offices, banks and hotels in the foreign

concessions of cities like Tianjin and Shanghai, but gradually different styles

were appropriated by local firms. By the 1930s the main streets in many cities

differed very little at first sight from those in foreign towns, except that shop-

signs still hung in the old way outside the otherwise modern shops. How-

ever, local builders took traditional patterns and expressed them in plaster ornamentations, leading, in the eyes of foreign visitors, to bizarre ‘rococo’

styles." The headquarters of the municipal government in Canton was built

in 1929 of reinforced concrete with elevators, electric lights, running water

and electric fans. It had comforts, according to one observer, which ‘emperors

in days of yore never even dreamed of’. The exterior was lined with white

granite steps, with banisters and balconies of marble; the interior walls were lined with white tiles or imitation marble. The curved roof was also made of

reinforced concrete, but with a traditional touch by the spread of brilliant

yellow roof tiles, ‘reminiscent of the former palaces of emperors’. The front

entrance was supported by four huge wooden pillars painted dark red, while

the same scheme was followed throughout the exterior of the building with red columns placed between windows in traditional style but made of steel and painted to suit the general colour scheme.'* Canton was not the only

municipality to mix concrete buildings with an imperial roof: Greater Shang-

hai also built a renaissance-style town hall with a palace roof designed by

Dayu Doon." Up north in Beijing the public buildings which appeared during the Nan-

jing decade also combined modern design and old architecture, including the

public library, Peking Union Medical College and Yanjing University, both

mixing colourful traditional roofs and eaves with modern-style two- and

three-storey buildings of reinforced concrete. In modern buildings through-

out China—Canton, Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing—the roof was intended to

constitute the distinctive traditional element, while the body of the building.

was proudly modern (figure 29). While this mixture often looked incongruous

to outsiders, it replicated a traditional approach to architecture in which the

roof was seen to be decisive for the outer aspect, as walls were of secondary

importance: walls were curtain walls, not bearing walls, as heavy supporting

pillars upheld the roof."*

Cities

29. Guanghua University on the outskirts of Shanghai, built in 1928.

In eighteenth-century Britain new buildings made use of forms and motifs

inspired by antique architecture; as Adrian Forty has argued, neo-classicism

was widely used as an antidote to progress: novelty, from country house to

Portland vase, could overcome widespread reservations among the middle

classes by presenting itself in the guise of the antique—the designs by Wedg-

wood in England being the best example. Resistance to progress was not confined to the eighteenth century: even the radio in the 1920s was housed in a cabinet imitating a piece of antique furniture to help the unfamiliar

conquer the household.'’ What is striking in comparative perspective is the extent to which novelty failed to bring about resistance in republican China and how marginal were concerns about the loss of things previously valued. The use of the ‘traditional’ roof was one of the very few attempts to integrate a direct material reference to the past in artefactual culture. Where neo-classi-

cal furniture or crockery or columns in buildings appeared, they referred

not to an idealised antiquity but to a perennial exotic foreign: neo-classicist,

rococo or cubist designs all equally indicated progress and modernity in China, even if they carried different if not opposite significations in Europe, and all were more often than not embraced. Cement is another example. It was admired as soon as it appeared in the

1880s, its favourable reception being premised on the use of a local equivalent

made ofa mixture of lime, clay and sand: called sanhetu, it was used for the

paving of courts, passage-ways and sometimes rooms in private buildings.'*

Cai Yuanpei admired the ‘sturdy’ (jiangu/) and ‘majestic’ (zhuangli) streets and

buildings in Paris made of cement,a new material he declared to be ‘strikingly

beautiful’ (fei/ei keguan) in his introduction to a book on the subject." Others

3

Changing Cityscapes

< “

ii

hailed cement as a ‘solid’ (jiangu) and ‘durable’ (yongjiv) material, unique in its

Hi

the book recommended that it be displayed sparingly for the most important parts of a building only, namely the foundation, the stairs, the roof and the

ability to resist water, insects and rot. It was still expensive in the 1910s, and

supporting walls.” Many would have agreed with Nong Gong’s observation: the higher the level of civilisation, the higher the level of cement.?! Or, as Li

Shutian approvingly quoted from Die Welt der Technik, ‘we say we live in the 30. Bank on a busy road, Kunming, 1940s.

age of the machine, or of electricity, or of steel, but we might just as well say that we live in the age of cement.” Nanjing, entirely rebuilt as a new capital after 1927, was covered in concrete, from a huge thirteen-storied pagoda®* to the benches in the stadium.” Foreigners like Lady Hosie, great admirer of

“brave new China’ and proud of its achievements, may have inveighed against

the concrete of the new capital,”> but other cities also took to the best possible substitute for wood: Canton, reconstructed by steam and electricity, had

heaps of cement which became a familiar sight and a common obstacle for

pedestrians walking through districts being renovated.” In Hangzhou—a last example—almost 100,000 square metres of cement roads and pavements had been built by 1937; cement railings appeared in the parks.”

The lack of resistance to novelty was noted by foreign visitors. Harry

Franck, intrepid vagabond roaming through China, returned to Hankou in

the early 1920s, and was left dumbstruck by the bustling city with modern architecture, buildings reaching high in the sky, automobiles dashing up and

down the Bund. He also remarked that it was sufficient to cross the river on one of the many sculled-boat ferries and look out from the hill beyond to

discover what alittle, really insignificant oasis in this vast China is the Hankow

of the foreigners’.* Nanjing, even before it became a capital, was described

by visitors as a cosmopolitan city with schools, universities and hospitals, the

open northern half of the enclosure having scores of ‘foreign houses and estates’. Liang Yen, who grew up in Beijing and worked in Shanghai, was

struck by the combination of antiquity and newness in Nanjing, where the

streets were bare in comparison with swarming Shanghai though lined with

modern bungalows and office buildings that looked like pictures she had seen from the United States.” Government buildings—from the Ministry of Rail-

ways to the Supreme Court—were huge edifices, some with bright green or

blue tiling and painted woodwork, according to traditional architecture, on a

concrete frame. These giant buildings overshadowed ordinary dwellings, often

made of grey stone, low, square and indistinct.*' Small town or coastal city, construction work became a permanent fea-

ture of the cityscape. Shanghai skyscrapers were sheathed in latticed bamboo which served as scaffolding during construction. With the completion of 114

Cities

two buildings rising more than twenty floors in 1932, Shanghai could boast the tallest buildings anywhere outside North America. To a new cityscape

was linked a new soundscape: Gilbert Collins noted how several of the most

insistent noises to be heard in Beijing in the 1920s were entirely new, includ-

ing the foghorn of the train rolling in from Tianjin in the south, Hankou in the south-west or Kalgan in the hilly north; the screech of the automobile

on roads into which the first crust of macadam

had barely settled, and the

drone of what was formerly the Imperial Pleasance (Nanyuan) but was now

transformed into an airport.“ Yet visitors in Shanghai used to the calm serenity of the courtyard in Beijing were struck by the incessant honking in the

‘Paris of the East’, as clangourous as a Chinese opera.’* In provincial capitals

loud-speakers on street corners blasted news and music from Shanghai or Nanjing, adding to the cacophony of traditional noises of the street.’ Some

of these sounds even penetrated into secluded interiors: studios in Shanghai

were poorly insulated, and many radio programmes failed to muffle street

noise, as listeners could overhear the honking cars and passing crowds of urban din.” William Martin observed the wireless speakers and gramophones which made streets deafening, while in Canton taxi drivers drove with one hand incessantly working their horns. The droning of electric fans was also newt Other sounds appeared: missionaries, for instance, initially used brass bands

to march the streets in order to attract congregations for their sermons.*” Soon

enough, in all cities entire brass bands were frequently hired for advertising new products, and it was not uncommon to see a full band, all dressed up, parading the streets and praising a soap label or cigarette brand.*’ In Beijing

many institutions had an orchestra, from the fire brigade to the local orphan-

age: all played modern music, frequently filling the public air with foreign

sounds.*' As Robert Bickers has noted, wealthy families in Shanghai would even hire the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra to play at a funeral as a sign of

wealth and prestige.*? New smells also appeared, including the petrol fumes,

burnt machine-oil and gases from tired exhausts that assailed Lady Hosie.** FACTORIES

Tall chimneys could be seen and factory hooters heard in most big cities."* Smoking stacks of antimony and zinc smelting works formed the skyline above the roofs of crowded houses in Hanyang," which was described by one visitor as a ‘miniature Pittsburgh’ with its factories and busy harbour. The Hanyehping Company boasted huge steel works, serviced by iron mines, collieries and its own standard gauge railway. The most visually striking

31.A main street of Canton,

reconstructed after the war.

Changing Cityscapes

32. Huge ship being built in a hangar, Shanghai, May 1912 industries, however, were the arsenals, ironworks and shipyards in Shang-

hai (figure 32). The Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Works, situated at the Huangpu

water front, were large enough to build 10,000-ton dead-weight

cargo steamers.”

Despite the existence of huge industrial complexes in Manchuria and

along the Yangzi, from Hanyang to Shanghai, industrial archaeology would

reveal that small-scale enterprises rather than large-scale industry characterised modern China.A whole range of modern factories had emerged by the

1930s, including soap and candle factories, match factories, ice and aerated water factories, factories for the preparation of egg products, knitting mills,

canneries, cement and brick works, chemical works, dockyards, shipbuilding and engineering works, electric light works, furniture factori . glass and porcelain works, cold storage plants, tanneries, oil mills, paper mills, printing and lithographic works, railway shops, rice hulling and cleaning mills, sawmills, modern silk filatures, silk mills, sugar refineries, tobacco factories, water works, woollen factories and arsenals (figure 35).** Most were small: in Shanghai the

majority of a total of 1,672 factories in 1931 did not have thirty labourers;

the survey was limited to factories employing at least ten workers, thus leaving out many smaller-scale enterprises.“” In Nanjing there were sixteen small 33. Factory in Taiyuan, Shanxi

province.

116,

foundries and ironworks in 1928, most relying on twenty or thirty hands. They made simple machines for local use and for export to neighbouring

towns, including light rice polishing machines, lithographic printing presses,

Factories hosiery knitters, cotton scutchers and noodle cutters: most of these concerns

were so small that Nathaniel Peffer wondered whether they could even be called ‘factories’.” Also in Ningbo, most factories were operated on an extremely

small scale with no more than six or seven employees, although the aggregate

production was of considerable size (figure 36).°' Small objects, as we have repeatedly seen, thrived in a culture of portability: small concerns, too, could

be easily moved at any time, all the more as the majority had rented build-

ings.” Furthermore, as noted in Chapter 2, an astonishing quantity of goods were traditionally made thanks to a sophisticated system of mass production,

each worker producing a standardised part which was then assembled into

a complex object. In republican China it was common for some industries to carry out only one stage of the manufacturing process, as separate concerns were responsible for the other stages: few large factories carried out the entire

process.** Even hands employed by small family concerns were divided: brush-

34.Young girl tends a bank of spindles in a modern cotto n factory in Hong Kong, 1940s.

making establishments in Wuxing counted hair sorters, hair trimmers and

holder-makers, often being paid at piece-rate

Small machines were perfectly attuned to the small-scale labour-intensive

enterprises which mushroomed all over the country. Contrary to a popular image of opposition to foreign machinery, the sewing machine and the portable ginning machine had already found easy acceptance by the end of the

35. Egg processing plant in Jiangsu province, separating yolks from whites.

Changing Cityscapes nineteenth century, even far in the interior.* In Jiaxing a local scholar com-

plained of the excessive use of modern machinery and the high esteem it enjoyed as traditional tools disappeared.” For many, machinery stood for modernity: intricate and progressive, but also desirable and attractive, sewing ma-

chines were compared to ‘high heaven and deep sea’; rice hulling machines

made the sound of ‘water on cloud mills in heaven’, according to the organis-

ers of the Nanjing exhibition of 1910. Fascination with the machine could

also be found at the top of the social ladder: Ba Jin happily declared in 1933: ‘Llove machines and I love so-called material civilization. Machines are full of movement, full of warm energy, full of speed and strength.** Machines were the measure of man, as Michael Adas has so convincingly shown, with the 36. Two young women engaged in the manufacture

of fire-crackers, 1940s,

ability to produce advanced machinery coming to be seen by many as a sign of superiority.” Most of the modern garments in which millions dressed were made with

modern sewing machines, which arrived in Shanghai in the 1860s, less than

twenty years after their appearance in the United States. In the illustrated

magazines of the 1870s and '80s, imaginary beauties would sit in front of the new machine to sew traditional dresses, their bound feet elegantly operating

the treadle.” A few decades later a city like Canton imported thousands of

sewing machines each year, while oil engines, faithfully copied from foreign

models, were produced in 1913 to meet the local demand for motive power.

Machines for knitting socks and underwear could be found everywhere;*!

they were used with ingenious economy, one example dating from

1914

being the power used to operate heavy lathes in the basement of boilerrepairing shops, which also served to run halfa dozen sock-knitting machines in the room above, connected by leather bands through the floor.” By the

1920s sewing machines could be seen even in the hinterland. In Xunwu, a

remote county located near the borders of Guangdong, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, every tailor had a machine (chez) in 1930: the first one appeared

in 1920 ata tailor’s shop that had started making Shanghai-style shirts.“ Sewing machines were repaired in Shanghai by the Xiechang Company, which

retailed Singer machines from 1925 onwards and launched its own brand

three years later.“ Tailors claimed that the machine could sew more evenly than their hands alone."

The availability of relatively cheap hand-machines not only fuelled the

notorious sweatshops of Shanghai, but also allowed a handicraft system in the

countryside to be replicated, as raw material was transformed by small groups

of workers into finished goods.“ Even in county gaols—where labour fulfilled both educational and economic purposes—prisoners could be provided

with the raw material to produce socks under the guidance of an instructor 118

Factories

37. Tailor shop where sewing machines are used to make cotton padded clothing for the residents of Bishan, Sichuan province, 1940s.

38, Women sewing uniforms in a factory in Shenyang (Mukden),

January 1948.

sent by a local hosiery factory.” These machines could also be hired out to neighbouring farmers who were paid piece-rate this was common in Wuxi, where farmers produced knitwear as a secondary occupation. os Small machines for small enterprises were increasingly made locally in the republican era. Close to 100 manufacturers of spinning machinery, looms,

stocking frames, bowing machines, equipment for reeling and weaving silk,

cotton gins and dyeing equipment show that in the largest sector of the industry, namely textiles, local machinery started to displace imports in a whole

range of product lines by the 1930s. Imitations of foreign looms, hosiery ma-

chines, welding machines, electric and gasoline motors and cigarette machines became part ofa widespread movement of import substitution, and were sold

at a fraction of the cost of competing foreign models. Domestic equipment was often inferior to imported machines in capacity, precision and durability, but it sold well because in a price market low cost outweighed poor quality.”

Even the looms powered by the mills in Shanghai were often locally made of iron and wood, costing far less than the iron ones imported from England, the United States and Japan.””

Whether in small factories or large plants, machine power was found everywhere. In 1937 bleaching, dyeing, printing, finishing and knitting factories were routinely equipped with modern

machinery.’!

Wuxi, a city

of 170,000 inhabitants in Jiangsu province, had 170 factories using machine power in 1932.” Nantong, a small town north of Shanghai, had machinery in

its four mills which was comparable to Minneapolis and Duluth. The town

also boasted a modern brewery with machinery bought in America by a Chinese merchant.” Workers not only encountered modern machinery in the factory, but often saw their everyday lives transformed by the dormitory. Factory workers in Tanggu, near Tianjin, shared accommodation with electric light and heat-

ing as early as 1924: rooms for twelve were equipped with a chiffonier, board

19

Changing Cityscapes table, chairs and even tea sets. Workers would file into the dining room with meal tickets, and had access to a local hospital, while table tennis and chess

games were made available in a room next to the Workmen's Library. Football

was also popular.” In Yunnan province, to take an example from the south,

dormitories for skilled workers during the Second World War had double-

decker beds and a chest of drawers for each worker, the rooms being equipped

with glass windows. Some of these amenities disappeared in the dormitories

for semi-skilled workers, while unskilled labourers were lodged in large bare rooms with a thatched roof. The inequality in housing for different groups

even affected the sheets, blankets, bedspreads and modern pillows for the top

workers, while at the lower end of the scale cotton covers were used and

workers would sleep together in the same bed to keep warm in the cold.”*Yet

even in the case of unskilled workers who complained of living conditions

in the dormitory, the picture of the factory they presented to their families

back home was often idealised. As Tian Rukang discovered when interview-

ing female labour in a cotton mill in Yunnan in the early 1940s, workers often

told friends and family at length about the marvels of the machinery and the

perfection of the provisions at the factory: even if we concede that some may not have wanted to lose face or cause their families to worry, their positive attitudes had not been anticipated by the interviewer, who was critical of the ‘machine age’.”*

Work entailed adherence to a strict schedule of time, and new devices

allowed time to become a quantity which was carefully measured in the new factories of a booming industrial age. Over 100 factories in Wuxi used steam

whistles, electric sirens and hooters with such frequency and intensity that by 1930 municipal intervention was deemed necessary. One cotton mill blasted

a steam whistle ten times a day for three full minutes, while a silk factory

nearby used it on four occasions, but at different times of the day.” Public

clocks appeared next to the electric siren (figure 39). In Shanghai these installations proved to be a great success with ordinary people,” attracting much attention when first installed in the 1870s: ‘The big striking clock (da

zimingzhong) is very tall and ascends straight into the sky. It strikes the time

each quarter from early morning onwards. People walking by can know the

time by simply looking up.There are always many people standing at the foot

of the clock to study it carefully.” As a bamboo verse remarked, when the

clock strikes ‘people think that the loud sound is a cannon firing, but when

they look up all they see is a red sun in the sky.” Ge Yuanxu described the clock tower in the French concession as a ‘lonely peak’ towering above all

other buildings: its dial could be seen from all directions and its clock heard far away."! City governments throughout the country started installing clock

120

Factories

39.The banking district in Chongging, with clock in the middle of a square, 1944. towers in the 1920s and "30s, gradually replacing the traditional noon can-

non (wupao)."? In Changsha the cannon was fired at noon for a while in order

to unify time, but the sound could not be heard everywhere in the city and

the firing was not always on time. In 1928 standard clocks were installed

throughout the city, linked to one electric network to ensure that they were

all synchronised." Giant clocks on the streets of Wuchang were specifically designed for the police to ‘foster’ (yangcheng) greater respect for time among

workers. The discipline imposed by the clock could be interpreted as a new form of tyranny over working men and women. However, alarm clocks could

also be used by workers in order not to waste time in the morning by arriving

too early. In a detailed survey of twenty-four Shanghai workers in the 1930s,

over one third had a clock and almost one in five an alarm clock. SCHOOLS

Modern schools, which started to appear after the abolition of the traditional examination system in the first decade of the twentieth century, incorporated new materials, including cement, steel, glass, electricity and running water.

Edwin Dingle, shown the modern school in Kunming just before the collapse

Changing Cityscapes of the Qing, described it as an architectural wonder with its huge oblong

building with a narrow wing on either side of a central dome; the schoolrooms

were well-ventilated and airy, while power was generated by an immense

dynamo in the basement.* Ina little town in the north of Zhejiang province,

the two government schools also had large airy rooms with more windows

than wall space. The blackboards, modern maps and charts were clean and stood out in bold contrast to the dusty Confucian tablets, before which sticks

of incense smouldered sulkily.®” As these two examples show, new schools

were not confined to wealthy coastal cities. Only a few years after the fall of the empire Lowes Dickinson noticed a school in a

tiny village 1,000 miles

from the coast which had walls hung with drawings of birds and beasts, of the

human skeleton and organs, and even of bacteria. This was not an isolated example: throughout the country, in coastal cities or hinterland towns, new

schools generally had large glass windows, while geography maps, anatomical plates and natural history images were placed on the walls (figure 40)."” As Elizabeth VanderVen has shown, even a single county in north China could

have hundreds of modern primary schools, as rural communities pursued a

variety of strategies to raise funds for education in their enthusiastic quest for modernity.” School was where many children first encountered things modern, start-

ing with the uniform: boys were often kitted out in military uniform inspired

by both native and foreign models, with gold braid on coat and cap and their

trousers tucked into leather boots. Even girls in some schools adopted uni-~

form which was modelled on that of boys.” Schools, one might object, were

for the privileged few, yet by the 1930s some of the most destitute people in the country were also exposed to modern materiality in poorhouses and orphanages. The Hankou orphanage, like so many others, had classrooms with

modern furniture and blackboards,” while the private orphanage at Nanjing

was entirely modern, the children playing table tennis in their spare time.”*

Many not only took pride in their uniforms, but developed lasting links

with the new objects they encountered in school. As Martin Yang evoca-

tively observed of a small village in Shandong, ‘the chalk, the blackboard, the clay stick and the clay plate were all delightful things which had never been seen before.’ Feng Zikai, later to become a famous cartoonist, was thrilled

when he could abandon the traditional colourings bought from a local shop after foreign crayons were introduced into his school. Now unstoppable in

his quest for better tools which would enable him to pursue his hobby, the

young boy further discovered an eraser, a ruler and a set square in the house

of a relative, as well as several Conté crayons: he used small photos as models

from which to draw.”” Some objects, notably rulers, could lead to painful

Schools

tits S

40. Children attending a primary school in Longzhuan village, Yunnan province, 1941.

memories: Zhao Yuanren remembered how teachers would hit children on

the palms with their new

instrument.”

Entirely unpredictable encounters

between people and objects also took place in the school corridors. Shen

Congwen (1902-88) liked to run along the corridors of the new girls’ school

built shortly after the 1911 revolution in his search for new objects. The sew-

ing machines in particular attracted the attention of the young boy, who was

spellbound by the seamless union of running gear wheels, producing a strange and utterly compelling rattle which he came to adore.”

However, the most ubiquitous object encountered in schools was the

pencil. Much has been written about the rise of print culture and the mecha-

nised press, but the pencil was a very simple tool which was just as effective in

extending the reach of the written word. In a culture of portability, the pencil

was easy to carry; once the use of pockets in new garments spread, it became

Changing Cityscapes the ideal pocket companion, travelling to places which the bulky attributes of the scholar—brush, ink stone, toggle, dropper—could not reach. Cheap, mobile and versatile, the pencil reached out beyond the pen: it was used by children and adults who might not normally use a brush. Pencils were also ideal for tasks in which the traditional brush was much more cumbersome,

such as sketching, drawing of plans, design or calculation.* Combined with

the eraser, the pencil also saved paper, since mistakes could be erased and

corrections added without the fear of waste in a culture of thrift. Pencils were cheap, imported ones costing 5 cents with or without rubber head in Chengdu

in 1909; in comparison, imported fountain pens cost 70 cents.”

Cheap pencils democratised formal literacy by cutting out the need for more

expensive writing utensils: by 1933 more than half of all students in relatively poor Guangxi province used imported pencils."

If the pencil catered to a price market, the fountain pen at first fulfilled

a luxury demand, although it too would rapidly become more affordable in a culture which prized a flexible nib. Expensive foreign brands like ‘Kastell’ (Sanbaolei) from Germany and ‘Venus’ (Weinasi) from the United States served

the upper echelons of literate society, while Chinese-managed firms such as

the Meimei Company of Singapore produced writing equipment of ‘Parker

quality’ by the 1920s.'"" By the 1930s local brands were able to imitate the best

foreign pens, ‘Tripod’ (Sanzuding) being particularly popular. Cheap Japanese

imports, on the other hand, were aimed at the lower end of the market and

sold for as little as 70 or 80 cents." The fountain pen allowed literacy to spread

while retaining a certain aura of exclusivity: 600,000 a year were imported

into Guangdong in the early 1930s, prompting fears that the brush might

disappear altogether. As a Shanghai magazine complained, ‘soon the Chinese-

style brush and paper will die out."”’ Others, including famous writer Lu Xun,

welcomed the modern pen and favoured its local production.’ As the use of the fountain pen became more widespread, menders started to appear in most cities, working by the roadside equipped with a tool box for spare parts

and used pens."

Anxiety about the disappearance of traditional calligraphy, the mastery of

which was considered a sure sign of breeding and character, was not entirely

justified: just as the fountain pen took over the cloak of authority from the

brush, it allowed the skills required in calligraphy to be replicated among

much larger sections of the population. A new ‘hard pen’ (yingbi) calligra-

phy developed, as insistent on respect for the order of strokes, balance of the characters and precision in composition as the brush. While the absence of soft hair slightly impeded the overall movement of the pen and the relative width

of various strokes, subtle variations in pressure, assisted by a smooth nib, could 124

Schools nonetheless approximate the fluctuations of speed and tension which allowed the brush to give life to a written text. The fountain pen could even be held as if it were a brush: in a fictional case set in the Second World War a doctor

pretends to be a teacher and holds the steel pen provided by a Japanese official in the same way as a traditional brush." Moreover, the brush did not

simply disappear but also underwent changes induced by modernity: made

of ivory, the writing utensil which remained in use by scholars and officials

throughout republican China, as is amply attested by the many archives con-

taining beautifully calligraphed documents, acquired a lid enabling it to be

safely carried around in an increasingly mobile culture. Judge Yang Zhaoyun,

for instance, took a special brush with him to court with ‘Qingyun’s judg-

ment brush’ engraved on it."” In a much more general way, however, it could be argued that both the pencil and the fountain pen allowed calligraphy—the very heart of elite culture—to thrive in the midst of modernity. Lothar Led-

derose has shown how the discovery of stone engravings in the eighteenth

and nineteenth century allowed calligraphers to expand and unify their art, some even questioning the monopoly that the literati had claimed for so long: a few went so far as to applaud anonymous writing and did not hesitate to praise simple artisans."* It could be hypothesised that the advent of simple

portable writing devices did much to further this shift in the early twentieth

century, since it allowed tens of millions to participate in hard-pen calligraphy—while classes in brush calligraphy probably increased as well. OFFICES

The spread of the traditional brush and the modern pen went unimpeded

by the typewriter in modern China.A central object of office culture in the

West, the typewriter was a simple and practical device to standardise writ-

ing systems based on alphabets but remained so technically complex for lan-

guages based on characters that it looked more like a small printing press. The first typewriter with characters was produced in the early 1910s in Japan, while the Nippon Typewriter Co. began producing typewriters with a flat

bed of 3,000 characters in 1917, which was a far cry from the tens of thousands of characters used in literary texts."A machine for writing in Chinese

was apparently developed by Lin Yutang in the late 1940s (figure 41),!"" but typewriters would have to wait for the digital revolution before acquiring widespread popularity in China. Social reasons rather than merely techno-

logical ones were also behind the resilience of the scholar’s brush: as we have seen above, calligraphy was a clear indicator of status and education. While ordinary clerks and professional recorders were required to produce or copy

41.A Chinese typewriter, 1940s 125

Changing Cityscapes

42. The Editing Office of the Commercial Press of Shanghai, carly 1920s,

documents which bore no personal imprint, business managers and politi-

cal leaders used ink brushes to stamp their personality on official paper: the higher one moved up the social hierarchy, the more complex, personal and cursive the script became, until it demanded a certain familiarity in the reader

in order to be legible.A personal chop instead of an institutional one provided final authority. Despite the staying power of the brush, many private and government

offices used typewriters to communicate in foreign languages: republican

China was a cosmopolitan era in which command of a foreign language was relatively common among new professional groups such as lawyers, doctors

and entrepreneurs, while it was a requisite for many of the government officials

working with foreign administrators in the treaty ports. Even in distant Shanxi

province the click-clack of typewriters sounded through the open windows

of the governor's office in the 1930s.'"' If the brush nonetheless remained more common than the typewriter, offices were literally run by the clock.''? Clocks, desks, telephones, lamps and

mountains of paper, as in most other countries, marked out the office as an oasis of modernity (figure 42). Office design was directly inspired from abroad

and seen as a mark of prestige, managers viewing themselves as vanguards sur-

rounded by a sea of tradition. The first modern offices were set up in the last

decades of the nineteenth century by compradors in foreign concessions, and became common among government institutions after 1900. Like the houses

built by these compradors, however, they could mix modern and traditional

styles. While most factory offices were simple with a long table and modern 126

Offices chairs,'? more prestigious institutions carefully maintained a social space in

which tradition could be preserved. The head office of an industrial exhibi-

tion in Hangzhou, for instance, consisted of a conference room, a meeting

room and staff offices. The conference room was sparsely furnished in modern style with a long table in the middle covered with a cloth and surrounded

by a dozen chairs: a phonograph in the corner confirmed the modernity of the room. The meeting room, however, was furnished in traditional style with old-fashioned furniture; only discreet material traces such as candleholders were reminiscent of the modern.

As in offices in Europe and the United States,a world of difference also ex-

isted between ordinary staff, who worked in open-plan offices, often sharing

simple desks and common lamps, and the manager, whose office was clearly

separated from the workers and furnished with all the material attributes

of power, a large desk proudly placed at the centre. Cheng Zhenjun, vice-

president, had a large desk covered with a patterned cloth and a separate table for the telephone and his brush pens, ink boxes and the indispensable personal

chop: old and new mixed without complexes. Behind the desk against the wall

stood a big floor clock, although, contrary to the wall clocks in staff offices, it signalled status rather than adherence to a strict schedule of time.'"* Different types of desks, chairs and clocks not only materially expressed the social hierarchy of the office, but also corresponded to a culture of thrift in which rare resources were carefully allocated: Yuan Ang, author of a book on school equipment, thus insisted that office furniture be pared down to the strict minimum, reducing the number of drawers in desks for use in the general

office and prescribing square desks for ordinary staff which could be pooled

during conferences."> Folding desks and folding chairs, rarely mentioned

in the literature on scientific office management inspired by Frederick Taylor

and popular in the United States,!"* were seen as crucial to saving space: as

always economy rather than efficiency was the overriding principle. Plants

in pots, however, were seen to add a ‘pleasant’ touch to the atmosphere of the office: they were ubiquitous in republican China, allowing the traditional rockery garden to migrate into modern office space.''” Just as model prisons were cathedrals of modernity, materially expressing

the power of the state,""* government offices were built to the latest international standards, even if the surrounding countryside was mired in poverty.

Most of the new offices in Nanjing were cubist blocks with pillared verandas

and decorated roofs in ‘Renaissance’ style. They were comfortably furnished

with steam radiators, carpets and palms in pots, as well as leather armchairs

and mahogany tables. Hundreds of tip-up chairs were available for meetings,

important leaders having several electric bulbs in varying colours, inspired by

Changing Cityscapes

43. Reception of post office in Yunnan, complete with telephone, telegraph and typewriter, pre-1911, traffic lights, above their doors.

Seats in white loose covers, spittoons and

endless cups of green tea also marked the republican office. 120 If green tea rather than black coffee was the social lubricant of choice,

other elements of tradition also shaped the material presentation of the office.

As Richard C. Kraus has shown, brushes have power, and the calligraphy of

local elites invariably adorned public places—whether displayed on traditional wood, large plastic boards or glaring neon lights.'*' Modern buildings were

canvasses transformed into literary landscapes by poetic inscriptions, whether

couplets on scrolls, inscriptions on boards or epigraphs in stone. Calligraphy

not only embellished doors and walls, but gave them an aura of power, as each

inscription conferred protection, creating a visible web linking the building

to important literary or political figures. Slogans were also important: in a

society long ruled by scholars who viewed the script as a sign of civilisation,

the written word itself was imbued with transformative power. In schools,

factories, prisons and offices, exhortatory slogans covered the walls, enjoining all to conform to a prescribed set of rules of proper deportment. Moral

mottos were even painted in huge characters on prison walls: they might not be understood by illiterate prisoners, but their mere presence was thought to

radiate a power that could induce repen

nce and moral renewal.

From lavish central ministry to sparse county bureau, moreover, another

medium united the material culture of the republican office: everywhere 128

Offices office walls were covered with pictures of Sun Yatsen or Jiang Jieshi. Photo-

graphs of leaders multiplied: very much as the calligraphy of important figures

was accepted as an emblem of patronage, the photograph of a local dignitary could bless a public institution. For instance, that of the provincial governor

Zhao Erfang was prominently displayed in the guest hall of a small school in distant Sichuan.’ A portrait of Sun Yatsen, revered as the father of the na-

tion, was also hung in every public building after 1927, often flanked by flags

of the Party and the Republic. Portraits of Jiang Jieshi were gradually creeping up beside that of Sun Yatsen in the 1930s, not only in public offices but also in small shops and private houses."* Group pictures and institutional

photography also became widespread: office workers would proudly display

collective photos, while entire school classes or government units posed for

the record. Beyond the home, in which a collective photo provided evidence

of social status, this particular genre rapidly became a fixture of most gov-

ernment publications: whether municipal reports or prison accounts, many

carried a large photograph of all employees at the head of the book—as well

as numerous prefaces calligraphed and signed by important dignitaries.

As in the past, paper ruled the office. In the mid-1930s the Ministry of

Justice employed nearly 250 individuals, including seven keepers of records, who

handled some

50,000 documents

and sent out 40,000

to the various

organs under its control.'’* Managerial hierarchy pervaded the paper empire,

including fine distinctions between different administrative levels which far transcended the simple opposition between boss and staff. There was a technical vocabulary that distinguished, among other things, between petitions

presented to a superior (cheng), official despatches between equals (zi), official

documents (gongwen), official correspondence (gonghan), orders from higher to lower officials (xunling), orders from the ministry (buling), instructions from

a higher official in reply to queries about duties (zhiling), telegrams (dian), re-

sponses to a report or request from a subordinate (pi) and official announce-

ments (bugao), all embodying a sense of hierarchy directly inherited from imperial administrative culture. Office paper closely followed these distinctions,

varying in quality, size and appearance. Blotters, envelopes, cards, invitations,

announcements, circulars, notices, all these further increased the amount of

paper in the office, demanding a range of chemicals in their production, from

sulphuric acid to soda ash. Most were imported, although by the 1930s paper

mills produced up to 10 per cent of local demand.'”* The sheer amount of work involving hierarchically ordained tasks meant that offices were mainly a male preserve. Out of a total of 278 employees in the Ministry of Justice in 1936, only twenty-one were women, and more than

half were university graduates, showing a strong gender bias and a preference 129

Changing Cityscapes for formal education.'”” Outside government circles some commercial offices

gradually gave women an opportunity for work as secretaries: Liang Yen, for instance, worked in an open-plan office with five or six young men, copy-

ing acknowledgements of government orders, directives on the marketing of company products and reports on investigations of official corruption—doc-

uments that became part of a regimen of laborious days. She spent her lunch

hours in nearby bookstores, browsing through secretarial texts to improve her

skills.'"*A few companies were even established by professional women, some providing accommodation for staff. Adeline Mah’s aunt founded her own

bank, the Shanghai Women’s Bank, and built a six-storey bank building on

Nanking Road, which was considered one of the most prestigious business

addresses in the republican period. Her staff lived in dormitories on the upper floors; lifts were installed and modern plumbing put in with flush toilets, central heating and hot and cold running water.'”

A key argument which runs through this book is that globalisation was driven

by ordinary individuals rather than political elites, global corporations or large organisations, but the most striking exception to this must be the emergence of new cityscapes, often shaped as a consequence of direct political intervention:

municipal development was part of the political philosophy of the ruling

Guomindang after 1927, and many city governments strove to emulate each other by building larger and better amenities. Yet even in the city individuals

tended to participate in, rather than resist, efforts to ‘catch up with the West’, whether students at school, workers in the dormitory or clerks in the office: in comparison with living conditions in more traditional environments, mo-

dernity seemed to offer a range of small but incremental improvements to the

perceived quality of life. What is also striking in comparative perspective is the extent to which novelty failed to bring about resistance in republican China

and how marginal were concerns about the loss of material objects previously

valued. In eighteenth-century Britain new buildings were often inspired by

antique architecture; neo-classicism was widely used as an antidote to progress, as novelty could overcome widespread reservations by presenting itself in

the cloak of antiquity. In republican China, however, the use of neo-classical columns in buildings referred not to an idealised antiquity but to a perennial

exotic foreign: neo-classicist, rococo or cubist designs all equally indicated

progress. Cultural bricolage marked these large structures designed by politi-

cal elites: in many new buildings colourful traditional roofs appeared on reinforced concrete buildings. Yet even as we move away from these municipal

projects, the prevalence of much more modest yet incrementally significant 130

Offices engagements with material culture becomes apparent: in industry the rapid

spread of small machinery in family enterprises was far more significant than the appearance of large factories. The availability of cheap machines allowed

a handicraft system in the countryside to be consolidated, as raw material

was more easily transformed by small groups of workers into finished goods. Much more enduring features could also be discovered beneath the surface

of the modern office: social hierarchy was materially expressed not only in different types of desks, chairs and clocks but also in subtle variations in the

quality, size and appearance of office paper. Such was the staying power of the mandarin that not even the communist revolution, with its strict system of ranks and grades and its finely differentiated nomenklatura, would be able to

destroy the hierarchy directly inherited from imperial administrative culture.

131

6 ELECTRICITY, TELEPHONE AND WATER

When Sheng Cheng left his village to visit the city in 1910, he discovered a whole new world: electric lamps, likened to glow worms in the night, bathed the quays along the river in a blinding light, while a telephone squawked ‘Hello! Hello!’ The buildings themselves, with their concrete floors, appeared like big ships without sails, while the paved streets were full of automobiles,

rickshaws and bicycles.' The foreign was no longer a small set of ingenious

objects like the clock and the telescope appearing in a traditional decor to indicate social status: the very texture of everyday life was undergoing mo-

mentous changes. Cement, glass and steel were the materials of modernity,

while electric light, running water and the telephone transformed everyday practices by linking private lives and public spaces to a wider grid of modern facilities. For millions like Sheng Cheng, the discovery of this grid came as a culture shock, although few have left us with a record of their impressions. For others the material transformation of day-to-day life was more gradual yet no less an object of wonder: as the established writer Liu Na’ou enthu-

siastically proclaimed, ‘with telephone wires, pipes for running water, central heating and gas, and even a square awning on the roof—are people not at the centre of machinery?” This chapter looks more closely at the meanings

and uses of electricity, the telephone and running water, thus closing Part I

dedicated to larger material structures before we turn in Part II to people and objects.

A NATION

ELECTRIFIED

When electric light appeared for the first time in China in 1878, contemporaries were dazzled: ‘Today electric lamps replace gas and border the Bund, while theatres, opium houses and teahouses are invariably bright and clear, resplendent with light. On entering these places the visitor has the impression

Electricity, Telephone and Water

44. Aerial view of Shanghai at night, with the Garden Bridge in the foreground, 1940s. that a luminescent phoenix embraces the sky, illuminating the country of eternal spring. A shining dragon spits its flames, as if travelling in a city that

never sleeps. A friend of Huang Shiquan marvelled: ‘The ingeniousness of Europeans is truly astonishing, as they capture flying electricity from the air

and transform it into glazed lamps, illuminating a dazzling expanse which

blinds the eye...

Shanghai has become a city which never sleeps.> In the

1880s opulent restaurants and several luxurious opium houses installed elec-

tric lights, which made such places ‘as bright as white books’, local customers specifically patronising these establishments to watch the lights, ‘making the 134

A Nation Electrified places so crowded’.* Street and shop lights spread to parts of Shanghai in July

1882, the Shenbao describing the night when the lights came on: ‘At seven o'clock in the evening all the lights came on, and they were brighter than the

moon.”

Electricity beyond Shanghai was first confined to foreign enclaves, illu-

minated amid the darkness of those yet to be enlightened. The vocabulary of

conversion and the technology of light went hand in hand among some missionaries, who were often the first to install great electric lights which domi-

nated the rest of the village, like ‘a beacon beckoning all the city to the fact of

Christ’.* Even the capital was a gloomy city at night, except for a feeble line

of electric lights in the legation quarter, as only the rickshaw lanterns would light their way about at night.’ However, the magic of light quickly colo-

nised a willing population outside foreign concessions. Electricity appeared

in 1881 in Suzhou, local people calling it a miracle as they watched electric poles being erected."° It reached the capital in 1890, as the imperial Western Gardens (Xiyuan) were illuminated with electric lamps, powered by China’s

first plant run independently of foreigners.'' Hankou was the first city in the interior to use electricity: electrification occurred around

1890 as a direct

result of Zhang Zhidong’s self-strengthening efforts in the province, supplying the steel and ammunition plants, textile factories and shipyards with a new source of power.'? Electric light was quite common in the suburbs of Canton by 1904, and the power company could not meet the constant demand for more light.'? Smaller cities like Wuhu and Shantou were among a number that

inaugurated electric lights in 1908-9,as thousands of lights appeared in streets, restaurants and private residences.'* In Jinan lampposts were set up 50 metres apart as early as 1907: in the commercial districts the light was ‘as bright as

in daytime’.'’ In Shenyang almost all the new buildings, whether public or

private, were equipped with ample illumination in 1910."*

Darkness was further repulsed in the following decades, in particular after

the 1911 revolution. Canton is a good example: a British firm installed four boilers and generating equipment with a modest capacity of 546 kilowatts

in 1901, while a plant purchased by provincial authorities in 1909 doubled

available capacity. The antiquated boilers were replaced by new equipment in 1926, and an auxiliary power station was installed in 1933. In order to ad-

just to the cycles and voltage of most plants in the country, it was decided in

1935 to change from 110 volts and 60 cycles to 220 volts with 50 cycles. In

1934 the municipal government signed a contract with the Siemens China

a

Company for the installation of a modern turbine-electric power station of 30,000 kilowatts, the new location at Saitsun being away from the centre of the city where noise, the smoke from boilers and the soot had become

Electricity, Telephone and Water

intolerable:'? Canton, like Shanghai, was described as ‘a city that never sleeps’

(buyecheng).'* Canton may have been wealthy, but it was hardly alone. Over 200 cities

were supplied with lighting by the early 1920s," and very few towns of any

considerable size were without electricity. In the small villages scattered in the countryside in the north of China, electricity started to appear in the

early 1930s.” Even in locations where the cost of coal was high, many small

plants sold current to customers on a flat-rate basis at from $1 to $1.50 per 16 candlepower a month.”' Generators driven by steam and oil engines also appeared, as well as a few water turbines, thus easing access to power. In 1934 a survey made by the National Reconstruction Commission at Nanjing

showed that out of a total of 548 electric plants scattered all over the country,

484 adopted 220 volts and 50 cycles as their standard, the others generally

using 110 volts with 60 cycles.” Even after the devastation wrought by the

Second World War, provinces in the hinterland embraced electricity: Dobson

noted that a surprisingly large number of towns in Hunan had electric light-

ing plants, always exploited to full capacity.” On the other hand, the Shanghai

Power Company at Yangshupu, run by the Shanghai Municipal Council, was

one of the biggest in the entire world.*

Electricity plants, of course, were at first plagued by uneven or inter-

rupted supplies. In Beijing the electric wires encountered regular problems,

and in 1898 most of them provided a very dim light, ‘like the burning ends ofa incense stick’. In Kunming every night just before ten o'clock the light

bulbs dimmed to the mere ‘glow of incense sticks’: kerosene lamps would take

over.”* Lights were often turned off in the dark to save money: at the railway station in Xuzhou passengers had to alight and board their trains in the twi-

light as a six o'clock blackout was rigidly implemented.” However, in the

republican period improvements not only in the electric plants and wiring, but also in the filature of light bulbs, meant greater light intensity and better visibility.” ‘Light’, moreover, was a vague approximation: arc lamps, neon lamps, fluorescent lamps, mercury-vapour lamps, all found their way into

China, while incandescent lamps were produced locally after 1913. Such was

the pace of change, George Barnes observed, that the country had jumped from burning oil to using electricity: the use of gas, an important stage in the energy revolution in Europe, was rarely considered,” apart from some gas

lamps in Shanghai: the local population initially referred to these as ‘fire which

comes by itself’ (zilaihuo) in analogy with running water (zilaishui).”

‘Whether supplied by local authorities or private companies, electricity

was rapidly taken on board to project an aura of modernity. The Taiping Road

in Hankou was illuminated at night with a myriad electric lights shining 136

A Nation Electrified

45. Nanjing Road and its department stores illuminated at night.

through discreet but brilliant ground-glass globes," while even the majestic gates in conservative Beijing were illuminated by huge electric lights. Nanjing Road in Shanghai had a myriad of lights which would dazzle the eyes of visitors (figure). Department stores were invariably outlined spectacularly from towering cupola and mansard to pavement and basement. Some foreigners considered the extensive use of electric light in shop buildings a 137

Electricity, Telephone and Water ‘childish taste’, although illumination appeared to be part of the magic of electricity.® Light also reflected status, since only wealthy shopkeepers could

afford these costly toys. The sheer scale of all the lights used in Shanghai gave the skyline an orange glow at night.“

Yet outside Shanghai a glare of electric light also welcomed visitors to

department stores and public buildings. R. A. Lundquist, on a mission to investigate the market for electrical goods in China, was struck in 1918 by

the number of small shops of all kinds that had good electricity, giving ‘an

impression of being over rather than under lighted, and unquestionably the

foot-candle intensity is greater in an average small Chinese retail store than it is in many a store of equivalent importance in a small American city’ These

46.Yet King restaurant at night, Canton, 1940s.

stores also used electric signs to advertise their wares, not only in Shanghai,

but ‘even in fairly remote interior towns’, according to special agent Thomas Sammons.**

Most electricity, however, was used in large public events. The Shanghai

Products Exposition was opened in November 1909 in Zhangyuan. The sign-

post for the exhibition was decorated with hundreds of red and green lights hung on top of a pavilion near the main entrance with a flag of the Qing dynasty. Inside the gate, even trees were adorned with light installations, while over 10,000 electric lights were on display inside the marquee. Boats on the

lake, shops and a zoo were also decorated with spectacular lights, the exhibi-

47. Gambling joint in Macao lit.

up at night, 1940s.

tion hall itself having more than twenty chandeliers with hundreds of bulbs. When all the lights were switched on, it became so bright that ‘one would

need at least 34,800 foreign candles to achieve equal brightness.” Light was often an essential part ofa good show: artificial light, for instance, was used

to create a stunning spectacle on the greyhound tracks in Shanghai. State-

of-the-art lighting systems produced a dazzling contrast between the dark

wilderness around the tracks and the tracks themselves, ‘ablaze with electric

torches’ and ‘as bright as daytime in the evening’, according to the Shenbao.

Even local villagers attended some of the free trial races, exclaiming what a

wonderful sight the spectacle was.*

Light was also used extensively to mark particular occasions: in Canton

a beacon was

erected on top of a hill dominating the city to remember the

founding father of the nation Sun Yatsen.” New buildings—for example the

completion of a road in Canton—were inaugurated with much fanfare, including massive illuminated arches.’ The Hotel des Communications in Tian-

jin—specifically designed to the highest standards for local businessmen—was

opened in time for Christmas in 1928 with thousands of external lamps, just

like the gigantic Industrial Bazaar (Quanyechang) nearby.“' In 1922, on the eve of the Chinese New Year, major streets in Hankou were lit up with coloured 138

A Nation Electrified electric lights, looking ‘more beautiful than bright stars’ according to Min

Huiming.*? During national holidays buildings and towers were covered with electric lights, while on the anniversary of the founding of the republic huge

light towers were erected in some cities to celebrate the event.** It was no coincidence that the light tower (dengta) resembled traditional structures like the

pagoda or the archway: in Thailand too huge gateways and triumphal arches were erected during royal pageants which used tens of thousands of electric lights, as traditional structures were electrified.

Electric light enthralled local people: when in the late 1920s electric

lights were launched in a part of Chengdu, many finished their dinner early and brought along small stools to watch the spectacle, the area becoming so crowded that traffic came to a halt. By eight o'clock,as the crowd became more

and more excited, the light was suddenly switched on, onlookers exclaiming:

‘It’s bright!"° The lights used in the local department store were referred to as ‘big electric balls’ (dadiangiu), people even coming from the countryside to admire them: every afternoon the teahouse in front was filled with customers eager to see the lights come on, some even applauding and cheering

48. The entrance of a shop surrounded by billboards and brightly lit by a variety of light sources, Shanghai, 1948. 139

Electricity, Telephone and Water as if at a fair.’ The famous novelist Guo Moruo captured the occasion in his

childhood memory of Chengdu:'It was so crowded in front of the shopping

mall that horse carriages and larger vehicles could hardly move. Suddenly [one heard] the sound of a whistle and people would rush to see the electric light

being switched on.” In Canton bamboo verses published in 1920 expressed

amazement at the abundance of light: ‘My eyes are dazzled by electric lights

everywhere, on the river I can hear flutes playing and see modern buildings

all around me. I am completely bewildered by crowds of vehicles and peo-

ple: Canton is full of spring and ten times better than Yangzhou.’ Ba Jin, a notable author, was also so captivated by Canton in 1933 that he watched the

city by night through binoculars: it gave him a thrill to see the city being lit

up by electric light, particularly during festivals.*”

To a country which made an abundant display of lanterns carried on

bamboo poles at traditional festivals and important social occasions, profuse

electric bulbs must have seemed both propitious and decorous. In Suzhou

in 1911 even the traditional lanterns carried in funeral processions were re-

placed with electric lamps.*” Maybe light warded off evil spirits and demons: candles were certainly a central element in all religious ceremonies. Light was important enough for Taoist priests to use batteries in the 1950s during the Hungry Ghosts Festival in Hong Kong to light up the coloured silk pom-

49. One-man shoe factory in Bishan, complete with electric light, Sichuan province, 1940s 140

A Nation Electrified poms which popped out from their high birettas, which were worn on top

of skull caps.>"

In Chengdu, as elsewhere, the advent of street-lighting in the late 1920s

allowed market vendors to stay open in the evening: electric light moder-

nised the night market. In Beijing peddlers could continue their trade in

the evening thanks to electric lighting. In Canton night markets appeared instead of morning markets in the first decades of the twentieth century,

while window shopping in the evening became fashionable in Hankou

thanks to electricity: ‘Ladies walk up and down like so many clouds, gazing at new items in the department store as if watching a play. There is no more

night with thousands of electric lights brightening the sky...“ Brothels were

also keen to use light to attract customers, and in Xi'an the district where prostitutes congregated was so well lit that locals referred to the area as ‘the

everbright city’.* Parks used electric bulbs, which acted as a magnet for insects in the evening, thus allowing leisurely activities in parks and gardens to continue

after dusk unencumbered by flies and mosquitoes.* Other more pragmatic

uses were found for light: in the first years of the republic sedan-chair carriers

counted street lights as they passed them to determine fares.*” Even in China’s

unelectrified backwaters, such as the mountain villages along Songlingshan

in western Liaoning, electrical cables had their uses—for instance as fishing

implements.** There was much fear surrounding the use of electricity, but it was quickly

dissipated. In Chengdu some locals were worried that electricity poles might

fall during a storm and electrocute pedestrians, although most were impressed on hearing that oil, petrol or matches would no longer be needed to make

light since it could now appear at the touch of a switch.* Fear of electricity

was also far from trivial in England,as stories circulated about old ladies keep-

ing plugs in all the sockets to prevent the electricity from leaking out, and of

farmers refusing to allow potentials of more than 50 volts in apprehension of the unpredictable power of the current. In England and the United States

popular ideas about electricity as a dark, invisible source of mysterious energy

were sufficiently common for the electrical industries to take them seriously; education campaigns were launched in the 1920s and ‘30s to portray the

electric current as a clean, wholesome and friendly power of nature.” In comparison electricity seems to have been welcomed

republican China.

far more

eagerly in

While electric light was often confined to government institutions or

municipal spaces, growing numbers of individual households started install-

ing electricity after 1911. In Fuzhou electricity appeared in the 1910s, and electric lighting was installed in the house ofa naval officer Xie Baozhang,

141

Electricity, Telephone and Water to the great excitement

of all the children in the household. Bulbs were

suspended from the ceiling, one in each room, five or six in the reception

area. Because the main switch was placed next to the father’s bed, the entire

household would be plunged in darkness as soon as he went to bed at nine in the evening, obliging each branch of the family to revert back to kerosene

lamps."' Kerosene was also used as the chief source of light by poor families

in Beijing, although up to a third of other families were using electricity by 1933;

the ordinary charge for electricity was 24 cents a kilowatt hour.

Electricity was more common in Shanghai, where 10 per cent of workers

used it for lighting in the 1930s, while others stuck to kerosene. In wealthy households in the north, it was common to hang blackwood lanterns with

electric bulbs shining through the white silk.*°

Bulbs came in all shapes and sizes, although bayonet-type sockets were

used rather than the screw type.“ They were furnished at first by Philips (the

Netherlands), Osram (Germany) and General Electric (the USA), but local factories started producing them from 1921 onwards.*”A full electric war started in the mid-1920s as foreign and local producers battled over the common

globe:in 1925 they were even sold at $8.50 to $9.50 per 100,a price considered

to be well below the cost of production, although it bounced back to higher

levels after a truce in the cut-throat competition over the market.“ Until the

Second World War the electrical supply industry developed by great strides to cope with popular demand: annual production was estimated at 15 million

bulbs on top of the 5 million produced by a large American factory.”

Bulbs were easy to manufacture and ideally suited to small enterprises: they were churned out by more than thirty small factories by 1937,Yapu’er

and Huade being the most popular.” Many consumers preferred to use light-

weight bulbs because they gave a brighter light, even if they tended to use

more electricity and had a shorter life-span than ordinary bulbs.”' Switches came in a bewildering variety, sustained by customer choice: tumbler switches, rotary switches, snap switches, push switches and pendant switches were common, and porcelain-covered

turn buttons, hard-rubber-base

and cover-turn

buttons were widespread.” In contrast to the sheer diversity of bulbs and

switches, drop cord lighting was usual in houses and offices, white opal, coloured glass and pink shades being preferred.”* Where

electricity was unavailable, the flashlight provided a substitute.

Invented about 1896 to eliminate the danger of fire when using a candle or a

kerosene lamp in sea ching closets and wardrobes, flashlights were extremely

popular devices in China, in particular in the countryside. The principal

commodity for sale in 1937 in Liuzhou, Guangxi province, was the electric torch." A decade later, Olga Lang observed that for rich peasants they were

A Nation Electrified

50. Drum Tower, Beijing, with electricity and telegraph cables, 1920s,

among the most popular gadgets, which could be used at night to light one’s way through dark streets.” Harrison Forman, writing after the Second World War, also noted how ‘perhaps the most popular of foreign gadgets (now made

in China) is the flashlight. It is so much more efficient than the old flickering

lamp to light one’s way through muddy, dark streets.'”° Torches became indispensable in the cities during the war, since all lights went out during air raids:

everybody had one in Chongqing when the wartime capital was frequently bombed in 1939-41.”

Flashlights were not only useful at night in unlit alleys and dark villages,

but they were considered safer than the traditional lighted lanterns used by

farmers for walking through the fields: some country people feared that

burglars and bandits could easily follow their movements thanks to the lights they carried, while the torch could be flashed on intermittently as needed.”

The flashlight also helped policemen make their way through the crowds which huddled in night trains, and anti-bandit teams in the hinterland.” Foreign flashlights were common, Barney and Berry cleverly capitalised on the farmer's on the wall by adding a hook on one end in the 1930s.”

patrolling small villages Eveready in particular; habit of hanging tools Native products were

even more successful: the Dawuwei torch carried three batteries and lasted for fourteen hours: it was advertised in the 1930s as being one-third of the

143

Electricity, Telephone and Water price of imported ones.*' Batteries, like other electricals, were the ideal item

for the small-scale industries favoured in republican China, and no less than

sixty companies produced them by the end of the 1930s." More generally, by 1930 not only flashlights and batteries but all types of small electricals— motors, conduits, transformers, desk and ceiling fans, switches, sockets and

receptacles—were being produced locally at prices considerably below the import products.**

51. Packaging for the Great Dreadnaught.

Light was a key metaphor of enlightenment. Min-ch’ien Tyau viewed mo-

dernity as the light of the world, believing that those who first received it would lead while the others would follow." Novelists assigned different values

to light, Ba Jin, for instance, describing the end of the night in his epic Family as the death of electric lighting: ‘The night died, and with it the glow of

the electric lights died too. Darkness ruled the big compound. The dismal

cry the electric lamps uttered as they expired still quivered in the air." The

“feeble glow’ of oil lamps,by contrast, reveal the ‘expressionless’ faces of the old generation, ‘corpse-like figures’.“’ In Cold Nights the lack of electricity, and

the ensuing odour of acetylene lamps at the height of the civil war (1948-9), was portrayed by Ba Jin as a metaphor for the decomposition of public order

and of the political system.”” In Mao Dun’s universe, however, electric power stood for capitalist power, oppressive and glaring: one of his novels had a roof, in Shanghai displaying a ‘gigantic neon sign in flaming red and phosphorescent green: LIGHT, HEAT, POWER". Power was precisely what the

owners of ‘the Company’ in a short story wanted to purvey with their mas-

sive, bright and imposing electric chandelier in the entrance hall."’ 1.” Elsewhere

electric clocks dictated the pace of an industrialising world,” while factory

light bulbs twinkled ‘sallow-faced through the dense clouds of steam’.”' Light

as enlightenment or power as oppressive, in all cases metaphors of electricity

pervaded the fictional world of republican China, further imbuing it with a

variety of local meanings. WATER

FROM

THE

DRAGON’S

MOUTH

Both excess and dearth of water were constant threats in China.” Floods, tidal

waves and monsoon rains wrought havoc, although concrete and rubber—

in addition to elaborate hydraulic strategies—increasingly helped to protect

against constant humidity, Droughts, however, killed crops and farmers. Riv-

ers were abundantly used for washing, cooking and, once boiled, drinking.

Surface wells were widespread, and water, like so many other commodities,

was brought to the doorstep of most houscholds by specialist carrie

In

Beijing water was carried to the gates of most residences in large wooden

144

Water from the Dragon's Mouth wheelbarrows and taken inside the compound in buckets. However, despite

the merits ofa sophisticated system of wells, entire provinces lacked adequate drinking water: in Guizhou most water was stagnant, and ‘drinking from wells

is considered as particularly unhealthy’.”* Sources for drinking water could

be contaminated even in Shanghai, contributing to the spread of diseases.” According to Wang Tao (1828-87), local water there tasted so bad that it

spoilt the tea.” Tea houses, of course, put a premium on pure water, not for

health concerns but because it enhanced the taste of the beverage they served.

In Suzhou tea houses collected rain water or obtained it from selected wells

or unpolluted canals outside the city, where boats operated specifically for

this purpose.”

Tap water was first discovered by imperial envoys on board the ships which took them to Europe in the 1860s. Zhang Deyi observed that ‘each cabin has a big wooden bath coated with tin. On one side there is a dragon

mouth (long=ui) with running water.A clepsydra hangs on top with a dragon

mouth below. To run cold water one simply turns it.”” Once in Europe or the

United States, early imperial envoys were rarely unimpressed by the public

provision of running water. Li Gui thus exclaimed in Europe that ‘water runs. to different streets and will never become exhausted, so that people can use as

much as they need: how wonderful and convenient!"

52. Farmer pouring water into bucket from a gas tank strapped onto a wooden cart used to collect water from fresh springs and sold on the town's market, Lindong, 1947.

Electricity, Telephone and Water

In 1875 the imperial government started to install a system of pipes to bring water to Shanghai, although the enterprise was abandoned due to prohibitive costs.” In 1880 a concern of large foreign companies and banks

established the British Merchants Water Company, which began to supply

the city with drinking water in 1883, as described by an admiring observer: ‘Underneath the water tower there is a very deep pool from which water

is mechanically extracted. Once the water is filtered it is diverted into iron pipes about 0.3 diameters wide. These are buried all the way from Jinanshi to

Dongxiaomen. At street level there is an iron water tank about a metre high

every ten steps, linked to the pipe underground. A mechanical stopper on top [of the tank] can be turned on, and water immediately shoots out... the

waterman can deliver it straight to your door. No matter what the distance, it costs 10 wen for one bucket of water. The water looks so clean that everybody

has nothing but praise.” Running water was suspected by some of being

poisoned, but it took the local population very little time to conquer these

fears and welcome new technologies." In 1883 the local water company

employed vendors to try to persuade local residents to buy the water, although

the response was rather disappointing, as ‘ordinary people were afraid of water

from an unknown source." Already by the spring of 1884, however, the

situation had changed and the sale of water started to increase,’ while in the following years consumption would leap. Decades later even wealthy home-

steads which repudiated things modern marvelled at the idea of running

water: a mere turn of the tap would obviate the need to draw water up a well, carry it across courtyards in wooden buckets, heat it in iron cauldrons and dip it into a container to be carried to a tub." Water companies quickly appeared throughout the country, as Shanghai became a central node in a global frame of reference which other cities were keen to emulate. In 1898 a water company was established in Tianjin, and in

1901 a German entrepreneur opened a similar enterprise in Qingdao; Beijing

followed in 1908. In 1909, with the erection ofa 48-metre-high water tower,

most households in Hankou could be connected to running water."

The example of Canton shows how municipal government in republican

China advanced in the conquest of water. A modern

water company was

organised in Canton as early as 1905, and a steel water tower was built near Saikwan alongside waterworks by the Western River at Tsangpu. The waterworks became an entirely private concern in 1915, calling itself the Canton Waterworks Company and installing a steam turbine pump which raised the total capacity to 11 million gallons a day. Like the electricity company mentioned earlier, it was taken over by the government in 1929. The method

used by the old waterworks consisted of letting water flow from the river

146

Water from the Dragon's Mouth

53, Squatters queue for running water, Shanghai, 1948. through a pre-sedimentation basin into a second elevated basin, from where

it was forced through sand filters before undergoing a chlorination process.

The new filtration plant at Tsangpu, opened in 1931, had a much faster rate of filtration by using sixteen gravity filter beds: the water went through four

processes

aeration, coagulation, filtration and chlorination—before being

distributed to the city. By 1935 the three existing waterworks produced a

total of about 24 million gallons of water daily, still insufficient to cover the

needs of the population, water often not reaching the third and fourth floors

of buildings in daytime.

Canton may have been exceptionally successful, but other cities also in-

vested heavily in running water. Pressurised water was available from the mains of the Beijing Water Company in a large section of the city by the 1930s, although the cost of plumbing was prohibitive for poorer families. Most of the water came from surface wells, although some of the carriers obtained their supply from the hydrants of the water company." In Nanjing 147

Electricity, Telephone and Water

six artesian wells were bored and equipped with a pumping system. While

river water and well water were generally used by the residential population, a modern water system was initiated after 1929 to draw water from the Neijiang river and store it in a precipitate tank, a filtration tank and one pure water

tank.'* In Shanghai the waterworks were so sophisticated that by the 1930s

roughly two-thirds of workers had access to tap water, which was almost

always shared by a row ofhouses." Yet even in the 1920s large numbers of ordinary people were unfamiliar with tap water: on a foreign steamer plying local rivers the tap on board was left running, because passengers were unused to seeing water run out of a pipe." ELECTRIC

WORDS,

WONDER

OF

ALL

WONDERS

As contemporary observers were liable to note, millions in republican China

were being electrified by modern methods of communication, in particu-

lar the telephone.''' The first telephone conversation in Chinese took place

in 1877. Ambassador Guo Songtao picked up a call and spoke to his inter-

preter Zhang Deyi when both were visiting a telephone factory in London: “Can you hear me?’ ‘I can hear you’, came the answer at the other end of

the line. Naming it a ‘machine which transmits sounds’ (shengbao jig), Guo

Songtao

solemnly

declared that ‘the principles behind

the telephone

are

impenetrable’.'"? Two decades later imperial envoys were still marvelling at

telephony. Xue Fucheng transliterated ‘telephone’ as delifeng: If the telegraph

is wonderful, then the telephone is the wonder of all wonders. This instru-

ment was invented in 1876 as an American called Bell used an electric current to capture human sounds which are relayed through wires and converted

back again into sound." In 1881, addressing a more popular audience, the Shenbao described the instrument as follows: “You

lift one end and speak into

the receiver, the sound is transmitted to the other end, which the listener

places against his ear’

One of the first telephones to appear in China was installed in the Astor

Hotel in Tianjin with the blessing of the regional governor Li Hongzhang in 1879."'5 The first telephone system was established at Canton in 1903 with

three exchanges for 100 users, a number which gradually rose; in 1927 there

were over 2,300 magnetic phones. Most firms would buy their own sets and pay a service charge to the telephone administration. Women

operators,

called ‘hello girls’, were used from the very beginning in the telephone ex-

changes, in stark contrast to the situation in the north of China. Over thirty were retained in 1929 with the installation of an automatic system in order to operate the long-distance calls and supply information to the public. The first 148

Electric Words, Wonder of all Wonders

automatic telephones were installed in the city by the Chicago Automatic

Telephone Company in 1926. The China Electric Company, a subsidiary of

the International Telephone and Telegraph Company, offered to fit a system for the city on a loan basis: the new system went into operation in August

1929 after installation fees had been collected and new numbers issued to applicants. An entire new network of wiring, cables and telephone poles was

constructed while the old wires were cut. More lines followed a few years

later to meet increased demand, making a total of 10,000 telephones in 1933.

A long distance service between Canton and Hong Kong was inaugurated in 1931, as the greetings of the mayor were transmitted to the crown colony.''®

In the 1930s other cities also acquired telephone exchanges, some entirely automatic, as well as toll telephone communications with neighbour-

ing towns. Private telephone systems also appeared, although generally the

number of lines in any one exchange was relatively small, ranging from 2,500 telephone handsets in Hangzhou in 1912" to some 17,720 in Beijing by the end of the republican era. The Shanghai Telephone Company had well over

60,000 telephones in service in 1938, serving both the International Settlement and the French Concession: 126 million local calls were made that year.

A further 5,850 lines were operated outside the concessions by the govern-

ment exchange by the end of 1936.'"* By the middle of the 1930s telephones

had become quite common in Shanghai, and the Shanghai Telephone Com-

pany confidently introduced specially adapted sets designed for home use,

three new colour ranges (ivory, chestnut and green), and an automatic dialling

machine capable of storing up to fifty numbers.""?

Most telephones were used by government institutions and large compa-

nies, although some families also installed the telephone. Liang Shiqiu’s father immediately fitted a huge telephone against the wall (number 606, which

shows how hundreds followed the trend) after the collapse of the empire.'””

Until his retirement in 1926 Zhang Yuanji’s telephone bill was paid for by his employers (Commercial Press): with its elegant coffee colour, gumwood

box and impressive bells, the early telephone set was profoundly imprinted

on the memory of his son.!! Telephones—like modernity—could appear in the most unexpected places. Peter Fleming, forced to stop during a storm

in a small temple in the remote countryside of Jiangxi province in the early

1930s, was being treated to a cup of tea when the telephone rang, causing what he thought was an incongruous clash among the old images with gilded faces." With the telephone came new freedoms. The last emperor Puyi experi-

mented with the new device, which he had installed in 1920 to the horror of

the head of the Household Department who believed that ringing bells and

149

Electricity, Telephone and Water electric lights had no place in the time-honoured system. The telephone, it

was murmured, might also damage imperial dignity, although the ability of Puyi to have more contact with the outside world was probably what fright-

ened his staff most. The telephone company sent a directory along with the

apparatus, and the last emperor's first call was addressed to an opera actor,

although he hung up before saying who he was. He also called up a restaurant and ordered a meal to be delivered to a false address, using his newly

discovered freedom to amuse himself until he phoned again and invited the celebrated scholar Hu Shi to come to the palace. The phone thus cut straight

through imperial protocol and palace etiquette, allowing the last emperor di-

rect contact with the world beyond the pink walls of the Forbidden City.'*

Wealthy ladies also discovered the freedom that came with the telephone,

and some used it on the most trifling excuses: a social call could be made and a

friendship strengthened without the trouble of changing one’s clothes, hiring

a rickshaw or buying a present.’ In general, in a highly hierarchical society in

which complex rituals inevitably accompanied social encounters, whether in the opium house, the tea house or the reception room, socially awkward situa-

tions as well as time-consuming social visits could be avoided thanks to the tele-

phone. On the other hand, while the telephone was a sign of wealth and status, ordinary people occasionally also had an opportunity to use the device: while

Ling Shuhua’s father was a high-ranking official who regarded telephones as a waste of money and made a point of never returning telephone calls, his cook

and a market runner spent an hour arguing with each other on the phone,

until their connection was cut—as well as their wages for the day.'"5 A sense

of disembodiment could strike those who encountered the telephone for the

first time: as Luo Han wondered, ‘the voice is here but where is the person?’'* Those who could not afford the telephone—the vast majority—could use

telephone booths, installed in Hangzhou in 1907 in eight popular spots'?”

and two years later in Suzhou: each call cost five coppers.'* Public telephone

booths also appeared in other cities, greater Shanghai being one of the first to

respond to public demand for the telephone.'” Booths were proudly installed

in prominent public spaces in the new capital Nanjing, conveying an aura of

modernity."

The postal services underwent dramatic changes, although this is not the

place to examine in detail the increased number of letters which crisscrossed

the country: by the end of June 1936 the Post Office had over 320,000

miles of courier lines across Division even thought that tariff reasonable, as will be tries’.'“! More visible in the

Bu

the country, while the British Naval Intelligence the service offered was ‘quite complete, and the found in many well-developed Western counmaterial landscape of republican China was the

Electric Words, Wonder of all Wonders

telegraph, which also revolutionised communications: with telegraph lines belting the globe as the nerve fibres of modern civilisation, China was more closely integrated with the rest of the world.A line between Shanghai and Tianjin was opened on 24 December 1881, although short lines from Tianjin

to the port of Dagu and from Shanghai to Wusong already existed, as well

as a submarine cable linking Shanghai and Hong Kong. In the following

years cities like Nanjing, Hankou, Beijing and Canton were joined up, while lines were opened to connect even the main cities of Xinjiang in 1887. A line across Mongolia from Kiakhta to Beijing in 1897 gave China land-telegraphic communication with Europe for the first time. William Geil, touring the country in 1904, noted that ‘China has built telegraph lines more rapidly

than any other country’, although the wires were frequently cut and used lo-

cally in Yunnan." By the end of June 1936 over 65,000 miles of land lines

were in operation, as well as 115,000 miles of wires.'** In contrast to the telephone, the telegraph lent itself perfectly to the terse style of literary Chinese ~a feature not lost on impoverished scholars in the 1920s and 1930s.'* The

telegraph also found other uses: before the advent of the macadamised road,

travellers would rely on the telegraph wire to avoid losing their way in the

countryside: ‘How we blessed that solitary wire!’ exclaimed Fullerton and Wilson, who had plodded through Shanxi on mule carts in 1909.'"*

Republican China is often portrayed as a period marred by ‘political involu-

tion’,‘economic stagnation’ or ‘social disintegration’, although, as the past few chapters have shown, modernity was alive and well, as a golden age of openness allowed people, things and ideas to move in and out of the country as

never before. Global flows fostered an unprecedented diversity which has

yet to be fully recognised and appreciated, although contemporary observ-

ers were fully aware of the rapid changes transforming the everyday lives of

millions. When we turn away from a purely economic analysis to look at the

qualitative changes introduced by electricity, telephony and running water, it

becomes clear that even ordinary people were dazzled by the modern utilities they encountered in public buildings, department stores, government exhibi-

tions, night markets and ceremonial arches. Ordinary people even brought

along small stools to watch the electric lights being switched on when they

were introduced in Chengdu. In republican China, unlike England and the

United States where negative ideas about electricity as a dark source of evil

energy were common enough to force electricity industries to launch a series

of education campaigns in the 1920s and °30s, electricity was welcomed. And

if few could afford to have electricity installed at home, many were delighted

Electricity, Telephone and Water

by the flashlight, repelling darkness and warding off bandits as well as evil spirits. Running water may at first have been suspected by some of being

poisoned, but it too quickly convinced local populations of its benefits. A

mere turn of the tap, after all, was far more convenient than the drawing of

water up a well, to be carried home in heavy wooden buckets. In all cases wealthy merchants and ordinary farmers marvelled at mechanical objects as if they were animate, whether the wonderful sight of running water or the

simple switching on of a light: exuberance and enchantment in technologi-

cal devices was widespread, leading to low levels of resistance against novelty.

This lack of resistance becomes even more apparent when we move away from large networks, nodes and grids of modernity to examine in Part I] how

the houses, clothes and food of individuals were transformed by endless acts

oi

of creative appropriation.

PART

II

APPROPRIATION: PEOPLE AND OBJECTS

7 DWELLING

‘House’, home’ and ‘family’: the term jia expresses the close relationship in China between shelter and family, since living space was a dynamic entity which changed to accommodate evolving relationships within the family.' A flexible use of space, for instance, allowed rooms to be added as the family

expanded. The permeability of the house in imperial China,as Ronald Knapp has argued, was one aspect of a remarkable continuity of form throughout

history, while principles of symmetry, axiality, orientation, layout and structure

were other characteristics which have recurred from ancient times to the

present, often revealing traditional beliefs and imperial cosmology. The closer

inclusion of China into a global network of trade from the mid-nineteenth century onwards nonetheless brought in its wake momentous changes in the architecture and materiality of the house, so much so that by the end of the twentieth century the majority of buildings in cities are starkly modern with minimal vestiges of traditional crafts such as joinery: cement has all but re-

placed wood, glass windows are ubiquitous, electricity and running water are

pervasive, and the form and layout are more reminiscent of Europe than of the

Qing. New dwellings in the republican period also drew on more traditional

designs and practices, often contributing to an enhancement of the existing architectural repertoire rather than to the disappearance of secular trends: the

use of either rectangular or square shapes, considered preferable to L- or Ushaped layouts for fengshui reasons, is one example.? However, as this chapter

shows, new building materials and new architectural conceptions led to a

gradual sealing off of the house, as glass windows, solid doors, stone or concrete walls and fixed layouts created more rigid boundaries with the outside world

than the porous dwellings of tradition: the interaction between permeable

and enclosed space in republican China is the theme of the first half of this chapter. The second half looks at domestic objects, invoking evidence about

changing interiors among wealthy circles as well as about objects such as the

Dwelling

kerosene lamp and the looking glass which appealed to much larger sections

of the population. It argues that modernising elites, by virtue of their closer

familiarity with the foreign, most conspicuously started appropriating new

objects by the end of the Qing, but ultimately ordinary people, thanks to their

distance from the centres of power, were the least inhibited about acquiring

goods from abroad which were perceived to be meaningful and useful. Working men and women, through small if often severely constrained choices on

how their hard-earned money should be distributed, incrementally changed

the material landscape of the quotidian in modern China, starting with their

own homes.

THE

PERMEABLE

HOUSE

SURVIVES

Most houses in imperial times were permeable if only because so few were built

of lasting materials: well into the republican period millions in the countryside sheltered in mud huts that were damp in wet weather and dark and cold during the winter. Poor farmers in the north lived in simple earth-walled

houses, unadorned with paint or whitewash, which often collapsed in monsoons or dissolved in floods. Wealthier families used partly baked bricks and tile roofs, while all the walls were based on solid material in order to protect

them from the humidity during the straw could insulate the upper wall sun-dried mud bricks, stuck together generally unhewn trunks, supported

summer floods. An inch-thick layer of from damp. Walls were built up with with yet more mud. Transverse beams, the weight of the roof and divided the

house into rooms; windows were papered.’ The floor was often of earth and

consequently damp, timber was untrimmed and the roof tiles were visible; water would be sprinkled to make the dust settle. The notion of a ‘residence’

in itself is of dubious value when describing the many millions of buildings

which were designed to shelter people and goods alike. The farm was often used as a barn or storehouse, with farm tools and equipment, or seeds for planting, hanging on the walls: ‘only rarely does one find attempts at adornment with pictures, paint, or even whitewash’, as John Buck noticed while studying thousands of households in north and east-central China in the 1920s.‘

Poverty alone, however, does not account for the lack of heavy houses built of sturdy materials for durability and prestige. As S.A. M. Adshead has

argued, houses in Europe demanded a high initial investment of capital and

low subsequent maintenance.’ In imperial China shelter with low initial outlay and high subsequent maintenance was preferred: carpenters rather

than masons or tilers assumed a leading position in house building. We have

noted in the introduction that small household enterprises in the countryside

The Permeable House Survives were widespread, allowing families to weave cotton or make paper umbrellas during the empty hours: lack of capital was not an impediment to economic activity. In a country where

minimum

use of fixed capital was the norm

and business aimed at a rapid turnover, interest rates tended to be high and liquidity was the ideal. The same preference applied to shelter, with everything being built with the aim of flexibility and low expense, from the impe-

rial but jerry-built palaces of the Ming to the adobe hut of the farmer. Low

initial cost encouraged labour intensity since there was little capital invested

in buildings that could be diverted to industrial investment: in a populous country with an endless supply of cheap labour these choices made perfect sense. This is not to say that prestigious mansions built by wealthy merchants

did not exist: Baron von Richthofen mentioned his amazement at the beauti-

fal and imposing dwellings in Chengdu on his visit in the 1870s, but he

considered this exceptional.* Ecological reasons also justified low investment in shelter; earthquakes, typhoons and floods discouraged capital outlay, light

wooden houses being generally safer than heavy stone buildings.

In contrast to Europe, no strong urban organisations existed to encourage

and protect prestige buildings, and merchants often chose to keep a low profile

and build for utility. In this context it is not surprising that warehouses, shops, restaurants, guilds and compounds for native place associations built in Shanghai by local people introduced for the first time a degree of brashness and self-conscious theatricality that would have been out of place in any other

city. This was made possible not only by a combination of foreign and local architectural principles, as Jonathan Hay argues,’ but, more important, by the

protection offered by foreign concessions: these buildings were entirely re-

stricted to the settlements. The absence of primogeniture also prompted the division of family property with the death of the parents, discouraging capital

investment on housing; the compound could be expanded in a lateral or forward direction by marriage of the sons, again reinforcing a flexible rather than a

durable approach to building.*

Shelter and clothing were intimately connected: the cotton clothes which

spread after the fourteenth century ideally complemented permeable build-

ings, as more layers of garments could be put on as temperatures became colder (more on this in the next chapter). Lack of heating in poorly insulated houses encouraged the isolation of the body by one layer of cotton after the other, an observation which

is as true of the luxury skyscrapers in Hong

Kong today as it was for the mud huts in Beijing in the fifteenth century. As

Dyer Ball noted of the majority of people in China, ‘when he is indoors he

a4g

is generally out of doors’: houses were open all through their interiors, open courts alternating with main buildings.” In the subtropical climate dominant

Dwelling in the south, high humidity during both summer and winter caused mildew to colonise valuable household items and wood to rot. Ventilation by the use

of skywells and verandas in permeable dwellings could mitigate the formation of mould, while openwork latticed windows and movable partitions further helped to capture ambient breezes—even during the cold winter months."" Electric fans conveniently contributed to the movement of air seen to be so

important in fighting mildew.

Flexible building entailed that wood was the material of choice rather

than stone, and vast amounts of it where imported from overseas: hardwoods

from Southeast Asia during the sixteenth century, sapanwood transported in

Japanese junks from Ayudhya in the seventeenth and Siamese teak in Chinese

ships in the eighteenth. Oregon pine began to be imported in the middle of the nineteenth century, and after the Boxer rebellion it was used systematically for the modern government buildings in Beijing. With increasingly violent sandstorms from the barren north, it was found that the lumber imported

from the United States looked better than other woods which were easily stained by the brown dust.'' When shortages in timber appeared in the early

modern period with rapid demographic growth, substitutes were increasingly

used, for instance tamped earth in the treeless north. In the south greater use

of brick and tile reduced reliance on wood before the 1870s.As we have seen in Chapter 5, cement became the ultimate substitute of wood conquer the country in the twentieth century. THE

SOLID

HOUSE

and would

SPREADS

Between the ages of wood and cement, brick and mortar made a brief appearance, marking a more general move from the outside to the inside, symbolising a shift from an architecture of the ephemeral to a vision of permanence. As China entered the twentieth century, the well-to-do started moving into

modern houses. The Manchu Prince Su was one of the first in Beijing to build a house in foreign style equipped with furniture from Europe, and his example was followed by many others. All the new government buildings had glass windows, board floors and corrugated iron roofs rather than the old paper windows, brick beds, brick floors and tile roofs used before 1900. The mayor of the capital himself came to inspect the rope, weight and pulley used

to open and close the windows in his house built by a carpenter shop run

by three Christian Chinese.’? This trend accelerated after the collapse of the

empire, as brick houses with stone floors and tile roofs appeared across the city, After Beijing lost its status as the capital and many inhabitants left the

The Solid House Spreads

54. The house ofa wealthy merchant with stuccoed walls, modern lawns and traditional

stone lions, rockeries and pavilions, 1931 north, these houses were rented out to the poor, thus coming within the

reach of a larger proportion of the people."’

In Shanghai wealthy compradors living in close contact with foreign traders

were undoubtedly the first to introduce modern elements into their homes. In

the 1890s Charlie Song’s modern house in Hongkou had a water-closet and

a staircase which led to four bedrooms and several bathrooms. Cold running

water was laid on while heating was produced by gas radiators,a luxury that many expatriates in Shanghai could not afford.'* Several decades later, in 1938,

Wu Tongwen, the king of Shanghai’s dye industry, had a residence built by the Hungarian architect L. E. Hudec which was hailed as the most luxurious

and ‘super modern’ (chao xiandai) building in East Asia at the time (Hudec

built numerous other local landmarks, including the Park Hotel, Asia’s tallest,

in 1934). The ‘Green House’ (Liifangzi), covered in green ceramic tiles in the

style of an imperial palace, was the first private residence in China to benefit from air-conditioning, and had a roof conservatory and a garage.'*

If detached houses remained the prerogative of the few, small flats appealed to a growing circle of professionals after the fall of the empire. James Lee was

deeply impressed by multi-storey buildings after visiting the United Sates in

1915,and erected the first apartment house ever in Shanghai, known as the Lee

Apartments, on Avenue Joffre: it was four storeys high. His next venture was the Bubbling Well Apartments—eight storeys high and containing an elevator, a

cinema on the ground floor and an arcade offering coffee shops and night clubs.To his own surprise, given the radical departure of the development from traditional buildings, all the shops were fully rented out before completion."

159

Dwelling

55. Row of motley shacks for refugees on the banks of a river in Shanghai, standing in contrast to the concrete houses of betteroff urbanites, 1948

Apartment flats rapidly became fashionable with the wealthy in Shanghai.

The building boom of the 1920s and ’30s gradually replaced the older oneand two-storey structures throughout the business sections of the city with

modern buildings rising eight to ten stories high: in no other city of East

Asia did modern apartment buildings develop so extensively as in Shanghai.” Estate agents proudly advertised the ferro-concrete structures of modern

apartment buildings, listing hot and cold water and the ceramic tiles of bath-

rooms and kitchens to entice the wealthy buyer.'* Apartment flats catered

mainly to professional groups, although even independent women could earn enough to move in. Liang Yen, teaching Mandarin to foreigners in Shanghai

in the 1930s, made enough to rent a large modern apartment on Bubbling

Well Road in the heart of the International Settlement, fully equipped with an American gas stove, a boiler, a big refrigerator, a tiled bathroom and a sun

porch. She even kept an amah to answer the door and the phone. Liang Yen

was only nineteen and had fled from her home in Beijing with four dollars in her pocket.'”

More enclosed spaces followed changing notions of the family, as modernising elites increasingly aimed at establishing an independent household sepa-

rate from the living space of the husband’ family. There was not only a trend towards smaller, nuclear families with the rise of professional groups in the

coastal cities, but also a tendency among those who could afford it to live alone, 160

The Solid House Spreads if not permanently then at least for a period of time before marriage. Privacy,

normally associated with the entire family rather than with a single person,

became important, as the home was seen as a repository of the individual, a

place of dissociation of the domestic self from the surrounding social world.

Zhang Ailing loved her flat in Shanghai, from the hot water and the lift to

the faint sound of city life: above all, she liked the freedom of apartment life,

as even servants were no longer needed on a permanent basis. Su Qing did

not have a flat, but she craved the freedom to lock the door, and the rest of

the world, behind her, however small, dingy and noisy her space might be.”A sense of privacy also struck Lin Xi, whose family moved into a modern house

in what used to be a foreign concession of Tianjin in the 1940s. In the tradi-

tional courtyard house (siheyuan) social hierarchy was constantly reinforced in an environment where everybody could see and hear everybody else: every

cough could be heard. However, the architecture of the modern house intro-

duced a sense of independence, as each member of the family could escape

from view into a private and insulated room.”' Not all households, of course, were satisfied with modern layouts. In Ling

Shuhua’s family, who occupied a modern house after moving from Canton to

Tianjin in 1914, her mother and aunt shared an extreme dislike for the new

layout, criticising the fact that the whole family was now concentrated in one

living area, using the same door for entering and exiting. In the old courtyard

home living quarters were housed in separate, interconnected buildings, far

more convenient and sensitive to social hierarchy.” Nor was the sealing of the modern house as rigorous as the use of new materials might suggest. When

Innes Jackson moved into her new residence near the campus of Wuhan Uni-

versity—a large, white and green edifice built at considerable expense—it

proved to be a nuisance to the very end of its existence: draughts were everywhere, newspaper pages had to be stuck over cracks in the front door, the tank leaked for days on end and mice scrabbled in the dark. However, despite these defects it had running water and electricity, which was more than many

could claim.’ Carl Crow, resident in Shanghai for many years, also pointed

at the reluctance to build for permanence and thought that all construction was shoddy: the ‘hollow brick’ method, thought to be a modern architectural

improvement, had long been used in China in order to save money, producing

a deceitfully massive building. In a country of thrift and poverty the cheapest

materials possible were used at all levels of society, the only exception being

plasterwork, which could conceal poor workmanship.

Adrian Forty has emphasised how the rise of the factory and the office

in England

in the nineteenth century turned the home

into a physically

separate sphere marked by positive virtues which were lost in the workplace. 161

Dwelling While a house had previously been understood as a place of work and residence, with craftsmen, merchants and tradesmen carrying out productive activities in their homes, factory and home became increasingly distinct, and

plenty of ways were devised to enhance and maintain this distinction, from

wearing different clothes to using different types of furniture: the home was

the antithesis of the workplace, soft and plush while the office was hard and

austere.” The distinction between work and home was also important in the

republican cities, but very few of the office clerks, let alone factory workers, could actually afford to live in entirely sealed off homes, while in the country-

side the majority of ordinary people continued both to live and work in the

same place. This observation is all the more significant because houses, as

we have seen, were far more permeable in China than their counterparts in Europe: the privacy enjoyed by Zhang Ailing, and hence her ability to decorate

the interior according to her every whim, must have been exceptional, in

particular since wealthy households had numerous members, guests and staff

continuously moving about the house. In Europe the bourgeois ideal was the

married couple with children dwelling in blissful domesticity, in contrast to

the crowding of several generations of working families living together, but in

imperial China the ideal was to have an extended family with three generations

under one roof: rich people had large families, while many farmers, if they

could afford to marry and have children, lived in nuclear families, the destitute

remaining single.

With its professional women living in apartment flats and eccentric mil-

lionaires building huge mansions, Shanghai was indubitably a trendsetter, although it would be wrong to underestimate the extent to which material culture changed beyond the treaty ports along the coast. Not only could mo-

dern housing be found in all major cities of the hinterland, but even relatively

small places could be islands of modernity closely linked to global trends:

immigrant towns are a good example. One of the most significant exports of

Guangxi province—although they were not taken into account in maritime customs statistics —were the many emigrants to the Straits Settlements, Java and Sumatra, of whom many regularly remitted money to their native villages.”° With new money came new ideas and new objects. In Guangdong province

many people from Taishan emigrated to the United States: on their return

they built modern houses, established modern schools and gradually transformed themselves into a ‘model county’.”” Scattered throughout the south-

ern part of Fujian lived a ‘numerous class’ of comparatively wealthy emigrants

who ‘live in quasi-Foreign style, and sometimes even in semi-Foreign houses’,

as a British trade representative reported in 1904. In Xiamen, he added, eight

families out of ten had some of their members earning salaries abroad, while

162

The Solid House Spreads

many bought comfortable foreign residences on the foreign concession of Gulangyu.*

Several decades later a detailed sociological survey was carried out by

Chen Da in a number of small villages in Fujian and Guangdong, which

further highlighted the changes in material culture wrought by returned emigrants hours away from the larger cities.” One returned emigrant,described

as representative of the middling classes, built himself a three-floored modern

house with a balcony.” In contrast to deposits in banks—earned over many

years of hard work abroad—a house was considered to be a solid, immovable

property: people can see it but not take it away’A modern house in the ancestral village was considered the most important tangible evidence of economic success: real estate in the countryside was used to flaunt new wealth, and in south

Fujian and east Guangdong the traveller would regularly come across ostenta-

tious mansions called ‘foreign houses’ (yangfang) in villages where economic

migrants had returned: all were inspired by European or American houses.”

These houses not only concretised the social status of their owners but also

incorporated their social cosmologies, leading to a range of subtle variations

in design, layout and placement which departed from the ‘foreign houses’

from which inspiration was sought. Wealthy merchants continued to identify

traditional scholarly attributes as signs of social respectability, and built vast

studies (shuzhai) laid out in courtyards complete with rockery, fish ponds and

potted flowers. Many emigrants also followed the principles of fengshui and

avoided large windows: these could either be extremely narrow (just over 10 centimetres), placed high up near the roof or missing altogether: fear of theft contributed to the resilience of customary beliefs. However, one should not

underestimate the pace of change: even if belief in fengshui was widespread,

it changed rapidly in the republican period. In one of the migrant districts

surveyed by Chen Da 500 windows were added to existing houses in a single year.”

Material

modernity

thus transformed

the house, whether

among

the

privileged few in foreign concessions or in the midst of migrant communi-

ties in the countryside. Returned emigrants, of course, were also relatively wealthy, yet sometimes even the poor could find themselves in modern hous-

ing. In Shanghai in the mid-1930s the best type of house for workers was a two-storied building lit by electric lights and in some cases by oil lamps. The walls were made of brick and the roofs were tiled; most of the floors were

wooden, although not a few were made of cement. Tap water was shared by a row of houses.” In the shikumen house shared by workers, concrete walls with

a row of glass windows on top were used to divide rooms into separate spaces;

curtains on wires were also used to fence off space for the old and young.

163

Dwelling Furthermore, in Shanghai, Nanjing, Canton, Hankou and other large cities,

but also in smaller ‘model towns’ like Nantong, the provision of social housing for the poor became a charitable enterprise pursued by local government in search of enlightenment.”> Large ventures also increasingly built modern

housing for their workers. The Hanyehping Company rented houses to its

workers ‘with plenty of room, light and fresh air’ for a nominal fee, most being

fitted with electric light and cooking ranges. The streets in the ‘model town’ had stoneware culverts on either side and broad pavements, while each house

was provided with its private enclosure at both front and back.” In Canton, Common People’s Hostels were built for the homeless, class A dormitories at $4 a month accommodating thirty people with one desk chair, steel bed and mosquito net for each occupant. In class B dormitories upper and lower

berths could be shared for half the price.” And even if the less privileged

could not afford to live in stone or concrete buildings, they could add a glass

window, as the next section illustrates. A GLASS

WORLD

If Europeans inextricably linked porcelain with China, to the extent that it

was called ‘china’, glass came to be seen as a quintessential foreign substance. Zhang Deyi, one of the first imperial envoys to travel through France, noted that all the windows were made of glass rather than paper, bright and clear

as crystal, unbreakable by wind and impermeable to rain.* When taking the train he marvelled at the glass windows which could easily be moved up and

down.” He was also elated by the beautiful glassware on display in a glass

factory in Belgium, and commented that its sheer transparency and brightness

‘opened his eyes and heart’. In a poetic mode, he even imagined a building

in the middle of a lake with hundreds of glass rooms: ‘I would call it the glass

world, where people would live pure lives in empty rooms’*’ His imagina~

tion was not far removed from that of ordinary farmers: a few decades later

in Baisha town, Zhejiang province, local farmers referred to the only house with glass panes as the ‘glass mirror house’ (bolijing wu).*! In Shanghai the

Shenbao in 1912 suggested covering Nanjing Road with a huge glass roof, which could be opened in clement weather and closed against rain, allowing

pedestrians to stroll down the street even on a rainy day.” Earlier in the cen-

tury, far up north, ensconced behind the walls of the imperial palace, empress

dowager Cixi insisted on having a conservatory: from farmer to empress, glass held a nation in thrall.** Although plated glass was imported as early as the eighteenth century, stiff

and strongly resistant oiled paper was commonly used to cover the windows. 164

A Glass World

In the decades following the Nanjing treaty in 1842, glass windows were used more frequently by wealthy families, and broken glass was even imported

and recycled in Canton and Shanghai.“ The scholar Yang Jingting recorded

in 1845 how glass windows were fashionable in Beijing: ‘Rich families are very proud, as they no longer need to draw the curtains to see the arrival of

visitors since they have installed glass windows.* During the same period a bamboo verse judged glass to be ‘as bright and as clear as ice, and as thin as a

cicada’s wings’.** Up north in Manchuria glass windows installed in the 1880s

brought sunshine during the cold winter months, as was observed apprecia-

tively by Tai Susheng.‘” Yet even the wealthy dreaded future expense: unlike

paper windows, glass could not be repaired.** Nonetheless by 1882 a trade representative noted that all new houses had glass windows in Zhenjiang.”

In Shanghai, where trends in material culture would often be set, coloured

glass windows were popular by the 1870s, and appeared in teahouses and bars.” Further south, rich families in Canton also replaced their windows

with ‘transparent tile’ (mingwa), as glass panes were known locally.*' Plated

glass remained a luxury product for many decades, conspicuously

displayed to

indicate wealth and status: the most expensive room of an imperial institution in Suzhou, visited by William E. Geil on the eve of the 1911 revolution, had

a glass window and a modern clock, purposely placed to convey an aura of luminous modernity.”

After the fall of the empire, however, cut glass was one of the few products which held even ordinary people in awe, and Paul Myron noted in his book

on business opportunities in China that many paid high prices to obtain it.

The first glass factory in Shanghai opened in 1882, although most of the glass was imported from Belgium. Only with the onset of the First World War was

local production encouraged, leading to the appearance of 770 glass factories during the republican period, the main centre being Boshan in Shandong

province,™ but in a country of dearth the quality of glass panes was often poor. Carl Crow even found it impossible, bar in a few modern buildings erected

under foreign supervision, to find a window with no imperfect panes. Foreign

window-glass factories found a sale for defective glass in China, known to the trade as ‘China grade’. Defective or not, glass was widely welcomed: in the many villages outside Beijing, three-quarters of all houses had glass windows in 1929, even if they were tiny; as one surprised observer commented, ‘the more open a society is, the larger the surface covered by glass."* Some foreigners were attached to the soft light allowed to stream through

by the paper covering the lattice. Ida Pruitt judged glass to be ‘hard and

cold’,*” but the exactly opposite conclusion was reached by Zhang Zhongxing (born 1909), who rhapsodised over the light which streamed through

Dwelling glass panes, banishing darkness even at night when he could still watch the stars and the moon through the window like a modern incarnation of the Tang poet Li Bai. He was not the first: the celebrated poet Yuan Mei had already praised the replacement of paper by glass in the eighteenth century,

as‘[1] can [now] wave to the moon without leaving my room, and [I] can see

the snow without getting cold.”

LOCKING

UP.

Doors were hinged from the end of the nineteenth century onwards among

the well-to-do, rather than hung on pivots on a high threshold designed to keep out vermin.” Fixed locks on doors, hitherto rarely used, became more common: while in large households padlocks had been used to secure personal

belongings in chests or rooms from the prying eyes of relatives,‘ in some

modern houses locks appeared on the main door. Traditional locks, requiring

two staples and a hasp and hence easy to wrench off, were increasingly re-

placed in modern city houses and flats by the modern keyhole: the key itself

became a new symbol of wealth and security. The spread of hinged doors was such that in the 1920s the poet Xu Zhimo was already bitterly complaining

about the ‘foreign’ aspect of Hangzhou, as modernity not only crept into the interior of homes but had transformed the doors and entire facades of houses

everywhere in the city. But how was the ‘modern door’ constructed? In most cases the doors and

windows in foreign-style buildings used redwood imported from Singapore,

which was cut on the spot. Once a sash was put in or a door was hung, the

wood started to check or warp, making constant tinkering necessary. One of the results was that doors and windows could come in a variety of sizes and

shapes even in one single building. Only in the late 1910s would an American

company in Shanghai start installing factory-produced, ready-made doors and

sashes imported from the Pacific coast.“

Were these doors reinforced? In imperial China the household was a per-

meable and loosely defined space, physically exposed to the elements and

socially open to the outside world. Nothing could be further removed from this type of habitat than the heavily reinforced units of the late twentieth

century, as even the windows in skyscrapers in Beijing, Taipei or Hong Kong

are protected with solid iron bars. The sheer variety and number of locks, bolts, catches, latches and viewers in private dwellings suggest a society that has locked itself in, although these trends may date from the post-1949 era (but see figure 56). No reinforced doors were mentioned by Julean Arnold in

his inquiry about hardware published in 1917, although he noticed how in loo

Locking Up Shanghai cheap padlocks for locking boxes were given to coolies for trans-

portation through the streets, ‘more for the appearance than for any actual

security they might give’. Foreign locks also replaced local padlocks every-

where in the north, as small locks appeared in an almost endless variety on

doors, cupboards, chests, drawers and other lockable items. The diversity of some goods like locks and keys contrasts with the relative

standardisation of others. In a country with many treaty ports dominated by

a British presence one might expect the sash window to have been relatively common, if not among local elites than at least among expatriate communi-

ties. Yet even in Shanghai most were casement windows, or ‘French windows’

opening in the middle, while the sash variety, common in England, was rare even in British concessions: maybe fengshui considerations prompted local : :

people to adopt windows which opened completely, which increased the

56. Qi Baishi with his two

grandsons in front of his Beijing

flow of qi.” These may seem rather obscure details to a reader with limited _ home protected by iron security interest in the actual texture of modernity in China, yet they raise interesting door, 1940s.

questions about the presumed nature of standardisation alleged to have been

enforced by globalisation. The evidence presented in this book shows that some articles diversified beyond recognition, others drifted towards a small number ofvariables, and only a few obtained overall market domination, their diffusion being inflected by a host of different factors from suppliers, retailers, users and workers to information, cost, advantage and compatibility. CHANGING

INTERIORS

From palace to hovel Just as all levels of society were reluctant to invest in capital layout for shelter in

imperial China, furniture was all-important: early modern Europe may have had monumental townhouses with prestigious staircases, but in the sixteenth

century furniture was still comparatively cumbersome and unsophisticated.

When they became more widespread in the eighteenth century, many chairs

and tables were heavily influenced by furniture from China. During the same

period furniture in China was already considered to be an important part in the everyday presentation of wealthy elites, and imported tropical hard-

woods were used in its manufacture. After 1900 social elites rapidly shifted

their interest from native to foreign furniture, as imported tables and chairs became a material representation of openness to the world. After the debacle of the Boxer rebellion and the initiation of the New Policies by the empress

dowager, a number of reform-minded officials also embraced the foreign, from champagne to the settee. Viceroy Duanfang, a keen reformer backing

the Nanjing exhibition of 1910, proudly displayed a Rochester lamp, a long 167

Dwelling

57. Sun Baogi, acting premier

in 1914.

foreign table spread with a white cloth, furnished with knives, forks and

plates and equipped with foreign chairs, in the official audience room visited by foreign guests,“ for whom government institutions also started to create

modern interiors. The Patent Office in Beijing thus had ‘a foreign carpet, a centre-table with a gaudy table-cover, four foreign armchairs, and teapots,

each guarded by two foreign chairs round the walls’ in its spacious hall, while

an ash-tray and a box of Japanese matches were placed with great deliberation precisely in the centre of the big table for foreign visitors like Mrs Archibald

Little. Even the tea was ceremoniously served in foreign teacups.“

This trend became more widespread after the 1911 revolution, as provin-

cial governors tried to demonstrate their commitment to reform in showcase

reception rooms where important guests could be entertained (figure 57).

The district magistrate of Nanchang, for instance, was renowned in the 1920s for his European objects, in particular an ‘upholstery ensemble’ in the living room. His modern house had six bedrooms with Chinese beds and furni-

ture, three of which were equipped with European chairs and wash basins.

The living room was furnished with a broad carpet, sofas, spittoons and a

round European table, complete with a rug-like table cloth.” Xia Zhishi, vice-

governor of Sichuan, installed French windows and a fireplace in the sitting room in the early 1920s. The room also had a piano, a sofa, stylish chairs, a

woollen carpet,a tea table,and some Chinese hangings and antiques.”! Another

foreign visitor to a well-to-do family was led to a reception room furnished in

168

Changing Interiors

58. The reception room ofa

wealthy merchant in Shanghai

combining both local and foreign elements, 1931. ‘foreign’ style, with wicker chairs and harmonium, cheap photos and picture

advertisements and the inevitable looking glasses, which

varied from full-

length mirrors to shaving glasses.”* Outside government circles wealthy merchants were even more keen to

transform their interiors into little islands of the West. In Shanghai a number

of compradors adopted modern interiors as early as the 1880s. Yan Huiging (1877-1950) described his parents’ home

as ‘more or less “foreignized™’ in

furniture and decoration.’ Cheong Chi Pio (born 1853 in Macau) boasted

a lavish interior in his ‘Verdant Villa’ on Haining Road, where ‘everything calculated to provide material comfort’ could be found. Yu Yah Ching boasted

a huge mansion stuffed with every conceivable piece of foreign furniture,

while others like Wai Luk Chune kept separate living rooms, one austere in

local style and one opulent in the foreign manner. Such was the importance of a modern interior that photographs of influential merchants, with their wives

and children posing in their residences, would regularly appear in the local

and foreign press.” Similar trends appeared in the hinterland after the Boxer rebellion. In Chengdu

in the early years of the twentieth century foreign

items were proudly displayed in the houses of the rich, including copper shelves, coloured glass lamps, family photos, microscopes, phonographs and organs.” In Canton families with a comfortable income lived in modern houses built of bricks with two stories and cool, shady verandas above and

below. Such houses had curtains adorning airy windows, which were screened

169

Dwelling with wire mosquito netting. Water was often laid on, while people washed

themselves daily in baths, the waste water running away in drains rather than

being scooped out and thrown into the street. Cosy settees, armchairs and

cushions could be found in the rooms, and spring beds were used in the bedrooms. Individual rooms could be preserved in the traditional way, with stiff straight-backed seats inlaid with marble and the portraits of the ancestors at

the top (always away from the door).”* In Beijing too the Chiang family had a

compound with a principal reception room traditionally laid out with an altar and ritual vases, an incense burner and jade screen, as well as teak furniture

and straight-backed chairs which offered no comfort to the occupant. Most of the family spent time in an adjacent room with cushioned and padded

furniture, separated from the main hall by openwork screens.” In Tianjin

some families entirely modernised their interiors: Li Cheng’s house had one

bathroom for each of the four floors, the top one being reserved for the five amahs; the master bedroom represented the state of the art with twin beds

of bird's-eye maple, lavender-coloured quilts of shimmering rayon silk, and a

porcelain-tiled bathroom.”

To stroll through the houses of the privileged few provides useful insights into the social lives of luxury goods, although it tells us little about ordinary

people or the poor (figure 59). Huts in a flood-stricken region along the

Yangzi in the mid-1930s contained two chairs, a table, occasionally a bed,a few working utensils and some farm implements,‘children and dirt’.”” Beyond the coast, deep inside the hinterland, some minority groups had no possessions at all. The Nosu in Western China visited by a missionary in the late 1910s

had no chairs, tables, benches or beds: they slept on the mud floor.“'Yet even

those who could not participate in a culture of conspicuous consumption were increasingly surrounded at home by a material culture inflected by the foreign. Detailed sociological surveys reveal the extent of modern furniture:

according to Lou Xuexi, who investigated every aspect of commerce in Bei-

jing with a team of researchers, modern furniture was at first confined to the

palace but by the 1930s could be found everywhere. Traditional furniture was used by no more than 20 per cent of the higher echelons of society, while even workers preferred the comfortable furniture which flooded the market

as families moving to Nanjing sold up after Beijing ceased to be a capital in 1927. Elm, cassiabarktree, linden and catalpa were the indigenous woods used

in the tables and desks churned out by more than a hundred factories, while rattan chairs made by prisoners, orphans and vagrants in a whole range of institutions of confinement could be found at rock-bottom prices ina saturated.

market: all were carefully copied from foreign patterns.*' Rattan, more than

any other type of material, democratised the easy chair. Where deck chairs for

Changing Interiors

59.A refugee from the war-

torn north lives on a sampan in

Shanghai, lighting her stove in order to cook a meagre meal for her family, February 1949,

first-class passengers made of rattan were still the prerogative of the wealthy

few on prestige steamers like the Princess Alice before the 1911 revolution, almost any ordinary person could afford one thanks to the voluminous output

of prison labour by the 1920s. Anyone strolling through Chengdu, far from

the capital, could see everywhere large amounts of cheap rattan furniture."*

Olga Lang, who travelled widely, showed how modern objects could be

found around the rural dwellings of northern China in the 1940s. While old

furniture, household utensils and tools passed on from previous generations dominated the household, factory-made cotton was not uncommon, lamps

replacing the old bean-oil wicks even in poor homes. More foreign objects

adorned the homes of the well-to-do: rich peasants could boast clocks and

watches, their walls displaying photographs of family members. Higher up the social scale of rural China were the homes of landlords, in which one might

find foreign mirrors, razors, hair clippers and sometimes even battery radios.

Most mud houses were still dominated by traditional objects, including in

north China the kang on which the family slept at night and sat during the

winter when it was heated by flues built inside, and simple furniture, often a

few chests, chairs and tables.“ The sociologist Dickinson largely confirmed these observations in her social survey of villages in the north, adding that the

171

Dwelling walls were usually covered with clippings from newspapers, cigarette advertise-

ments and cheap prints of auspicious babies or legendary scenes.** ‘Thanks to Japan; added Lady Hosie in 1929, ‘small soft towels are gradually becoming possible, owing to their cheapness, even to China’s poor After the Second World War, modernity was irremediably ensconced in many urban homes:

‘Clocks, mirrors, and photographs adorn a mantelpiece... Bicycles, battery ra-

dios, safety razors, and hair-clippers are seen in increasing numbers.” Regional differences

Regional differences were as important as social variables in the dissemination of material culture. In the large houses built by wealthy locals in the British Concession of Tianjin there was a certain austerity as modern luxuries were

relegated to the guest parlour. In Shanghai the local could be entirely expunged from the house in order to create an enclave of civilisation,a small oasis

transported from an alien world, very much as the concessions were viewed as satellites of the foreign. Particular household items illustrate these regional variations, the bed being a good example. In the north the kang continued

to prevail (it can still be found in some rural hotels to this day): heated by the

burning of grass and brushwood, it served as a platform and occupied half or more of the space in each room, flues running back and forth in a network of clay bricks to other rooms of the house. Quilts were spread on the kang in the

winter, each person lying in his or her own quilt as families slept together.” In central and southern regions wooden beds replaced the kang customary in the north. Bedsteads with mattresses were produced locally in Canton,” while aluminium frames even appeared in Shanghai in the 1930s.” Iron bed-

steads came in a variety of colours and cost as little as $9, modern beds made

of copper tubes being available at $7;” the iron ones were used by factory workers as early as the 1910s. In Hankou one observer noted how ‘the old

furniture is no longer considered good enough... Merchants from Ningbo go

around selling Western-style furniture, and brass and iron beds are now all the vogue. In general, cheap foreign furniture purchased from local workshops gave interiors of poor houses in Canton and Shanghai a more modern look than

in Beijing, while many households in the interior continued to sit and sleep

on tradition. But what exactly was considered ‘comfortable’? We see in the

next chapter how shoes with rubber soles were welcomed by individuals

from all social backgrounds, as they offered protection from the pervasive humidity during the monsoon season. Notions of ‘comfort’, however, were

3

closely tied to personal experience and social context. As Emile Bard rightly noted in 1899, Europeans who had lived only one generation before would

Changing Interiors probably have accepted the lack of comfort with few questions asked: ‘The word “comfort” (confort), which we have borrowed from the English language,

is a new word to us and represents something new.” He pointed at the nature

of the sleeping surfaces in China, which were often hard regardless of wealth

and class, as an example.” Even after the introduction of modern bedding,

many adhered to old ways: in the 1930s some patients at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital preferred to sleep on the floor rather than on the soft hospital mattresses.” Others perceived the ‘comfortable’ temperature in winter as unbearably warm.” The otherwise conservative parents of Cecilia

Chiang felt that the kang in their traditional Beijing house was uncomfortable, even when covered with several thick quilted felt blankets; instead they had four-poled brass bedsteads.”

Another example of regional differences was the ability of particular imports to superimpose themselves over already existing local practices: wallpaper was, literally, a layer of modernity over a background of tradition in

Beijing. Floral or foliage wallpaper, churned out by modern factories, might seem a luxury product which ordinary people could ill afford, yet even com-

mon hovels in Beijing were traditionally covered with paper. Unlike the south, where houses were whitewashed, most walls in the north were papered (biaohu): paper often covered walls (hugiang), window panes (huchuang) and the ceiling (hu dingpeng) in a variety of different textures and strengths, which

were replaced as soon as they became blackened by dirt and smoke. Modern

wallpaper simply increased the quality and variety of wallcovering (news-

papers could also be used to cover walls).'" This is not surprising since wallpaper, after all, had first come to England from China by the early eighteenth

century.

Educating taste It would be futile to review the many changes in interior decoration in republican China: not only were there huge differences in taste and style between

individuals from various social and professional backgrounds, but many people

were up to date with rapidly changing fashions. However,a variety of sources

brings us closer to the ways in which taste was presented in biographical

and didactic literature. Mu Shiying, for instance, was not only in thrall to the

sheer beauty of modern interiors (‘Life is so comfortable! I take a shower and

comb my hair in the morning, put on a bright spring dress and go to the office; in the evening I

sit on the sofa and listen to the radio programme’). He also

expertly listed the subtle scents emanating from things modern, from newly

decorated walls, the pine resin of furniture, the golden aroma from a sofa and the chemical components of a new dress.'"" The flowery scents from

Dwelling the boudoir marked a lady’s territory, intimacy being further conveyed by a discreet oil painting on the wall and a few modern magazines and photo-

graphs strewn on the coffee-table." Even those with less money took pride

in making their homes cozy: Junzhi bought a bed, a round table with chairs and a cupboard for his first home.A dressing table was expensive, and he used a chest of drawers with a large mirror on top instead to save money. Blue curtains to match the blue wallpaper were made to measure by his newly-

wed wife to enhance a homely atmosphere, while several pictures and the

wedding photo were placed on the wall." Literature of advice—dispensed by

magazines on family life like the Home Weeklyp—further recommended the use

of green shades for electric lights in order to create an intimate and relaxing

atmosphere, in particular for the bashful bride about to experience her first night with the groom." The Happy Home magazine prescribed blue for the

interior:‘In order to create a cool effect in the house, it is important to choose

the right colour. Why not try to match all furniture in blue colour, and in the

winter they can be painted over with warm colours... for instance, paint the

back of chairs and the top of the table in blue to produce a unique and stylish effect. By painting the door of an ordinary kitchen cupboard blue it can be made to look new and original. The bedroom is also full of possibilities: by

choosing a blue pattern for the bedding and painting the wall behind the bed

blue, it can make the room look interesting."* Illustrated magazines like the Peiyang Pictorial News provided instructions on the tasteful arrangement of

furniture in the ‘modern home’ (modeng jiating), amply illustrated with photos of wealthy interiors."

Besides magazine advertisements and pictures of modern interiors spread

by photography and film, didactic literature appeared with the object of educating the reading public in proper taste. Thus an article in the Female Student published in 1912 introduced its readers to the American parlour,

which was seen as embodying a desirable domesticity and a sense of spatial order to be emulated: ‘comfortable chairs’ such as ‘a rocking chair’, and per-

haps ‘a dulcimer, a mirror, a few potted plants and carefully selected paintings’

were essential, as well as modern conveniences, for instance ‘heating supplied by a radiator’, ‘pipes for running water, hot and cold’ as well as ‘an indoor bathroom with a flush toilet’. The home itself should have ‘a porch, a door

with a lock, a bell, and a mail slot’, preferably surrounded by ‘a lawn with a

low wooden or iron fence’. This, it was argued, embodied a ‘civilised’ (wen) household, in contrast to the ‘uncivilised’ (ye) homes to be found in China.

These were described as chaotic habitations devoid of sanitary principles or guiding vision: rooms were crammed with a myriad of objects, the kitchen

having numerous ‘bottles, scoops, pots and bowls’ as well as the kitchen god 174

Changing Interiors and incense burners. The living room was cluttered with ‘account books and

needlework, gifts and clothes, hats, shoes and umbrellas, a smoking pipe and spittoon, and pictures of emperors and Daoist magic figures’. Rubbish was

exposed, chamber pots polluted the air, and water vats took up valuable space: according to the author, all were to be replaced by modern objects more attuned to new concepts of space, hygiene and taste.'"”

The fiction of ‘hybridity’

In wealthy households or poor hovels, foreign appurtenances happily mixed

with native objects. While noting how most people lived without furniture

in Yunnan and Sichuan on the eve of the 1911 revolution, Edwin Dingle remarked that many locals would glory in goods of foreign manufacture, ‘no matter if to them is not disclosed the proper purpose of any particular article

adopted’." Specific evidence confirms how both local and foreign objects

were integrated without inhibition within particular social cosmologies: the

biological notion of ‘hybridity’, deployed so eagerly by a growing number

of historians and anthropologists today just as ‘race’ was used a century ago to convey a spurious sense of ‘purity’ and ‘mixing’, entirely disregards the perspectives of historical agents, who rarely saw any sense of conflict in the

juxtaposition of different objects. Old and new continuously interacted in ways which may have seemed incongruous to outsiders, but which appeared perfectly in tune to locals. Returned emigrants used both things modern and

objects imperial in their interiors: few migrants saw anything odd in having

traditional landscape paintings and calligraphy scrolls hanging next to kitsch

oil paintings and modern advertisements. In one case a calligraphed inscription by a high dignitary to express gratitude for a charitable contribution was

hung next to an ordinary letter written by an American, thanking the owner

for having lent him his car: top officials and foreign voices both conferred respectability.'”

Higher up the social ladder Kenneth Lo remembered that ‘In Lo Lodge

the old blended naturally with the new and we were not aware of any cultural conflict." Among wealthy elites both ‘foreign’ and ‘traditional’ interiors

happily coexisted. James Lee had a dining room which was a miniature copy of a room in the Winter Palace in Beijing with wood carving and the deco-

ration of the ceiling by special craftsmen from the old capital. His living

room, however, had panel work and furniture made in the latest fashion by Arts & Crafts in Shanghai, including a movable bar and a curio cabinet. The

creative tension between tradition and modernity was captured by his study, which consisted of decorations and furniture from old Chinese items re-

designed into modern pieces." Finally,at court level the last emperor, who only

175,

Dwelling

60. Woman amid kitsch statues on sale in Shanghai

discovered things modern in the 1920s through foreign magazines used by his Scottish tutor Reginald Johnston, instructed the Household Department

of the Forbidden City in which he was confined to buy foreign furniture,

changing the red sandalwood table with brass fittings on the kang for one decorated with foreign paint and fitted with white porcelain handles. He also had a wooden floor laid down, resulting in a creative hotchpotch of local and

imported items.'"?

The most vociferous opponents of material changes, other than con-

servative

176

local scholars, were

foreign

observers.

For Nathaniel

Peffer the

Changing Interiors mixture of foreign and indigenous signified a hideous ‘mongreloid’ culture

which invariably mixed the worst of both worlds, particularly among the rich: ‘How many a patrician of Peking, whose tastes are infallible and intuitions

sure when moving among the things of his own background, sits in a Grand Rapids mission chair sipping tea out of a violently beflowered teacup which he sets on a fringed doily of the atrocious 1880s, the while the eye roams too

tolerantly over a chromo on a wall in which a lady stands on a pseudo-Italian

terrace pensively kissing a dove’ (figure 60).''* Ellen LaMotte even regretted the ‘contamination’ of the palace: ‘Nothing remains of the old glories of the

palace save the elaborate carving on the wall and ceiling, and a few pieces of magnificent old furniture. The ceiling is now disfigured with a gaudy, cheap European chandelier, while standing here and there are beautiful ebony tables and hideous modern vases, straight from the five-and-ten-cent store. The floor was covered in ugly oil-cloth. Such is China modernized, imbued with

European culture." But even so-called ‘traditional’ objects cherished by

those foreigners who wanted to deny China the opportunity to participate

in global exchanges were already inflected by the modern: classical furniture,

for instance, incorporated many elements from abroad, including renaissance, baroque and rococo, as auspicious patterns mixed with whirling lines and curvilinear carvings without inhibition.''* KEROSENE,

TORCHBEARER

OF

MODERNITY

An illuminant of choice

Not everybody could afford modern furniture, but by the 1920s even many

of the poor had a Standard Oil lamp.'"* Before the advent of kerosene, nights

in imperial China were dark: hand-made cotton wicks floating in peanut oil

or candles in paper lanterns provided only feeble light, while narrow streets might stay in the dark, lamps with vegetable oil marking the gates of the most

important compounds. At night within the walled city one would carry a lantern made of bamboo splints or sometimes of wire covered with paper.'”” Securing fuel for the long cold winters in the north was also a constant prob-

lem, as large quantities of corn and gaoliang had to be raised by farmers, the seeds being used for food and the stalks for fences about the house or fuel to heat the kang.'"’ In a country depleted of trees, however, lack of fuel was

widely felt: poverty in wood meant that every chip, twig, root and shaving was

used. Baron von Richthofen, travelling extensively through China in 1870-2,

reported that the entire north from Hankou to Beijing was destitute of trees, with barren mountains and hills offering a view of desolation.''” Decades later Paul Myron was one among many to be struck by the extreme barrenness

Dwelling of parts of Anhui and Jiangsu,'”’ others noting the absence even of shrubs in

north China.'”"

Kerosene appeared in some of the large cities in the 1870s: in Beijing the

foreign oil was cheaper than vegetable oils, and ordinary people started using

kerosene lamps crafted from imported tinplate in 1879. In Changsha the city was apparently illuminated by kerosene oil on the occasion of the emperor's

birthday in 1877.'” The same year the streets in Ningpo were lighted with kerosene oil.'?* Such was the appeal of kerosene that in some cities its rapid spread was seen as a fire hazard, and local authorities attempted to ban it: in Fuzhou and Shanghai kerosene was forbidden in 1882, prompting Standard Oil to place prominent advertisements extolling the safety of its product.

Retailers developed a ‘safety oil’ which was slightly diluted yet provided a brighter light.'** The lifting of restrictions on the use of kerosene a year later

led to huge expansion: in Zhenjiang even the most common farmhouse used

it in place of native oil, while restrictions in Changsha, introduced after a number of fires broke out, were only observed for a few months.'* A few

years later groundnut oil had been almost entirely displaced by the brilliant oil from America even in relatively poor Hainan.'** Standard Oil also started distributing free lamps, leading to a huge expansion of its business in China.'”” Imports from Russia, America and Sumatra increased by leaps and bounds in the last decade of the nineteenth century: in 1898 alone over 16 million

gallons were distributed from Hankou to six provinces.'™ Kerosene was retailed to the poor in minute quantities vended in the streets by peddlers with

a cymbal (huoyoutong), buyers bringing their own vessels.” Twenty years later

$44.5 million worth of kerosene were imported into the country.'” Even in

Chengdu lamps were filled with kerosene in the early years of the twentieth

century," although the substance was still expensive enough to remain a

luxury reserved for rich families. This is how they described the lighting up

ofa room: ‘The light suddenly shone and was so bright that one could even see a needle on the floor!” By the 1920s ships flying the blue and red flags of ‘Socony’ and ‘Asiatic’ could be seen carrying kerosene up the Yangzi in great quantities,as the gospel of light reached far into the remote interior.'** As Georg Wegener noted in 1926, ‘We encountered the excellent petroleum by the American firm

Standard Oil Co. in all major market places, even in the innermost parts of Jiangxi’ Even in small towns up-river in Zhejiang in the early 1920s, the Standard Oi] Company did a thriving business in foreign lamps, which were much in request."* By 1935 almost half of all rural households throughout

the country regularly bought kerosene."

Kerosene, Torchbearer of Modernity

61.A man lights a kerosene lamp in a small village. Mei Foo lamps, skilfully marketed by Standard Oil, sold for a few cents and

provided the light equivalent to a candle, needing only one gallon of kero-

sene for 240 hours.'” They were easy to repair: since only one type of lamp

dominated most of the country, broken cylinders could be replaced with the

Wunder-Cilinder from Germany, which were available from dispensaries.'*

Even the ancestral hall was conquered: where incense would once rise and a wick be burnt before the altar, kerosene could now be used. Such was the

reach of kerosene that almost half of more than 200 localities scattered all over China reported in the early 1930s that their standard of living had increased

thanks to the change away from oil lamps to kerosene lamps." After its

Dwelling

62. Family of squatters gathered around a kerosene lamp on a casket.

success with the Mei Foo lamp, Standard Oil also started to make free gifts of mirrors, hammers, pincers and pl

s in the cities in the 1920s, contributing to the further dissemination of things modern.'*”

Kerosene broke the tyranny of darkness, allowing people to work and

read later in the night. The father of Xie Bingying taught his daughter to sing

poems under the flame of an oil lamp in the evening.'*' In the same period

Zhao Yuanren spent many evenings reading as a child by the light of the oil

lamp.'*? Li Xianwen also studied as a child next to a kerosene lamp.'*’ A local

poem described the changes wrought by the kerosene lamps used to light

up the streets over the Western New Year:‘Each family pays a tax to light up

the streets, as night looks like day. Dogs no longer bark at the moon, though

thieves continue to steal. How er, kerosene was not merely an illuminant: it heralded a much more

profound revolution in material culture.As Jiang Menglin observed after new facilities such as matches were introduced in his village in the 1880s, it was the sign of an impending revolution which would profoundly alter life even in the interior of the country, transforming traditional life in its wake: kerosene

180

Kerosene, Torchbearer of Modernity lamps were but a tiny segment in a vast cycle of change, leading irredeemably

to the telegraph, the steamboat and the factory.'**

Stoves and fires As Julean Arnold noted in 1917, ‘the rooms ofa Chinese house are so disconnected and scattered that the use of a large stove for several rooms is

seldom possible’. The small stove was ideal for a population which sought

concentrated heat in specific places rather than diffused heat throughout the entire house: since shelter in imperial China was not built with a view to

durability, adding extra layers of clothing and seeking warmth from a kitchen stove or a hypocaust bed like the kang was more effective than using an open

fire.” Stoves, as opposed to braziers, were fairly recent: in Beijing they were only introduced in the mid-nineteenth century, not only reducing smoke

and providing greater warmth but also leading to new forms of sociability:

in the winter months friends and families would gather around one to share

stories and food, a practice known as ‘sitting around the stove’ (weilu). The late Qing official Li Ciming (1830-94) fondly recalled the winter of 1859

when he used to sit by the stove with his brother eating warm congee until three o’clock in the morning." Initially coal was used in stoves in the north before the advent of kerosene: anthracite was powdered and mixed with sawdust, earth or wet clay, and shaped into balls used to heat the house or cook the food."” Kerosene tins lined with clay were a popular type of stove with

poorer families."

Stoves came in all shapes, styles and sizes, catering to the different needs and requirements of users. Imported stoves, often delivered to the capital from

Tianjin, could be large and stylish. Deng Yunxiang, for one, was impressed by the stove he saw as a child in an expensive jewellery shop: made of brass, it had a big plate at the bottom and a shiny label with foreign letters.'"' Lu Xun

bought a ‘foreign stove’ (yang Iuzi) for $9 in the 1910s: because they were

better ventilated than the traditional white clay ones, they could also burn

hard coal, which did not produce smoke and was much safer." Zhu Ziging

remembered that the ‘foreign stove’ in his household was too high, as his father

had to stand up to stir the food cooked in the thin aluminium pots, called

‘foreign pots’.'** In Shanghai too kerosene was a popular source of heating despite the advent of electricity: it was preferred by 90 per cent of workers in the 1930s for cooking and heating.A stove cost $5 for the item itself and four

cents a day for the kerosene, $1 a month cheaper than electricity (firewood, coal, cotton stalks and straw were also used).'4 Small stoves, like so many other

commodities in a culture of recycling, were hand-made by riveting sheet iron into cylinders and attaching a top end as a base for the fuel: ‘the sound 181

Dwelling of riveting and of various hand operations can be heard as one walks along

almost any street, one foreign expert in machinery observed in 1930." The

movable stove was ideal in a social context of ever-shifting family relation-

ships. Large families could live under one roof, but they did not always share

food: each smaller unit could cook at its own stove. If the stove was everyman’s source of heat, wealthy families made the transition from oil to electricity—as we saw in the preceding chapter. At least

ten different makes of electric heaters were marketed in the 1920s ‘to protect

the body and preserve the warmth of one’s home from the cold rain drum-

ming against the window and the piercing winds of winter’. Electricity was

advertised as the ‘modern fuel’, and stoves made by the Shanghai Electricity Company were to be free of odours, soot or ashes, safe and convenient—the

city of the future in a stove.'’ The electric heater very much represented a

continuation for a preference for small, localised sources of heat, even among

wealthy households which

could afford electricity: for many

families heat

continued to be a current expense rather than a piece of capital investment in the form of central heating. So popular was the electric heater that it was declared the cleanest and best winter warmer in 1933 by the Young Companion,

close as ever to the pulse of elegant life among the rich and famous."* THE

HIDDEN

POWERS

OF

DOMESTIC

OBJECTS

The gentle breeze of the fan

Notall things modern invariably appeared in Europe first, the fan being a good example. Many foreigners in Shanghai regarded electric fans as unhealthy— they

were

thought

to cause

pneumonia

and

stomach

trouble. ‘Punkah’

fans were used instead, even in the electricity department of the Interna-

tional Settlement in Shanghai in the 1910s.A punkah consisted of a large

rectangular bamboo frame covered with cheesecloth, fringed at the bottom and suspended from the ceiling by cords. Another

cord attached to the frame

extended through a hole in the wall to the courtyard, where a servant kept it

in motion by pulling the cord back and forth." Punkahs were imported by the colonial officers from India, where they were widely used indigenously

among the princes, Ge Yuanxu observed in 1877 how the punkah (he called it a zilai fengshan) was used by foreigners in Shanghai to create a gentle breeze.'“'

The imaginary beauties depicted in popular magazines already enjoyed the

cool of the punkah in the 1880s, just as they mixed with other modern artefacts like the gramophone and the electric lamp.'"' Outside of the pictographical world of the Qing, ‘real’ punkahs appeared in the institutions set up in the wake of the New

Is2

Policies before 1911: Lu Xun and his brother

The Hidden Powers of Domestic Objects attended a school in Nanjing in which a punkah was fitted in the lecture hall." In Chongqing punkahs could be made of palm leaves and were found

even in modern barbershops, the fan being folded and stored after the hot

summers.'® As late as the 1930s punkahs could still be found in remote cities such as Nanchang, a town still without electricity: the wealthy boasted cloth

punkahs with two sections, while poorer households were content with only one section.' Electric fans were all the rage. The

first in China was installed in 1897 in

Tianjin, at the Astor, rather than in Shanghai." Immediately after the collapse of the Qing, Liang Shiqiu’s house was fitted with two large electric fans; children were not allowed to approach them for fear of losing their fingers.

63. Qi Baishi painting in his study in Beijing, kept company by his cat; note the clocks, lamp and spittoon 183

Duelling The first electric fans produced locally appeared on the market in 1925, being imitations of a model sold by General Electric.’ At first only 1,000 were sold a year, although a decade later over 10,000 were produced by the Huasheng Company alone every year.'* Even if most fans cost $30 to $40, they had been transformed from an elite object to an everyday one to be found in

many public spaces.’ The head of an isolated rural district in Jiangsu prov-

ince, as a team of agricultural researchers discovered with surprise in 1934,

had an electric fan, increasing the social distance between the ruling elite and

ordinary farmers.'”’ Fans, whether fitted to the ceiling or portable, standard or

oscillating, were so popular that they were often operated continuously for a whole day or more. They could be so heavily used that some of the imported brands tended to burn out, being ill adapted to the rough environment they

were subjected to in China."

The delightful tick of the clock

As Arthur Brown observed in 1904, the desire of Asians to ‘possess foreign lamps is only equalled by [their] passion for foreign clocks’. Many were

hoarded in the imperial palace in Beijing, while ‘cheaper ones tick to the delighted wonder of myriads of humbler people."”? When Jiang Menglin grew

up in a village in the interior in the 1880s, he remembered a farmer running

breathlessly out of his father’s studio: he had heard a bell ring without seeing

anyone nearby and believed that it was a ghost. It was the brand-new clock,

striking seven in the evening.'> Cao Juren also reminisced that when he was

a boy only one household in his village had a clock: when his father went to market to buy a standing clock, the entire family was awed by the mysteri-

ous ticking until after a week it inexplicably stopped and somebody finally

discovered how to wind up the spring." The clock was the indispensable centrepiece of any home aspiring to be in touch with the foreign. Hoarded

by emperors, displayed by officials, cherished by compradors and collected by the wealthy, the clock was the ultimate luxury item"? and represented

everything that was ingenious about foreign products. The timepiece was the earliest sign of an age of machinery, with its intricate cogs, weights and hands,

its mysterious movement and impressive bell. Moreover, clocks produced noise. Ma Zhanshan, a general based in Manchuria, had several large standing

clocks placed in different parts of his compound: they were equipped with

heavy sonorous gongs and chimes and were all set to strike a few minutes apart so that it took a while before each hour was struck.'”* Clocks became

emblems of modernity in shops in south China: in Pakhoi, they could be seen

in most shops in the early 1880s.!”7 In the 1900s alarm clocks were ticking on

the display shelves of local governors in places as far away as Mongolia."* Is4

The Hidden Powers of Domestic Objects After 1911 clocks and watches could be bought in all towns andcities, spe-

cialised shops appearing in the large cities of the coast: in Shanghai, they were

located on Nanjing Road, including the Shenchang and the Yitaixiang.'” At

the top of the range a standing clock from one of these shops cost under $50,

and elegant women’s watches up to $20." Cheaper clocks were available

everywhere: a detailed survey shows that fifty different clocks made locally could be bought in Hangzhou in 1934,These included cuckoo clocks, stand-

ing clocks, wall clocks, brass clocks, mantle clocks, alarm clocks, pendulum

clocks, table clocks, square clocks, round clocks, triangular clocks, octagonal

clocks and oval clocks; most cost $5 or $6.'*' Even in remote and poor parts of the country, clocks were the most common ‘foreign’ item next to kerosene lamps: Georg Wegener specifically searched Wan’an, Jiangxi province, for modern goods but could find none, apart from the cheapest kind of kerosene lamps and wall-mounted clocks producing mechanical tunes.'*? As a socio-

logical survey carried out in the north of China before the Second World

War showed, an almost universal wedding clock graced even the small huts of

farmers in the plains of north China."

Clocks also stood for science, as precision and measurement came to be

cherished by a great number of modernizing families. Yang Renshan one of the

first envoys abroad in the 1870s, had a timepiece prominently displayed in his reception room at home." He also filled his house with scientific instruments, terrestrial and celestial globes, transits, telescopes, cameras and thermometers,

on which he spent all his money in the course of an official visit to Britain and

France in 1875. He used his thermometer, hung on a shady side in a corner of the porch, to decree that his children would not attend school when the temperature reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit.'** Even a wealthy but conservative

homestead in Hebei which rigidly stuck to traditional ways had a telescope

carefully housed in a shrine in the early 1920s—its only concession to the modern."

The reflective power of the looking glass Its reflective power assured the looking glass an even greater appeal than the mechanical mysteries of the clock. Tens of thousands of them were imported

in Zhenjiang—and no doubt many other ports—as early as the 1880s.'"”

Imported mirrors made of glass were considered much brighter, clearer and

shinier than local ones made of copper or tin.'** Mass production of the mir-

ror in republican China reinforced rather than displaced cosmological con-

ceptions about spatial relationships and spiritual forces. Spirit screens were traditionally used to prevent evil forces from entering a household, and were

often placed inside or outside a doorway, often adorned by the bagua, or

Dwelling

64, Street vendor sells glass

mi irrors as well as other small

amenities, Shanghai, 1948.

trigrammed mirror. The use of bronze mirrors as an all-purpose device for

fengshui was even more widespread, and it has been noted how the ‘mysti-

cal appeal of mirrors runs deep in Chinese history’: hundreds were buried in ancient imperial tombs, as the polished demonifuges could reveal powers

and spirits of earth beneath and heaven above.'”’ In the countryside in the

1940s—for instance in Zhonghechang—glass shops sold mirrors and deco-

rative plaques etched with flowers that would blur the reflection of passing

faces. These mirrors were sometimes used by the local farmers for purposes

quite different from the ways of city people: after a birth, some believed, a

demon could be frightened by seeing its ugliness reflected in a mirror, which

was placed to bar entrance to the house.'” Bagua mirrors can still be found throughout south China, placed outside the house to keep malign spirits

from entering. In Kunming it is common for a small round mirror resem-

bling a cheap shaving mirror to adorn many houses, while larger ones, some rectangular or square, can also be found." In the bathroom and the water closet both ancient cosmological concerns and modern notions of individu-

ality happily coincided, as mirrors were welcomed in order to ensure that an otherwise windowless and enclosed space would not become a dead and

stagnant area."”? Mirrors could also be placed in other confined spaces, for instance an entrance, room or hall, while even restaurants and shops were keen

to use mirrors to create a good flow of qi and money.'”* At the other end of

the social spectrum, a mirror across the front of the passenger compartment in a car which still had a separate space for the driver in the 1910s was used 186

The Hidden Powers of Domestic Objects more often than the windows to observe the life outside: ™ in a crowded environment the mirror was everywhere, in homes, shops, restaurants, hotels,

barbershops and even private cars, allowing the constant monitoring of the self and others without eyes having to meet.

Rich or poor, homes were gradually sealed off as new building materials

and architectural conceptions became more widespread in the republican

period; glass windows, solid doors, stone or concrete walls and fixed layouts led to a shift away from the more permeable dwellings common throughout

imperial China. Although wealthy merchants and government officials were

often the first to transform their homes, glass remaining a luxury for decades,

some new materials such as cement were relatively affordable even for the

less privileged: in Shantou a stupendous number of new properties, valued at $50 million, were built of reinforced concrete in the 1920s.'> And far from

cosmopolitan cities such as Shanghai and Tianjin returned emigrants built ostentatious mansions called ‘foreign houses’ in the villages of south Fujian and

east Guangdong, incorporating new elements inspired from abroad, from the

balcony to multiple floors, as well as local touches more in keeping with popular geomancy, like narrow windows warding off unpropitious forces. Thus houses not only materialised the social status of their owners but also

incorporated their social cosmologies, new materials and new ideas allowing an enormous diversification of the architectural landscape in design, layout

and substance. In all cases, however, glass held people in awe, whether farmers dreaming of ‘glass mirror houses’ or the empress dowager demanding a glass pavilion. While only minor changes appeared in the housing of the majority of

poor people—one thinks of the use of corrugated iron in slums—many could afford at least a few new objects, none being more popular than the kerosene

lamp with its glass chimney. Rattan, more than any other material, democratised the easy chair, while a passion for foreign clocks also transcended social

barriers, many being hoarded in the imperial palace while much cheaper

versions ticked away to the delighted wonder of humbler people. Many

objects, however, became the subject of resignification, acquiring a range of different meanings according to social context.The mirror is a telling example,

as its mass production reinforced rather than displaced cosmological conceptions about spiritual forces, cheap ones being placed outside the door to keep

malign spirits from entering the house. Clothes, as we see in the next chapter,

also underwent material changes which allowed more enduring practices to persist in the face of rapid change: the use of many layers of cotton clothes, to be donned or doffed to adjust to temperature variations, is a good example.

187

8 CLOTHING AND GROOMING Those who met the last emperor after he was allowed to leave the Forbidden City were struck by his foreign appearance: from top to toe, Puyi presented himselfas a modern dandy with no material link to China (figure 65).Already

as a child, he became obsessed with modern objects. Whereas his tutor Regi-

nald Johnston adored things Chinese, being an admirer of tea and peonies and well versed in classical Chinese, able to chant Tang poems, Puyi loved things

foreign: Johnston's woollen cloth made him doubt the value of silk, while his fountain pen made him ashamed of the writing brushes and hand-made

paper used in China. He became convinced that everything foreign was good

and everything local bad, buying pianos, watches, clocks, radios, shoes and spectacles; even a stick of Spearmint chewing gum or a Bayer aspirin would

be enough to make him sigh at the ‘utter doltishness’ of the Chinese:! ‘I made the most of the clothes and diamonds of the foreign stores such as Whiteway,

Laidlaw & Co. to dress myself up like a foreign gentleman from the pages of

Esquire. Whenever

I went out I used to wear the very latest in Western clothes

tailored from English cloth. I would have a diamond pin in my tie, diamond

cuff-links in my sleeve, diamond rings on my fingers, a “civilization stick” in my hand, and German Zeiss spectacles on my nose. My body would be fragrant with the combined odours of Max Factor lotions, eau-de-Cologne

and mothballs...?

The last emperor, as depicted in the 1960s in his re-educated persona, was

no doubt an extreme example of the uncompromising way in which some

of the wealthy presented their material selves, yet few people in republican China were left entirely unaffected by sweeping changes in material culture,

whether they discreetly wore knitted underclothes or more conspicuously

displayed leather shoes and a walking stick. This chapter looks more closely at the cultural meanings and social uses of modern objects carried on the person. Clothing is a favourite subject in studies of material culture, in contrast to the

189

Clothing and Grooming

65. Henry Pui, photographed in February

1934.

relative neglect with which historians have treated other objects carried on the person.’ Here we look only tangentially at clothing—it is not intended

to trace the many changes in fashion which occurred after 1900, but to high-

light the speed, extent and manner in which clothes initially considered to be

foreign became part of the texture of everyday life. Clothes were not simply

adopte they were adapted, thus undergoing changes either in their cut or in the uses to which they were put: pyjamas, for instance, were used outside on

hot summer days in the south. This chapter, however, is also dedicated to ob-

jects which have attracted less scholarly interest, especially shoes: the primary 190,

Clothing and Grooming sources, autobiographies in particular, reveal the overwhelming importance

accorded to a reliable pair of shoes by poor and wealthy alike.

In a context of widespread poverty, clothes were all-important as a means

of social distinction. The celebrated writer Lu Xun pointed out that fashion

was a key to mobility: ‘If you live in Shanghai, it pays better to be smart than

dowdy. If your clothes are old, bus-conductors may not stop when you ask them, park attendants may inspect your ticket with special care and the gate

keepers of big houses or hotels may not admit you by the main door. That is

why some men do not mind living in poky lodgings infested by bedbugs, but

insist on pressing their trousers under the pillow each night so that the creases

are sharp the next day’ Indeed, ‘modern’ (modeng) was ‘fashionable’ (shimao), and both terms became interchangeable in the early republican period. As the

Shenbao noted in 1933, almost everything had become modeng, from coats to

shoes and socks:‘There is hardly anything which is not modeng’®

The meanings of objects carried on the person were all the more pro-

found in a country of dearth: not only were the privileged few keen to dis-

tinguish themselves from the myriad poor by accumulating portable signs of wealth, but a culture of portability resulted in individuals being able to spend

relatively large amounts of money on small objects which could be carried

around. Whether Rolex watches or gold teeth, portable objects were gener-

ally preferred: the wealthy feared that bulky items like cars and houses could

be confiscated, while the poor could easily hide small objects and take them

along when forced to move. During the onset of the Second World War many of the rich had to abandon most of their material possessions, as many simply boarded trains towards the West, bound for the Guomindang’s wartime capi-

tal, their pockets full of dollars and dressed in their Sunday best.* COTTON,

THE

FABRIC

OF

EVERYDAY

LIFE

Industrial cloth ‘In 1350, no one in China wore cotton cloth; by 1850, almost every peasant

did.” Philip Huang points out that China was conquered by cotton while

Europe was still wearing linen. Cotton cultivation was introduced from Southeast Asia in the ninth century but spread only slowly until the fourteenth. Increased affluence and what some moralists condemned as a ‘custom of extravagance’ on the one hand, and an ingenious system of household

production on the other, ensured its rapid diffusion to all levels of society in

the following centuries. As was noted in Chapter 2, spinning and weaving at

home during many of the hours when farming communities had no work was common in late imperial China, involving men but particularly women and

rt

Clothing and Grooming

66. Weaving ofTurkish towels

with home-grown cotton spun in a foreign mill on a loom at home, 1931.

children: cotton was a household crop which brought money to producers,

modest affluence to farmers and greater warmth to the entire population. While some cities like Suzhou and Wuxi were involved in spinning and

weaving, most of the cotton processing, finishing and marketing was rural and

independent of urban management: as S.A. M. Adshead has observed, it was ‘capitalism, but without capitalists or big capital’. The expansion of cotton

production beyond the Songjiang area did not require great entrepreneurial

effort: it was a household enterprise which could easily be replicated in other parts of the country, reaching the isolated villages of north China in the eighteenth century. Cotton kept the farmer warm far more cheaply and effectively

than other fabrics, whether as padded jackets or, as is still common today, as layers of garments to be taken on or off to adjust to temperature variations.

In Europe linen instead of cotton dominated the market, its use expanding

dramatically during the eighteenth century: in France even ordinary domestic

workers, tradespeople and shopkeepers had ample amounts of linen in the

wardrobe. When the East India Company attempted to introduce cotton shirts to England in the seventeenth century, the attachment to linen was so strong that they failed to make much progress, even when cottons were made

in India after sample patterns designed for an English market.’ When the flow of trade reversed and manufactured piece-goods finally arrived in China from

Manchester in the nineteenth century, similar difficulties were encountered:

192

Cotton, the Fabric of Everyday Life

67. Group of students in China in the 1900s,

textile importers found a sophisticated market shaped by local preferences

which were difficult to alter. Thanks to the early adoption of cotton and a sophisticated culture of household production, imported piece-goods in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century failed to have much of an impact—unlike in many other

centres of manufacture in Asia which were gradually replaced by a colonial

economy dependent on the export of raw materials and the import of machine-

made goods. Like the expensive opium imported from India, smoked by the

wealthy as locally grown substitutes were consumed by the poor, imported

piece-goods were worn by the well-to-do who enjoyed some extra income for the purchase of luxury items." As a trade commissioner reported in 1869, they were willing to dispense with durability ‘in favour of gloss and novelty’.""

Von Richthofen also observed during his travels through China in 1870-2

that most foreign piece-goods were considered an article of luxury which

could not compete with native cloth in terms of cheapness and durability: ‘It

is the greater elegance, the ing of foreign cotton-cloth taste for ‘decent and showy either on their bodies or in

evenness and finish which have made the wear“fashionable”’ Luxury imports corresponded to a apparel, and for the exhibition of articles of value their houses’.'?

The proportion of foreign cloth (yangbu) increased from 21 to more than

40 per cent of all imports between 1867 and 1905. Plain fabrics accounted for 193

Clothing and Grooming

between half to three-quarters of these: grey and white shirtings, sheetings, drills, jeans and T-cloths.'? In the years before the 1911 revolution, however,

between a third and a half of the value of all imported cotton was yarn, the

spun thread used to weave finished pieces.'* The very fact that yarn and cloth rather than finished pieces played such an important role in the external trade of the country is in itself an indication that commodities described as ‘semi-raw’ materials were required from foreign traders rather than finished manufactured goods: as we have repeatedly observed, abundant labour meant that finished products could be manufactured more cheaply at home than in modern factories abroad.'® As Hosea Morse pointed out in 1908, yarn penetrated every corner of the empire, and the long, white thread used by

women in preparation of work at the loom could be seen in every village street.'° In Shaanxi where no more than a few bars of imported soap and some cigarettes could be found in the main store of the provincial capital in 1902, the warehouses throughout the region were filled with bales of cotton

woven in England and the United States. The cotton thread was the only link

of communication with the outside world, camels taking the product of Fall River, Massachusetts, still further to Gansu and Inner Mongolia.”

Cotton

could be found as far away as Tibet, where coloured pieces were used to decorate places frequented by spirits, the fluttering of prayers written on long

strips of cotton being considered efficacious." In Wuzhou one foreign trade representative estimated at the turn of the century that perhaps half of an ordinary person's dress consisted of foreign materials of some sort, whether camlet, velvet or shirtings.'” As cotton mills were increasingly established in China in the first dec-

ades of the twentieth century, machine-made cloth made rapid advances: the industry grew faster than anywhere else in the world, at times surpassing England and Japan in total output by the late 1920s." By 1934 an estimated

three-quarters of available yarn was machine-made, meaning that even the cloth made by small households in remote parts of the country was based on an industrial product." Cotton cloth also was increasingly manufactured by machine rather than by hand in the 1920s and ’30s: close to half of all cloth

production came from powerlooms rather than handlooms in 1936.” China

even started exporting manufactured cloth, cotton pieces and factory yarn to

overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and more generally to the poor in Asia

who demanded cheap goods: these items comprised a tenth of China's exports

in value by 1936.2

However, as Richard A. Kraus has noted in a thoughtful study of cotton

production in republican China, machine-made cloth did not simply displace

an inferior hand-woven cloth: while the former was cheaper per square yard, 14

Cotton, the Fabric of Everyday Life

68. Shoppers at clothing store in Bishan, Sichuan province, 1940s the latter was thicker and made by von Richthofen who could afford to spend smooth finish and looked

could outlast it in the long run. The observation in 1872 still held true half a century later: those more turned to machine-made cloth, which had a good. Well-to-do farmers continued to buy hand-

woven cloth, even at a premium of 50 per cent, because they found it profit-

able for reasons of durability. On the other hand, since factory products had a low initial cost, they also appealed to poor farmers who could not come up

with the higher purchase price of the more durable hand-made cloth, show-

ing how the everyday texture of life not only changed in the cities but also profoundly affected the poor in the countryside.

Despite the advances of manufactured cloth, impoverished farmers could

hardly meet the expense of new cotton. Cai Tingkai’s family was so indigent that they ate gruel and taro, while layers of discarded clothes kept them warm,

and when he joined the army in 1908 he was delighted to be given new clothes.®* Farmers in the small village near Tianjin where Feng Yuxiang grew up were so deprived that nothing but patched rags were used for clothing.”* Huang Kecheng, born in 1902 in a poor hamlet in Hunan, only experienced 195

Clothing and Grooming padded cotton when he was nineteen: as a child he spent most winters shiv-

ering with cold.” Moreover, even when cotton was bought by wealthier families, it was

subject to specific social restrictions before the collapse of the empire in 1912. In Yan Huiging’s ‘modern’ household the material, cut and colour of

children’s clothes were all tightly controlled. Despite living in the heartland of silk production, modesty dictated that only cotton clothes were worn. These

were loosely fitted and sombre in colour, for the sake of decorum as much

as for practical reasons; no frills or manifestations of fashion were permitted.

Children’s clothes were young adults’ clothes, reduced in length through tuck-

ing around the waist: the biggest humiliation would be to display the dark strip of newly released fabric produced by untucking.” Besides the use of dark hues to indicate modesty, a variety of formal and informal restrictions were

69, Shanghai street vendor selling shirts, 1948,

placed on the colours of dress:

most obviously yellow was the imperial colour

to be avoided by ordinary people, while the literati wore garments of deep

purple. Even the suit ofa criminal condemned to death was colour-coded in carmine.” Only after the collapse of the Qing would the sartorial repertoire

expand dramatically, leading to entirely new combinations of colour and cut. Sartorial diversity

With the disappearance of the empire, clothes diversified rapidly: petty ur-

banites in Shanghai wore silk gowns, fur coats and caps; clerks in the big cities often had foreign suits; and women abandoned traditional coats and

trousers for long gowns or a mixture of garments in old and new styles.” These changes were by no means restricted to the cities, and even in remote

mountain villages, novel objects like imported clothes, shoes and hats (called Dutch hats by the farmers in Guangdong) were proudly paraded by the local

elite in 1912, as the social restrictions on the conspicuous display of things

modern dissipated with the revolution."! Wellington Koo, based in Beijing in

1912, acutely observed how the capital was marked by a surprising willing ness to embrace things modern (xiandai xin shiwn) despite the conservative attitude of local elites. He was particularly struck by the number of men

wearing modern suits: the cut was not always the latest, but it showed how

rapidly everyday life was changing in the wake of the republican revolution.”

A few years later even a wretched beggar shivering in the freezing snow could

combine the usual padded coolie trousers and short tunic of dark blue with a foreign boater jauntily balanced above it," while the sight ofa rickshaw man

barelegged and barefooted splashing through the mud with a new mackintosh

over his shoulders was not uncommon.” Many foreigners bemoaned the

demise after 1911 of ‘traditional’ Chinese and Manchu garments, which the

196

Cotton, the Fabric of Everyday Life

70, Two men in business suits

walk past a beggar in rags and a coolie in a mandarin jacket, Shanghai, 1948.

regarded as more ‘dignified’, Dorothy Fox thus opined in 1913 that Western

suits worn incomplete, e.g. without collar or necktie, were highly improper, while Shanghai women were ‘dressed in the newest fashion—a tight coat of

silk with such a high collar that her ears scarcely show, tight silk trousers, a foreign cap with a bow of pink or blue ribbon on top and her hands in a muff of fur or crochet wool. She “waves” along in semi-foreign leather shoes on her tiny bound feet?" Whatever the opinions of foreign purists and conservative scholars, by the 1930s neckties, fancy socks and underclothes were all on sale at rock-bot-

tom prices: as the British Consul reported from Canton, these goods were

uneven in quality but appealed because they were cheap and met the fashion

Clothing and Grooming

71. Two young ladies in the 1900s. standards for wearing foreign clothes.” While local manufacturers attempted to undercut foreign imports by using cheaper materials, customers nonethe-

less determined which standards were acceptable. Modern knitwear factories in Shanghai found that some of their underclothes could not compete effec-

tively on the market because they used material which failed to absorb sweat:

only by importing foreign machinery and developing better production methods could these goods be improved and find an outlet.” Social elites, on

the other hand, welcomed foreign imports. As Lin Yutang commented, from

bound feet to the one-piece bathing suit was indeed a far cry; the permanent

wave, English high-heeled shoes, Parisian perfumes and American silk stock-

ings, as well as the high-slit flowing gown and the brassiere in place of the

former chest-binding jacket also became more fashionable among women in

the 1920s and °30s.*

The long gown remained in favour after the fall of the Qing in 1912.A

black silk tunic with a high collar and short sleeves, called the magua jacket,

or mandarin jacket, was usually worn over a long blue gown as formal dress, although both were far more tailored than under the empire. Ordinary men wore simple jackets and trousers made of blue cotton cloth. On

the other

hand, the ‘Zhongshan suit’, introduced by and named after Sun Yatsen in 1914, was tailored in a modern way with a military cut, turndown collar and

four outside pockets. Worn with modern trousers and made of dark blue serge

in the winter and khaki drill in the summer, it was preferred by nationalist

198

Cotton, the Fabric of Everyday Life

elites and after 1929 became compulsory for government servants. Despite its modern look and relatively low price, many men of various social backgrounds continued to wear foreign suits—even if in the same limited palette allowed under the empire, mainly grey, dark blue or brown. The ‘Western suit’

(xizhuang) became more common even in the countryside, as among young

men in Fujian province. As they told the sociologist Chen Da in the mid-

1930s, ‘the Zhongshan suit waves like a flag on windy days, which really lacks

elegance.’ The suit was so popular that in a small market town near Chengdu no less than six tailors made them specifically for local people in 1942: as one

observer astutely noted, ‘Foreign trousers free Chinese legs for faster move-

ment. In the 1930s in Beijing over fifty shops specialised in modern suits,

which were worn by scholars, politicians, officers and merchants. They were

made of wool, silk or cotton, although woollen serge was also popular, the materials being generally imported from Europe; buttons tended to come

from Japan." Suits could also be made at home, and as early as 1916 Zhang Shunian and his friends consulted sketches of clothes in American magazines

in order to make their own ‘Western suits’. Large overcoats, on the other hand, incorporated both local and foreign

references; made of dark grey or black cloth, they were single- or double-

breasted with a heavy fur collar and were common until 1949, The

influence

of the long gown could be seen in the length of the sleeves, which covered

the hands, and in the coat itself which reached the ankles if not the ground.

A cape could also be worn, made of dark cloth with a thick collar. Although

it was a common article before the republican era, government officials,

Jiang Jieshi in particular, made the cape more popular among the military.®

In a country plagued by humidity and constantly fighting the rain, rubber

was also an essential ingredient in the raincoat: traditional ones, just like the umbrella, were made of calico impregnated with tong oil, but new ones made

of sailcloth or rubber were entirely impermeable and easy to wash: they were

appreciated by soldiers and the police, who spent many hours in the open

during the rainy season.“

Clothes in imperial China were pocketless,"* as small items like a fan, a to-

bacco pouch and a pipe were carried either inside the sleeves or attached to a

string or belt around the waist. The watches made in England and Switzer-

land, mentioned in Chapter 2, were carried in special pouches attached to the

belt.” When the imperial envoy Zhang Deyi was offered a few cigars to be

taken away by the King of Sweden, he politely declined by showing that his

clothes came without pockets: his explanation was met with disbelief, even if pockets were relatively new to Europe too.** As late as 1938 the famous ‘silent

traveller’ Chiang Yee was still writing in London of his astonishment at the

199

Clothing and Grooming prodigious number of pockets in Western clothes,” although the Zhongshan suit, by then in the wardrobes of most government officials in China, had

four large pockets placed on the outside. The pocket—in trousers, shirts and

coats—created moving spaces into which a myriad of small objects could dis-

appear as the wearer moved about.

Women after 1911 could wear a local jacket with long skirt, followed in

the 1920s by short skirts and tubular garments. In all cases the collar on jackets

and gowns in the 1910s was much higher than it had ever been, reaching to

the tips of the ears, while the sleeves were cut just above the wrists;*’ when

the collar was stiffly starched it could even cut an angry red mark in the necks

of children.*' More popular was the qipao, also known in the south as the

cheongsam (figure 72). A one-piece dress initially worn by Manchu women,

it was revived in the early 1920s and underwent a number of changes, being ideal for formal and casual occasions, requiring relatively little material and being easy to make and elegant to wear, closed at the neck and reaching to the feet: instead of concealing the body, the modern qipao hugged the figure and often came with one slit in the bottom, revealing feet and ankles; other

models had a long slit on both hems for ease of movement and to reveal the

legs.** Even the corset was occasionally used by wealthy women, although in the early 1920s it was still confined to returned students.*’ These trends were

not limited to Shanghai: conservative observers even railed against female

students in Sichuan, who ‘wear coloured leather shoes, cotton tops, short sleeves and large trousers, just like in the theatre, and people often mistake them for prostitutes from the other side of the river’

In a culture of creative bricolage, various material objects were combined

in new and unexpected ways: the gipao, for instance, was often worn together with a modern overcoat and a colourful scarf. The creative uses to which some clothes were put could seem incongruous to foreign visitors.Vests could be worn outside the coat,*> while underclothes used for outside wear were

popular in many a thriving store. Shirts, usually in white or plain colours, were commonly worn outside the trousers by the 1940s, in contrast to the

sartorial rigidity of many foreigners. When the two young daughters of Lin

Yutang arrived from the United States in wartime Chongging, they observed

what appeared to them to be a new way of wearing the modern shirt, namely outside their trousers in the ‘traditional’ way.”

After their conquest of the country in 1644 the Qing required that all

men wear their hair in a tail with the rest of the head shaven. Historians have

shown how the fall of the dynasty in 1912 led to a widespread movement of

tail-cutting, but little has been said about the proliferation of hats: panama or straw hats crowned emancipated heads. Sumptuary restrictions which 200

Cotton, the Fabric of Everyday Life

72. Chinese women in fashionable cheongsam dresses, 1937. promoted a strict hierarchy in clothing codes were abolished by the republican government, allowing people to wear what they wanted regardless of social

status: the abolition of the tail equally introduced an unprecedented freedom

in the choice of headgear, since many men took the opportunity not only to cut their tail but also to abandon their traditional hat. Rich or poor, heads were often covered by new hats in republican China: as early as 1912 a news-

paper mocked this trend by publishing a cartoon of twenty-four people (all in gowns) wearing different headgear, from the panama hat to the police cap.” 201

Clothing and Grooming The straw summer hat was one of the first to appear in 1912, soon followed

by a small cap, then by the soft felt hat and later by the derby and silk hat.” Felt or velour trilby hats were particularly popular for informal as well as

ceremonial dress, replaced by a light straw version of the panama during

the summer.”' By the 1930s hats with stiff brims, soft straws and panamas of every style could be found in the store windows; even in the countryside, hats were an outstanding innovation.® In the 1920s wealthy women took to the cloche, the beret and the picture hat." ‘Traditional’ hats, on the other

hand, were increasingly produced by ‘modern’ enterprises: the folding silk hat produced by the Modernhood Hat Company in Shanghai came in an attractive box, while the satin hat by the Good Luck Coin Company

used modern materials. 73. Street vendors with stack of hats, Shanghai, 1948.

FROM

BOUND

FEET TO

LEATHER

in Beijing

SHOES

Shoes were arguably even more prized than new clothes in the republican

era. Many men continued to wear a gown and a magua jacket, although most

acquired new shoes and hats; for women the shift from bound feet to leather

shoes was even more momentous in terms of self-presentation. One of the

first changes in dress after the debacle of the Boxer rebellion in 1900 noted

by Isaac Headland was the replacement of cloth, silk and velvet in the manufacture of shoes by leather.”

Lack of a proper tanning process, as well as Buddhist injunctions against

the slaughter of beef, meant

that leather was only used more

extensively

after being introduced from Europe.” In the 1910s shoes were made from imported leather in small shops in a number of cities.” In Chengdu leather goods were produced with imported machinery in the 1900s as coats, bags

and shoes were churned out for the local market; a pair of modern shoes cost $10 to $16. The rage for leather shoes spread after 1911, although elderly

people did not find them as comfortable as traditional footwear.” Students

who had returned from abroad were often the first to display their envied status by promenading with walking sticks and leather shoes.” Yet even those

who continued to prefer traditional dress could make an exception for mo-

dern shoes, a sure sign of wealth and position: when Mei Lanfang posed in

a long gown in his traditional rock garden for the Peiyang Pictorial News, the

only visible concession to modernity was his pair of white socks and leather shoes.”

By the 1930s prices had come down and leather shoes were much more

affordable. Oxford shoes were quite popular in Canton, where they were

made out of leather imported from Shanghai.” In the recycling culture

From Bound Feet to Leather Shoes of republican China they could be bought second-hand in street markets.

Dozens of leather shoes, which were frequently repaired or mended before

being put on sale, could be offered by a single peddler displaying his goods on the concrete pavement.” By the early 1940s even skilled workers and rich village children in Yunnan could afford a pair.”* If modernity

walked

in leather shoes, these were

not only a matter of

prestige: good footwear could keep the feet warm and dry in an environment

5,

constantly fighting against water, whether by tropical monsoons and humid summers

in the

south, the

rainy season

in central

China

or the summer

storms and winter snow of the north.A good pair of shoes was an overriding

concern of many, as is amply testified by the many autobiographies in which

shoes play an important role. Even before the 1911 revolution Yuan Xiangpu

considered a pair of leather boots to be the best foreign item available as ‘it

makes a great sound when walking fast:”> Liang Shigiu (1902-87)—who

hailed from a household wealthy enough to install telephone and electric

74.With leather shoes comes shoe-shining.

lighting in 1912—wore home-made socks and shoes throughout his youth.

He had to trawl through the rain with his studded shoes (dingxie) specially

oiled for wet weather, the mud sometimes a foot deep on the streets before

1911. Only when he entered the prestigious Qinghua University in 1915

did he grow bold enough to order by mail, behind the back of his mother, a pair of white cloth shoes and foreign socks; years later he would finally pur-

chase leather shoes.” Xia Yan—who grew up in Zhejiang province—also remembered how he had to wear studded shoes till the age of twenty: made

of cowhide with nails on the sole, they were the most common footwear for the rainy season. He hated the constant humidity of drenched shoes so much

that even years later he would see them in nightmares every time he suffered from a cold.” Feng Yuxiang—later to become one of the most powerful gen-

erals—vividly remembered in his youth walking in old cotton shoes discarded

by others: since they never quite fitted, he suffered from painful feet for the

rest of his life.* Li Zongren (1891-1969), who also became a famous general,

came from impoverished Guangxi province and walked to his local school

barefoot: he would wash his feet in the river and only put on his cotton shoes

just before entering the town. Later, when he joined the army, he admired

the leather boots worn by returned students and was delighted to be given a

pair.” Liang Desuo also reminisced how joining the army was a popular thing to do in Shandong, one of the attractions being the leather shoes soldiers had

to wear.*’ Yu Dafu even recalled begging his impoverished mother for a pair of leather shoes as a child, which he saw as the most glorious object to display

with his school uniform. His constant nagging finally got him into a shop, only to have to witness the humiliation of his mother being refused credit.*! 203

Clothing and Grooming However, while leather shoes were indubitably a sign of wealth, they were also very practical, as returned emigrants in Fujian emphasised when asked

why they preferred them to cotton shoes: ‘They last longer and save effort

when walking.”

Leather shoes were even made for women

with bound feet: C. E. Bos-

worth, investigating the leather trade in China, thought the pointed shoes had

a neat appearance and admirable fit, which explained why they were quite

common.” Some were machine-stitched in black leather with instep strap

and leather sole, others had Oxford laces. Instead of buying special shoes

for bound feet, some women, including the teacher at Wang Yingxia’s school, used paper to fill the toes, hobbling back home in modern attire."* Her shoes had flat heels, just as the slippers used by women in the countryside would

have flat heels, but the high heel too found its way into fashion in the 1920s,

prominently displayed on fashionably dressed women in calendar posters and

advertisements.” Liang Yen, who worked as a secretary for a government official in Shanghai, used her spare money to buy high heels and a fur coat."”

In the early 1920s in Shanghai wealthy school girls too looked forward to

the school holidays specifically to ‘show off’ high-heeled shoes.“ A few years

later high heels became fashionable even in distant Chengdu: girls would

compete to see who had the tallest,” expense further adding to emulation:

a good pair in a local brand like Shenjiang could cost about $13.” Did high

heels become a substitute for bound feet? Lin Yutang certainly thought that they enhanced the female figure, imitating the gait of bound feet by throwing

the hips backward and making the body shimmy: high heels created the illu-

sion that the feet were smaller than they were in reality”! If leather was beyond the means of most, even the masses could keep their feet dry thanks to rubber. ‘A Chinese carries the floor of his house under

his feet’, foreigners sometimes observed, as lack of heating outside wealthy households meant that soles were very stiff and quite thick, creating much

discomfort:” rubber revolutionised footwear. Three-quarters of workers in a

sample questioned by the Bureau of Social Affairs in Greater Shanghai in the 1930s had rubber boots,”’ while in Sichuan even rickshaw men had rubber-

soled shoes.” In the Fujianese countryside, where workers and farmers usually

walked on wooden clogs or simply bare-footed, rubber shoes appeared in the mid-1930s ‘because they are cheap and handy’.”* Even in the remote county of Xunwu, over 70 per cent of young people wore rubber-soled shoes by

1930, each pair costing about $1.°* Rubber shoes were specifically adapted

for rainy weather, since the foot was completely encased as far as the ankle.”

They were particularly popular with female students: in Chengdu they

were said to be able to walk for miles, a far cry from the bound feet of their

204

From Bound Feet to Leather Shoes mothers.”* Sports shoes (yundongxie) were made of rubber soles and cloth

and were also popular with female students, although cheaper versions were

used by workers in the cities; soldiers along the coast were also equipped with

these shoes. Rubber boots laced to the toe with blue cloth uppers and rubber

ankle protectors were also extremely popular, and adopted as ordinary dress by

soldiers and students.” Over-shoes (taoxie), or galoshes, were just as welcome

in the countryside. Farmers in the south would wear them for most of the

time, in particular during the rainy season and when working in rice paddies and inundated fields. Many households on both sides of the Yangzi River, which frequently flooded, also had rubber galoshes.'"” The popularity of rubber shoes or rubber soles was reflected by the in-

creasing output of local factories. In 1933 they made more than 12 million rubber shoes, although imports were still cheaper and sold mainly in the north,'"' worth more than 5 million standard dollars."

The Dazhonghua

Rubber Co., the largest in Shanghai, produced halfa million shoes and about 300,000 galoshes a month after the Second World War."

Knitted socks were welcomed by all. Local factories began to produce

knitted socks by the late Qing, 1,000 pairs being manufactured in Canton

every day. From Jiangsu along the coast to Guizhou in the hinterland, the

socks and towels as well as cotton and woollen clothes produced by small

companies or peasant households became everyday items (richang yongpin)

accessible to ordinary people.'’ In Beijing alone fifty to sixty enterprises spe-

cialised in socks, since ‘foreign socks’ (yangwa) had all but replaced the ‘cloth socks’ (buwa) that were made of woven A WHIFF

cotton.

OF MODERNITY

Skin

Smell has a history, one that has been brilliantly interpreted by Alain Corbin in the case of modern France: a decline in ‘olfactory tolerance’ among a rising bourgeoisie led to a shift away from heavy, musky perfumes towards more delicate fragrances after 1789." Before the revolution in France, it was not

uncommon for the aristocracy to carry boxes or sachets of scent meant to vanish body odours."” With the spread of the germ theory in the 1880s, an even greater sensory intolerance appeared in France, as asepsis and an odourless environment became goals pursued by educated elites and government

circles. The use of soap and water against body dirt and the circulation of

water and air were meant to exterminate hidden germs and microbes, leading to a profound shift in public hygiene.

75. Advertisement for rubber shoes.

Clothing and Grooming

Similar ideas appeared in China, carried by a discourse on hygiene which

became widespread during the republican era.'* Although

the term ‘hygiene’

(weisheng) first appeared in the Song dynasty (960-1279), it achieved an un-

precedented status of power and prestige only in the early twentieth century. Hygiene referred to a specialised field, a distinct discipline defined by a body

of knowledge anda set of social practices based on medical science. Its status was enhanced by social elites in the cities, who emphasised the scientific competence of new knowledge in order to further their own claims to professional

autonomy. Medical professions in particular were instrumental in the develop-

ment of new institutions, organizations, committees and periodicals, as well

as the publication of a burgeoning number of family handbooks, manuals on hygiene and treatises on physiology which explained new norms and attitudes

76. Advertisement for olive soap.

towards bodily cleanliness. Under the guise of science, these popular booklets liberally dispensed advice and enunciated precepts on hygiene, housekeeping,

proper clothing, diet and related matters. They were written in simple language and served as a guide to the new social formations of the coastal regions. Pri-

mary and secondary schools also became centres for the dissemination of new knowledge. Textbooks were printed for a new curriculum which included classes in hygiene, as teachers preached the physiology of health. A textbook

used in primary schools for boys explained how ‘rotting objects and filthy

places breed a kind of microscopic insect called a germ. Germs are so small

that the eye cannot see them. Light and tiny, they spread everywhere and get

into the human body where they proliferate.""” The body itself was seen as a battlefield where bacteria crossed swords with antibodies.'"’ ‘From birth to

death not a single day in man’s life is without a struggle with microbes. The body is a battlefield.""' While ideas on hygiene were widespread in modern China, commerce

rather than propaganda turned them into an everyday practice. Adrian Forty

has rightly observed that health education in schools was a cumbersome

instrument of reform, while a patronising attitude towards the working class

in England was as likely to prejudice ordinary people against greater hygiene

as to persuade them of its necessity. Far more effective were the commodities designed in an aesthetic of cleanliness that appealed strongly to customers of

a variety of social backgrounds.''? The same can be said of modern China: commerce in scented soaps propagated cleanliness far more effectively than

discourse on hygiene. As early as 1883 a local merchant already advertised an

imported Five Colour Fragrant Soap as being ‘bright and dazzling’, with an ‘extraordinary fragrance’, coming in a ‘lovely’ shape.'" The superiority of foreign soaps was explained some ten years later as follows:‘Compared to other

soaps on the market, these are superior. They smell clean and pleasant, feel

206

A Whiff of Modernity smooth and slippery, last longer and get rid of any kind of grease and dirt’! By the early twentieth century imported soaps from Britain were the most

popular in Shanghai, since they cleaned clothes better than local varieties.''*

Such was the status of soap that it was fictionalised in 1924 in Lu Xun’s short

story Soap:a young woman in the countryside joyfully anticipates unwrapping her first-ever olive-scented bar of soap, which represents sophistication and luxury. An entire paragraph is dedicated to describing the colour, texture and smell of the present from the city.""* Soap may have indicated status, but it was also bought for practical reasons: imported varieties were preferred to the traditional cleaning agents (lye or soda), since they were kinder to the skin.'"’ The use of soap, of course, could

be interpreted as a need closely tied to a vision of properly disciplined bodies

promoted by the state and the practices of cleanliness spread by advertising

campaigns, but even in strong colonial regimes the evidence points at a much

more active role played by consumers in shaping habits of hygiene. In Zimbabwe soap was seen by most Africans as a fundamental need, although this could be linked to missionary efforts to promote cleanliness and to massive

postwar advertising. The popular use of petroleum jelly and body creams, by

contrast, developed without any commercial sermons or state support: some companies even felt compelled to take steps to protect products like margarine

from being understood by local communities as body lotions. A precolonial practice of ‘smearing’,in which the body was coated after washing with a paste to protect it from dirt, prevent it from cracking and give it a shiny appearance,

was behind user experimentation from the 1930s to the 1960s with a variety

of products to cream the body, including margarine, oil and soap. Vaseline and

body lotions like Pond’s eventually prevailed quite independently from the

advertisements produced by these companies.'"* Such was the demand for cleanliness by consumers in China that a whole

variety of new products labelled ‘hygienic’ (weisheng) appeared in the republi-

can era. Manufacturers and retailers would try to give any product the appearance of ‘hygiene’ in response to the idea that cleanliness was a positive value. In Chengdu some stalls even advertised roasted peanuts and sunflower seeds as

‘hygienic’ produce,"'’ while ‘hygienic’ dumplings and ‘hygienic’ shoes appeared during the New Life Movement.'””

The appearance of simple, ingenious devices spread by a burgeoning glo-

bal economy also helped to diffuse hygienic practices. Much as the thermos

bottle, to be analysed in the next chapter, became an intrinsic part of tea culture, the enamel washbasin became the centrepiece of washing rituals. In

a country of thrift and poverty, often lacking adequate access to clean water, the washbasin allowed millions to perform their morning ablutions with a

207

Clothing and Grooming minimum of wastage: hot water from a thermos would be poured into the

basin and a wet (Turkish) towel would be used to wipe the body clean. Washbasins were widely available, locally made and very cheap: even in a small

town in Zhejiang province in the early 1920s, pink and blue enamel wash-

basins and mirrors were popular.'2! As Forman noted after the Second World

‘War, numerous houses had a washstand with an enamel bowl ‘with perhaps a

cake of real soap and a Turkish towel (universally popular in China today).!? At first perfumes and cosmetics were imported and used by the wealthy

alone. The last emperor Puyi, as we have seen above, used Max Factor lotions

and eau-de-Cologne. In Shanghai perfume was in vogue in the last decade of

the Qing: [Ladies] spray perfume all over their bodies, so that one scents fra

grance everywhere when the wind blows.’ Many others took to imported

scents, and already before the 1911 revolution cities well beyond Shanghai sold

a range of expensive perfumes. In Chengdu Guo Moruo remembered that as shops were being smashed by the army, many perfumed bottles were broken

and the smell carried far away: ‘The silk city of Chengdu had been turned

into a long fragrant street." In the early 1920s vanity shops in Hankou, on the Yangzi river, were stocked with perfumes from all over the world,'* while

even in the hinterland fashion-conscious ladies happily sprayed perfumes.'* To douse oneself in expensive imported perfume while many could not even

buy a bar of soap must have appeared to be the ultimate in self-indulgence,

which would be decried by the communists. Yet cheaper perfumes aimed at a

much larger section of the market were also available. In Hangzhou in 1934 dozens of local lotions, scents and perfumes appeared on the market, excluding foreign imports.'” In Shanghai well over 100 factories produced cosmetic

products by the 1940s, including perfume, talcum powder, shampoo, hair wax, face cream, cold cream and vanishing cream, toothpaste and perfumed

soaps.'* As Carl Crow noted, those who could not afford expensive imports

would buy cheaper local brands in smaller quantities.” A huge demand for cosmetics also appeared immediately in the wake of the 1911 revolution, as social restrictions on personal appearance weakened with the disappearance of the Qing. Simple preparations made at home, including charred matches to apply a fine curved line on eyebrows, or rouge prepared from flower dyes and applied in liquid form,'*’ 10 were increasingly replaced by

packaged products. One observer noted how in the two decades following the

collapse of the empire, women in Beijing, young and old, ugly and pretty, all

powder their faces and colour their cheeks... as the demand for face powder is very high, the city produces some very famous brands. For instance, the Palace

Powder is known all over the country, as even women in the south request it!" Specific examples highlight how cosmetics were particularly popular 208

A Whiff of Modernity among professional women. Liang Yen bought her first lipstick while on a trip to Nanjing: she was an independent woman working as a secretary.'”” Adeline Mah’s aunt worked as a clerk in the savings department of the Bank of Shang-

hai and habitually wore face cream, a dab of rouge and a touch of lipstick, while her ears were adorned with stud earrings of pearls and jade.’

The range of products was phenomenal: White Snow (Baixue) sold face

cream in glass pots,'* while the Earth Brand Company sold Everyone Balm to

“everyone’.'> Butterfly Cream was advertised as protecting ‘against the ravages

of sun, wind and age’."* Some specifically targeted country girls, an indication of the extent of the success of cosmetics beyond the cities. The famous

‘Twin Sisters brand thus promoted its jasmine lotion: ‘Have you not noticed

that country people always look aged when they first come to the city? They

are looked down upon by everybody... [jasmine lotion] can transform their

dark, rough and aged skin to a tender, smooth and white complexion.!”

Over 100 different powders, pomades, rouges, soaps and creams were available

in cities of the lower Yangzi in the 1930s, all made in China at prices targeted

at a broad market." As a consequence, almost every woman, rich or poor, had

a beauty kit. The wife of a rickshaw puller would have among her possessions a bit of talcum powder and some rouge, even if it might only be used once

or twice a year for a wedding or a festival." Sociological surveys confirm that rouge and white powder were the only luxury products used by women

in the poor villages outside Beijing.'* By the time of the Second World War country girls could buy soap, towels, cream, powder and rouge from ordinary stands on market days.'"! Teeth

Where soap and perfume conquered the countryside, the toothbrush did

not lag far behind. Brushing teeth was not new: a willow stick of which

one end was frayed by incisions could be used to cleanse the teeth with salt, an Indian

habit brought to China

with the introduction of Buddhism

a millennium before.'*? As early as 1909 the toothbrush was mentioned as

an ordinary daily product in Fu Chongju’s detailed inventory of material

culture in faraway Chengdu,'**

while brushes, powders and pastes were not

only imported but made locally by countless companies two decades later. In Hangzhou in 1934 local customers could choose from seventy-eight different types of toothbrush—not including foreign imports." Dozens of local brands of toothpaste or tooth powder competed on the market, including major brands like Three Stars, Double Pearl, Peerless, Pretty Star, Treasure Pagoda, Peacock, Orient, Gold Ribbon and Scholar: many cost as little as 20-30

cents."“5 Darkie (Heiren), with a grinning caricature in blackface and a top 209

Clothing and Grooming hat, would remain popular till the end of the century (it was renamed Darlie after the Hong Kong company that produced it was acquired by Colgate

in 1985). In the 1930s huge flamboyant posters would advertise these

brands,'"” while vouchers and cash could be won in Three Stars toothpaste

competitions.'** In a country of poverty, toothpaste often came with a key so that buyers could squeeze every last morsel out of the tube.'"” For many the toothbrush became an essential everyday item: when Liang

Yen absconded from her comfortable but conservative family in the early

1930s, she took with her nothing but a toothbrush, soap and pyjamas.'*” The habit of brushing was so important to Li Xianwen that when he was briefly detained in the summer of 1919 he used his finger instead to clean

208

ak

fe

Oe

77. Darkie Toothpaste.

his teeth.'*! Toothbrushes were also common among working people: a detailed survey of the belongings of twenty-four families of workers in Shanghai found thirty-two toothbrushes, revealing how new habits of hygiene were rapidly adopted in the cities by all social groups. Almost all workers used

tooth powder or toothpaste and foreign soaps.'* By the mid-1930s even sol-

diers had an enamel basin, a toothbrush and a towel each: weapons were too

expensive.'* According to one foreign observer in the 1920s, some rickshaw

pullers even kept a brush under the flap hanging from the cushioned seat of

the rickshaw.'* The toothbrush was less popular in the countryside: a socio-

logist who investigated a number of villages outside Beijing noted that not even one in three adults had one; the habit of brushing teeth and cleaning the mouth

was all but non-existent in Ding county, Hebei province, since

only two out of thirty-four families used a toothbrush.'** Yet in textbooks on

proper deportment used in middle schools in the 1930s, brushing your teeth

was just as important as bowing to the teacher in school and meeting the guest with a cup of tea at home: an essential part of everyday etiquette.'* Teeth were not only brushed as never before, but also carefully maintained

by those who could afford a dentist. Straight white teeth became one of the

prerequisites in professional circles, as can be deduced from the huge expan-

sion in dentistry. In Beijing alone dozens of dentists appeared in the wake of

the 1911 revolution to fit porcelain or gold tecth.'” A dentist of excellent reputation who had been trained in America had to replace his assistants every

two or three months, one foreigner noted after the Second World War, when

they absconded at the end of this unofficial apprenticeship to practise on their own.'** Crowns in particular attracted interest, since even wealthy individuals

with healthy teeth were so taken with foreign gold crowns that they would

buy gold sheaths to be worn as movable ornaments on the most prominent of

their front teeth on special occasions: they were perhaps the ultimate in port-

able wealth,'” In Xi'an one observer noted how young people would have 210

A Whiff of Modernity

78. Children in a Shanghai orphanage brushing teeth and washing, 1940s,

healthy teeth replaced by gold ones:‘Even though one may have a mouth full of teeth as white as ivory, they must be drilled in order to put in a gold inlay?" This habit extended to both men and women, who would ostentatiously chew seeds or play with a cigarette to show off their gold teeth, smiling to dis-

play their wealth.'*! Even more spectacular was the glass eye; with the spread of modern surgical devices artificial eyes appeared (imported from Germany)

in missionary hospitals,'® although they were sometimes perceived more as

novelty objects than as medical appurtenances: at a Beijing temple, one reliable foreign visitor noted the sale of artificial eyes made from a variety of jade in

which red veins occurred, closely resembling a diseased eye."

211

Clothing and Grooming Hair Besides skin and teeth, hair was a component of everyday presentation which underwent important changes in modern China—in particular with the cut-

ting of the tail by men. Traditional barbers worked on the street shaving the

heads and every nook and cranny of the face with great care, including eyelid, nose and ear, both inside and out." New barbers appeared immediately after 191 1:when Liang Shiqiu had his tail cut offas a boy following the revolution,he went to the only modern hairdresser in Beijing. Even in a relatively remote

place like Chengdu, far from the coast, a modern barber's shop was opened in 1911

by a converted Christian who had returned from Singapore with

an iron barber's chair: several adjustable revolving chairs as well as windows of coloured glass turned it into a local attraction, crowds obstructing the

traffic on its unveiling. Mr Zhu’s shop, the first of its kind in Chongqing, boasted a mirror and a copper washbasin. In the summer a huge punkah was attached to the ceiling with a servant pulling the string. In the evenings before

the busy New Year a kerosene lamp would be lighted. The shop upgraded its equipment in 1919, adding clippers, scissors and foreign razors to the

contents of the wooden box hanging on the wall. Glass windows and iron chairs appeared a few years later, while an electric fan and an electric hairdryer were introduced with the advent of electricity in 1934.'*” By the 1930s

and '40s most urban barbers in Sichuan were equipped with modern chairs and electric clippers; razors, clippers and scissors were disinfected, the barber

wore a gauze mask over his mouth, hair was shampooed and it was finally dried with an electric blower (hot air during the winter, cold during the summer);

chemicals could be applied for permanent waving, while pomades and gels

were provided on request.'* Many installed a revolving glass door while neon lights with bright red, white and blue colours became the standard sign for

the barber. Even the YMCA in Chongqing opened a barbershop in 1925,

complete with twenty revolving chairs and imported German clippers: prices

may have been high, but the place was always crowded." Barbers were also among the first to install heating. By 1910 many barber's shops in Shanghai used at least one gas stove: ‘On entering the shop the customer immediately feels the warmth, and the smoke turns his face red; a hot towel is offered and

he no longer fears the strong wind outside. Taking a seat by the fire he can

relax as if it were a balmy day!"”"

On the other hand, even itinerant barbers, catering for the poor by setting

up stalls on the street, would have a bamboo chair, a square mirror and a wash-

tw

basin made of ‘foreign china’ (yangci), i.e. enamel. The old black apron was gradually replaced by bleached imported cloth, cigarettes being handed out

A Whiff of Modernity during festivals to attract customers.'”! Far away in the hinterland, barbers in

tiny Xunwu immediately substituted traditional implements with modern

shears and scissors after the 1911 revolution, while

the first large mirror appeared.

in 1923, as rattan chairs took the place of the four-legged bench. Metal combs

were also brought into the city, to be replaced by plastic ones in 1926.'? Barbers’ premises emerged not only as spaces of a hygienic modernity, but also as popular venues for social meetings,as with the Hua An Hairdressers on

Jing’ansi Road, Shanghai." The ultra-modern Lingfeng Barbershop, where

master barber Yang Deshan practised his trade, was famous enough to make it

into the pages of the Peiyang Pictorial News; comfortable reclining chairs with footrests and porcelain shampoo bowls welcomed wealthy patrons.'* However, most of these places remained male preserves, with women continuing to have their hair cut at home, away from the public gaze. In the first decades of the twentieth century barbers nonetheless started to cater for women,

and a variety of hairstyles appeared, from the pompadour style of coiffure, quite fashionable after Japan’s victory over Russia, to the ‘bob’ popular in the 1920s,'75

TRINKETS

FOR

THE

POOR,

WATCHES

FOR

THE

RICH

The use of gold sheaths placed over healthy teeth shows the propensity to decorate the body with expensive objects in a country of great social mobility.

In imperial China both men and women covered themselves with jewellery

whenever they could afford it: men

would wear gold or silver rings with

precious stones, often on the thumb; pearls could be put into hats while the

ubiquitous fan often came inserted with pearls or coral. Finely crafted snuff

bottles of bone and horn, coloured glass, jade or crystal were also common among the wealthy. Women were adorned with hairpins, heavy earrings, large

gold or silver bracelets and weighty rings; nails could be protected by silver

fingerstalls.'’* Many women had one or two hairpins sticking out of their hair

as ornaments; these too served to indicate wealth, copper and silver being less

exclusive, and gold and jade more so.'”” Imported jewellery was popular in Shanghai well before the collapse of the empire. Specialised shops advertised a wide range of merchandise in the

Shenbao in 1907, including rings, earrings, bracelets, pins for hats and collars,

brooches, necklaces, watchchains, wooden combs, cufflinks and buttons.

Some stores also stocked diamonds, guaranteed to be genuine, the cheapest

one retailing at $2.'* In a culture which prized jade, imported varieties of the

mineral were very successful: imitation jadeite imported from Japan appeared in the 1900s, and was even judged to be superior in colour.'” Diamond rings

213

Clothing and Grooming were another example of a new ornament with local overtones. According to a Shanghai magazine, wearing a diamond ring had become fashionable as

‘rings originated from the imperial palace... in recent years some people have

mistaken them as an accessory, and both men and women like to wear one...

when they lift their hands, the ring looks very bright and sparkling in their eyes.’ Fake diamond rings, needless to say, also thrived in a culture of ostenta-

tious display." Local imitations did not take long to appear either: in 1911 the Quanchang Jewellery Store advertised its own line of products to compete

with foreign imports, selling diamond and jadeite brooches and collar pins,

watch chains, cigarette lighters, cigarette holders, ornate buttons, pearls,as well as jadeite and gold earrings. The shop also retailed diamond rings mounted

with blue and red stones costing $8 a piece; gold ear cleaners, another port-

able item particular to China, cost around $3 each. In order to accelerate

turnover, the shop offered to exchange old items for new pieces.’*' In a country where plenty of small objects were hung about the person, the ultimate object of desire was the wristwatch. In Canton wealthy girls

displayed their status not only with necklaces and gold-filigreed glasses, but also

with wristwatches, ‘walking slowly on the streets in a big group’.'** Canton may have been a special case due to its proximity to Hong Kong, but far up

north in Xi’an wearing a wristwatch also became fashionable after 1911: the

rich showed off their expensive watches in the theatre, sometimes spending

more time checking the time than following the play.'** Cheaper watches

also became available, and in Shanghai even a few workers wore one by the

1930s." In Xunwu—located far from all major cities on the border of three provinces—about 2 per cent of the 120,000 locals had watches and clocks in

1930, so it was necessary to have a watch-repair shop." In Beijing, by contrast,

over 140 shops were specifically set up to repair watches, not including a simi-

lar number of watch sellers, who could offer imported timepieces for as little as $5: most came from Japan, Germany and Switzerland." Spectacles too were sometimes used less for their optical virtues as for their

ability to display wealth and education. Like watches, they were imported

from abroad as early as the eighteenth century, and like watches they were

immediately copied by local artisans, as wearing spectacles became more common

among

well-to-do families. Yang Jingting observed in 1845 that

some men in Beijing even pretended to be short-sighted and wore specta-

cles so that ‘people would regard them as scholars’.""” Such were the social connotations of glasses that during the late Qing an inferior would take them

off when speaking to a superior as a sign of respect, very much as in Europe

hats were doffed as a mark of courtesy (this part of social etiquette was still followed in parts of China in the 1920s). A few decades later a dedicated

Trinkets for the Poor, Watches for the Rich street, known as ‘spectacles street’ (yanjingjie), could be found outside the Tai-

ping Gate in Canton, while in Shanghai most shops dealing in foreign goods

began to retail them during the second half of the nineteenth century.'” By the turn of the century expensive spectacles could be found even in jewellery shops as a fashion accessory in Shanghai. A short poem published

in a pictorial magazine in 1909 described the spectacle culture of Shanghai:

“Spectacles are such an ingenious invention, helping the eyes to have a rest

and see more clearly. People whether the spectacles have most fashionable ones come frames and tinted glass lenses

love to buy a pair to make their eyes dazzle, plain glass, long- or short-sighted lenses. The in a slightly pointed shape with golden filigree in wax yellow or black ink." It added that ‘in

recent years, from the wives of officials to mere prostitutes, all are often seen

wearing [spectacles]. In the 1930s readers interested in things modern were

told that spectacles could be bought from shops even by those with perfect eyesight: glasses were a must in the everyday presentation of the modern self.” Cheaper spectacles were round, wire-rimmed and tinted. Students often

79. Man with large spectacles.

had hornrims, although gold filigree glasses and leather shoes were the two

key sources of pride among the modernising elites in parts of the country

after 1911.'° In Beijing both old and modern spectacles—called ‘chemical glasses’ (huaxue yanjing)—were manufactured, the traditional ones with copper,

hawksbill turtle or horn rims only finding a market in the countryside. Some

of the modern versions could be quite cheap, especially those made of plain

iron.'* Spectacles became increasingly affordable, and by the time of the Sec-

ond World War even ordinary people could buy a pair: in the small town of Zhonghechang, Sichuan,a stand offered them to the local farmers on market

days in 1942.1

As we have observed of other new objects, the uses to which glasses could be put did not always accord with the intentions of their producers. In Chengdu, for instance, they were worn on windy days simply to protect the eyes against dust rather than to improve eyesight: in the north they must have been useful as protection against sandstorms.'” In the ‘civilised weddings’

(wenming jiehun) of the republican era a bride would no longer wear a head-

scarf to cover her face but use tinted glasses instead to hide her eyes.'” Even

more often, however, spectacles seem to have been used against the glare of the sun, much as Eskimos wore glasses against the blinding whiteness of the snow. Most lenses were made of a smoky quartz, although even colourless rock crystal had sufficient opacity to soften the light passing through the lenses. In the late 1920s the use of glasses against the sun was important

N a

enough for Crookes anti-glare glasses, later called Calobar lenses (they gave

Clothing and Grooming protection against UV and IR), to become popular in parts of the country,

such as Hankou, whether or not one suffered from poor eyesight.'"* Moreover, as Rudolf Hommel indicates, the dark colour of the glasses was also an aid ‘to the almighty officials for scrutinizing with searching eyes without

being detected in doing so’.'”

Even the way in which spectacles were worn varied according to social

context: while students placed the shafts firmly behind their ears, photo-

graphs show that ordinary people frequently had frames with straight iron shafts which were placed against the head, or even bent up underneath a skull cap or against the ears like a claw, no doubt in order to avoid cutting into

the ears.” Zhang Ailing confirms that spectacles were used for ornament: ‘The indiscriminate importation of things foreign went to such an extent that

society girls and professional beauties wore spectacles for ornament, since 80. Moscow Barber Shop in

the French part of Shanghai, with cheap spectacles on

sale on the street.

spectacles were a sign of modernity’*”' Not everyone, however, wore spectacles as a mere fashion statement: emperor Puyi as a boy already suffered from severe short sight and other ocular defects, and glasses made a huge difference

to his comfort and wellbeing; he became so devoted to his spectacles that he

refused to be parted from them for a moment, even to have a photograph taken or his portrait painted.” The civilised umbrella

Wealthy elites also took to the walking stick. It appeared in Europe after 1600 as a sign of gentility, and by the eighteenth century the new bourgeoisie spent a vast amount of money on the canes which became central to social ceremonies and political rituals, and which would be despised as tokens of the ancien régime during the revolutions which shook the nineteenth century.” In

Shanghai, however, they were seen by local and foreign elites alike as a neces-

sary accessory." After 1911 they also became an emblem of the member of

parliament, together with the attaché-case or small valise, while the military salute and the doffing of hats were in vogue as forms of salutation.?”*

Far more common than the walking stick was the umbrella.As a trade representative observed in 1878, everyone in China, from rich to poor, carried two objects: an umbrella and a fan.” Umbrellas started to replace the walk-

ing stick as a sign of gentility in Europe in the early twentieth century, but in

China umbrellas already had a long pedigree. Traditional umbrellas were made

of oiled paper: like the oiled shoes mentioned in the previous chapter, they

provided some protection against humidity in a country where torrential rain

was common. They were twice as heavy as their modern equivalents, as stout

bamboo handles and large and thick ribs added weight.” Foreign umbrellas were one of the first articles to be bought by ordinary people in the south 216

Trinkets for the Poor, Watches for the Rich

of China as early as the 1880s, even before the spread of lamps and soap.*™

By the 1890s the imported umbrella was so cheap that in Hainan it had

ousted most of the local equivalents made of varnished paper.”” Immediately after the 1911 revolution, they also appeared in small villages in the north of Guangdong province.”" Elsewhere too the foreign umbrella, called the ‘civilised umbrella’ (wenmingsan), could be bought from modern shops in the

1910s, even in small towns in Zhejiang.?"' In Xunwa, near the Jiangxi border with Guangdong and Fujian, a majority adopted them in the 1910s: by 1930,

whether in town or countryside, male and female, rich and poor alike, used modern umbrellas.”” These could cost as little as 30 cents apiece, and dozens of different styles made in China were on offer in Hangzhou in the 1930s.7” They were used not only against rain, but also as a sunshade in a country where dark skin had

negative connotations.”"" Like most global artefacts, the modern umbrella also

became enmeshed within the moral and cognitive traditions of the locality.

In China a system of taboos was often analogically constructed on the basis

of homophony. As Li Zongren remembered from his childhood in Guangxi,

the modern umbrella was forbidden when the locals prayed for rain: since

‘foreign umbrella’ (yangsan) sounded just like ‘sun umbrella’ (yangsan) it was

considered an inauspicious sign.2'> Umbrellas made

locally of paper could be adorned

with pictures.”'*

Whereas imported umbrellas were austerely black, as in Britain, colourful

patterns and cheerful motifs appeared on local varieties in China.” The handle might be inlaid with ivory, glass beads or even a toy compass, while the deco-

ration of the web enabled dealers to tell the different makes on the market by

their style: those produced in Hangzhou had views of the West Lake, while the ones made in Wenzhou came with figures of birds and flowers.” In Beijing they came in red, blue and yellow, while local imitations were produced in three varieties, namely figured and coloured calicos for women against the sun, green ones oiled against the rain, and blue or green ones made of rough cloth.” Like thermos bottles, enamel washbasins and a multitude of other

portable objects, new surfaces were covered in gay colours and often carried

‘traditional’ images (beauties and landscapes were favourites).2” Cheap hand-

kerchiefs, imported in large quantities as early as the 1890s, were also well

received in the countryside because of their fancy colours.””' While the colour of clothing tended to be conservative in twentieth-century China (in contrast

to the strikingly colourful clothes worn by even the most humble farmer in Africa), colour and pattern were to be found in simple everyday objects: the plastic revolution and the communist takeover would consolidate this trend

even further after 1949, as a riot of colour characterised simple plastic objects

Clothing and Grooming in contrast to the austere clothes worn under communism. On the other hand, social elites closer in tune with foreign trends might opt for more sombre

colours: the renowned painter and government official Ye Yuhu (1881-1968)

liked to carry a black umbrella inspired by the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain.”

The ‘dual economy’ thesis holds that the rural economy in republican China

remained relatively isolated from global flows,as market forces were confined to the cities along the coast. In social history too there has been a tendency

to equate ‘modern’ with ‘urban’, Shanghai attracting so much detailed attention that it has tended to overshadow other major ports. Yet already before the collapse of the empire most of the yarn used by farming households to

make their clothes was produced by machines. Globalisation not only transformed the everyday lives of ordinary people beyond the coastal areas, but also

led to increased diversity. Women of all social backgrounds selected scarves,

skirts, blouses, gowns, corsets and stockings from a growing range of sartorial

possibilities, using them in combinations which were often strikingly original: the use of the one-piece gown with a scarf and coat is but one example. By

the end of the republican period even the very poor were likely to be wear-

ing clothes spun from imported yarn, while a rickshaw puller could afford a

cheap straw hat and shoes with rubber soles; the wealthy, on the other hand,

were proud to display their leather shoes and panama hats. Yet even when the gown retained its status among privileged circles, the suit became popular

in the countryside, showing how ordinary people did not necessarily trail behind in the appropriation of material culture. Where social elites sometimes preferred the more sombre colours dominant among the middle classes in

Europe, ordinary people covered new surfaces in gay colours and adorned

them with auspicious images, from enamel washbasins to modern umbrellas.

Bright and showy colours favoured by ordinary people also transformed other objects, in particular the enamelware used for the most basic of all daily activities, namely eating, as we see next.

9 EATING AND DRINKING Sidney Mintz has noted how food rarely figures in discussions of consumption, maybe because of its ephemeral nature: food is transient and thus quite

different from other forms of material culture. Yet the swift satisfaction which

may follow ingestion should not obscure the cultural importance of food, in

particular in societies where hunger was widespread and intense, as in China.!

Moreover, food is often seen as the aspect of life least permeable to foreign influence, China again being a prime example. But as this chapter shows, every

aspect of food was changed by the inclusion of the country in a global econ-

omy which hugely expanded the existing culinary repertoire. Changes in diet were not restricted to the wealthy elites of the coastal cities: the very staple of food changed in taste and aspect, as rice, sugar and wheat were increasingly

produced industrially, white being the desired colour. Simple objects like the

thermos flask and enamelware profoundly transformed the material culture of food, while those with a little money to spare might experience ‘foreign’ food—by a visit to a simple stall on the pavement or a

lavishly decorated

exotic restaurant with a menu in a strange language. Moreover, the use of tins enormously expanded the range of available foodstuffs, whether simple dishes or rare delicacies, across regions and seasons, for rich and poor alike. Cultural bricolage pervaded every aspect of life, including creative appropriations in the kitchen, as dishes now considered quintessentially ‘Chinese’ made their first appearance in the thriving culinary environment of the republican

period - fried egg with tomato being a prime example. As in England and

France, studied by Stephen Mennell,? the trend in modern China was towards a more varied experience in eating and more varied tastes—thanks to the advent of manufactured foods and the closer integration of the country with a global economy. Greater culinary diversity and complexity were the fitting

result of globalisation for a country which had readily adopted foreign food-

stuffs since the dawn of history in its search for health and longevity.’

219

Eating and Drinking EATING

MODERNITY

China's sweet tooth

Modernity had a way of insinuating itself in the form of sugar. Sweets penetrated the imperial household via the Scottish tutor Reginald Johnston: Puyi

was delighted by their tin box, silver wrapping-paper and different fruit fla vours (his tutor used the occasion to explain to him how the fruity tastes were

produced by new chemical techniques and how the neat shapes were made by machines).‘ In the household of Charlie Song, an entrepreneur who had been educated in America, children were taught to cook American food as

early as the 1890s, and Song Meiling was famed for her ginger cookies and

Christmas cakes.> In Chongqing and other cities it was considered by the 1920s to be a mark of social prestige among local ladies to be able to entertain

foreigners at ‘tiffin parties’.* Zhang Ailing liked to eat cream cakes because they were ‘soft and easy to digest’; she was also fond of hot chocolate with

cream.’ As Lady Hosie noted, new China had a sweet tooth and appreciated sumptuous patisserie with mottoes piped in pink sugar; iced American layer

cake was particularly fashionable among well-heeled ladies.*

Milk, when sweetened, was also consumed on its own rather than in pastries and cakes.A vogue for it appeared in the 1930s, as 600 cows in Nanjing produced milk for teachers, students, officials and hospital patients: as the North

China Herald noted, the general view that China was a country in which

milk was not drunk was a pet maxim in need of revision.’ In Wuxi, an indus-

trial city without the capital’s concentration of foreigners and government

officials, ninety-two registered dairies produced milk for the local popula-

tion.” On the other hand, a report on the living conditions of workers in Shanghai noted in 1934 that milk was sold at a price that was beyond the

reach of the average family."" By 1946, however, even petty urbanites in large cities consumed milk and butter, two imports which were considered a sign

of prosperity."? However, not everybody was fond of cold milk: Kenneth Lo thought of it as slimy, and he only took to cheese years later as an impoverished

student in Cambridge, where the rancid and formless mass was invariably

served for lunch by English friends in their college rooms.'? When Liang Yen was first confronted with cheese during a visit to a foreign academic in Beijing, she thought the yellow morsels revolting.'* Cheese, Olga Lang noted, being

abhorred in China, was rare and relatively expensive.'® The most popular dairy product, however, was ice cream (figure 81). Cold

in heat, ice cream violated the natural order: its sweetness further ensured that

it became a huge success. Zhang Ruogu even posed as an expert on the various

Eating Modernity

81.An ice cream vendor in Beijing, also supplying bottled soda, cold fruit juices and chilled watermelon, early 1920s. flavours of the frozen substance: after a review of all the ice cream sellers in

Shanghai, he proclaimed the soda ice cream sold by the Puji Dispensary to

be peerless."° Ice lollies were also available, although they too were expensive even for middle-class consumers, so much so that a bowl of crushed ice with

brown sugar on top was considered a treat.'? Those who tried it were in for a

surprise: when Zhou Zhaoxi ate ice cream for the first time in the summer of 1941, he shovelled a huge scoop of it into his mouth. Totally unprepared, he was numbed by the cold in his mouth but did not dare to spit it out, forcing

it down and spreading the sensation to his stomach. He quickly developed a

fondness for ice cream, although he would have to wait for many years after the communist takeover to taste his favourite snack again.'* One of his aunts was so shocked by the coldness of ice cream the first time she tried it that she

asked the vendor whether she could have a warm portion."” Ice cream may

Eating and Drinking have been relatively rare in Chengdu, but in the large cities along the coast,

even coolies could afford to buy the street ice which they put into their tea in the 1930s. In Hangzhou shaved ice, ice cream and lemonades were all the rage during the festering heat of the summer in 1936." In the 1930s more than

ten large ice cream parlours operated in Beijing, some even delivering the

substance by the bucketful to people’s homes.”' ‘Hygienic ice cream’ (weisheng binggilin) and ice lollies (bingzhen) were peddled in pre-electric, heat-insulated

wooden vats.”

The three white goods

Sweet edibles, from lemonade and champagne to cream and cakes, may have

been popular in republican China, but they remained at the periphery of the everyday diet. White sugar, white flour and white rice brought industrially produced goods right to the centre of the table of a growing number of families. As early as the 1890s imported flour was cheaper than the locally produced.

product, and it steadily penetrated the interior.”* One trade representative based in Fuzhou

noted that an enormous

increase in demand for foreign

flour showed how the taste of the many ‘is being taught to appreciate cleanliness in feeding, provided that it is not obtained at the cost of cheapness’.

Local stone-grinders usually turned out a coarse grade of flour, and increasing demand for well-milled flour produced by modern mills marked the decades

after the 1911 revolution.” Even in remote Xunwu most of the flour used by

1930 was foreign-style,* while imported varieties accounted for about one

fifth of all flour consumed in Beijing, not including the many local brands,

from Peach in Tianjin to Lion in Beijing and Bicycle in Shanghai.”

A similar observation can be made about rice, as rice-hulling machines

from Japan became the most significant import in agricultural machinery:

individual holdings in the countryside were small, purchasing power was

limited, native tools were cheap, and labour was plentiful, but carefully

polished rice was increasingly a must even in the hinterland. In Beijing in

1930 almost half of the rice bought on the market came from Japan and the United States; countrywide over half a million tons of the staple food was imported: it not only looked better, but was actually cheaper than locally

produced equivalents.”

Sugar, too, was preferred in its refined form, and it was imported in grow-

ing quantities after 1900, as monthly trade reports from the maritime customs show.” As a customs commissioner based in Niuzhuang observed in 1902, it

was often said that locals in the north liked to eat ‘salt’, as salted fish and meat as well as pickled beancurd were common, while in the south they liked to eat

“sweet’. Yet even in the north sugar from refineries was becoming increasingly

Eating Modernity

82. Candy shop with jars, bottles and packaged sweets in Bishan, Sichuan province, 1940s

popular with the growth of purchasing power." Sugar cubes were available in Shanghai already in 1895 :they could ‘boost health’ and were as‘as white as snow’ (xuebai)..° After 1911 white sugar often replaced the brown sugar traditionally

prepared at stone-roller mills as its cost went down when produced locally,

whether milled by the Taigu company in Tianjin under British control or at

the sugar refineries installed in Guangdong by the provincial governor Chen Jitang. Government restrictions on the use of coarse sugar were even passed

in that province to enforce a state monopoly. By the mid-1930s 1,789 private

sugar mills operated by hand had disappeared.”

White flour, white rice and white sugar were imperceptibly altering the

very staples of everyday food. Noodles, besides being made increasingly from

white flour, were produced by machines, as the noodle cutters, like other

small items of new machinery, were ideal for small-scale industries. They were advertised in 1911

by the Shenbao as ‘smooth, bright and clean’ as well as

‘lovely’ (ke’ai) in appearance, for it is true that people everywhere love what is associated with their food. Instant noodles, destined to conquer the East,

appeared on the market in 1906: ‘These noodles can be eaten instantly by

simple addition of hot water, and taste delicious while being highly hygieni

Even in remote Chengdu, local observers satirised the use of machinery by 223

Eating and Drinking commenting that ‘as most noodles are made by machines, people’s hearts are

also becoming mechanical.’ Other ‘traditional’ ingestibles, such as soy sauce,

were increasingly produced in mechanised factories as mechanisation was thought to bring not only greater efficiency, but also a more ‘hygienic’ mode

of delivery.” Mechanisation was also behind the spread of canned food, as the

next section shows. Tin culture

Preserving food was a vital strategy against hardship or scarcity in a country

of poverty, and traditionally foodstuffs were smoked, salted, sugared, steeped, pickled, dried and soaked in many kinds of soy sauces. With this background in mind, it is not surprising that the innovations brought about by what

Jack Goody has called ‘industrial food’ were immediately adopted in modern China.” Food was traditionally sold loose and weighed by theseller, although packaged and branded food had appeared centuries earlier and became

increasingly important in the late imperial period:*’ the move to prepackaged

food was not an innovation

in China, although industrial manufacture, the

use of tins and better distribution were new. Republican China witnessed an

explosion in branded foods in modern packing. Whereas in 1900 industri-

ally packaged food was virtually absent, by the end of the 1940s it could be

found throughout the country even in the humblest of places—in particular

canned items. As an early admirer observed, tinned food was an instrument of progress, as sealing up (mifeng) allowed food to reach sealed off ( fengbi) places: to proponents of free trade it symbolised movement and commerce.*'

Condensed milk is a good example of the success of tins in China:a quantity to the value of $1.5 million was imported in 1921,” indicating the fondness

with which the substance was welcomed. Kenneth Lo, who abhorred cold milk, learnt to appreciate Nestlé’s condensed product while recovering from a

bout of measles as a six-year-old in 1919. Nestlé came not only with porridge

for breakfast, but was even taken on rambling trips to the mountains of his

native Fujian province.*’ In the countryside dried and condensed milk was

slowly coming into use in the 1930s," and even in the Gansu backwoods

condensed milk could be found in the early 1920s, some foreigners refer-

ring to it as‘condemned milk’ due to its age and strange smell.“ In Chengdu

condensed milk was imported from Britain before 1937. During the Second World War a local factory set up by an ironmonger in the galvanised iron

trade produced the first locally made condensed milk. He operated at first

without modern machinery, the cans being made manually from wrought

iron and sealed with tin, the final product being sterilised in boiled water.*”

Eating Modernity

In general, canned and packaged food could be found in all interior towns by the 1920s, as locals were buying these articles in increasing quantity. The

most important factor for consumers was the trademark or‘chop’: when it came to foodstuffs, the relative merits of the brand were all-important.” A second

consideration was diversity: scores of dishes, from shark fins to preserved eggs,

were served at banquets in local restaurants, and it was precisely a desire for

greater variety which allowed a more extended use of canned foods, whether produced overseas or locally.*

Tinned food was increasingly made by local merchants in the 1920s: al-

ready in the 1890s a canning factory appeared in Canton, and by 1930 dozens

were busy churning out tins in a number of cities along the coast.*? The Tai

Foong Company, established in Shanghai in 1906, was turning out a huge

variety of canned products by 1915, from fruit, vegetables, meat and fish to

fowl and game, including woodcock, quail and snipe. Many of the foods—such

as lychees, loquats, carambolas, ginger and bitter melon—were hardly known to foreign palates, let alone appreciated by them. Even

common

varieties

of fruit were prepared in a distinctly local way: American pears, for instance,

were considered too soft, the manager of the company explaining that ‘the

Chinese like to chew what they eat.’ Fruit, consequently, was cooked at a low temperature to retain a certain hardness which appealed to customers: texture, which is often much more difficult to achieve in cooking than taste,

remained a key concern in local cuisine even in an age of manufactured food. The meats and fish were prepared with sauces which would also have been

difficult to sell anywhere but in China, for instance roasted turtle or scallops

in chicken sauce.™”

Cans were versatile: they catered for people with modest incomes and

were sold as early as the 1910s along railways by vendors together with ciga-

rettes and sweetmeats; on the other hand, canned delicacies such as shellfish

and shark fins reached the interior to serve the wealthy.’ Delicacies were

also exported: in 1901 a quarter ofa million rice-birds were earmarked for immigrants in California, as they were not only expensive but also judged

‘repulsive’ when enclosed with ‘highly malodorous grease’, according to one

foreign trade observer (he thought them succulent when fresh). Such luxury dishes not only reached consumers removed from the centres of production,

but also allowed households to prepare prized delicacies without the need

for a skilled cook or a visit to the restaurant. Tins democratised consumption,

since they reached more people far inland and made available all year round

products which hitherto had been available only at certain times of the year,

as a team visiting the Tai Foong factory pointed out. Fish reached much

nN a

larger numbers of people, both rich and poor: and because fish is extremely

Eating and Drinking perishable—whether the common croaker or the exotic salmon—refrigera-

tion and canning solved a universal problem of distribution.™ Canned foods,as well as packaged biscuits and wrapped sweets, were popular not only for reasons of taste and cost but also because they were considered

more hygienic. Tinned or wrapped food was convenient to carry around, handy to use when travelling, and ideal as a gift: cans were praised by the Shenbao in 1911 as ‘convenient for travellers’.** By 1930 even Ketchup—the

quintessential American food—was produced locally and offered at half the price of the imported item, responding to consumer demand.

Despite successful local imitations, packaged food from abroad could be cheaper than the local equivalent: packaging not only allowed fruit and

vegetables to be preserved more easily, thus cutting costs, but also led to largescale production which contributed to lower prices. Dried raisins from the

United States or Japan were cheaper than the locally produced ones in Beijing

in the 1930s.” Dried raisins were a good example of the portability of pre-

packaged food: American Sunmaid raisins could be found everywhere,

whether hawked on trains or sold in shops. Such was the success of the sweet raisin that the Sunmaid Raisin Growers Association was the third most

important American company in China after Standard Oil and the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Besides portability, the popular idea that raisins were a source of iron probably also contributed to their success.” From china to enamelware

Historians of material culture often point out that China brought porcelain to

millions of tables in early modern Europe, but it is often ignored that porce-

lain was replaced by enamelware in tens of millions of households in republican China: enamelware was popular because it was cheaper and stronger than earthenware and porcelain. In a culture of mobility and portability, enamel

utensils, produced by kiln-firing stained glass on to metal, were handy to carry drink and food around. Enamel pots, bowls, cups, plates and basins were all popular, and often covered in gay colours and pictures of landscapes or flowers. Even wooden chamberpots were displaced by enamel ones in Beijing.”’ Most came from Japan or were local imitations, whereas counterparts from Europe,

invariably in white or blue, fared rather poorly.*! The same could be said of china: cups, plates, mugs and bottles produced in Japan were cheerfully decorated in a riot of colours, appealing so much to the locals in Beijing that they were even traded by door-to-door merchants.” Outside the capital too, imported wares from Japan with bright colours and intricate patterns were

popular.’ It is tempting to think that cultural propinquity between Japan

and China resulted in the successful marketing of colourful enamelware, but

226

Eating Modernity Austrian imports were the first to start offering articles with bright, showy and flowery decorations in the 1910s specifically in response to demand in

China: Japan cornered the market with cheaper imitations of Austrian goods during the First World War. Whatever the provenance, as a trade representa-

tive noticed of enamelware, a bright finish was essential, as brightness was as-

sociated in China with newness: even articles which could be demonstrated to be better by the dealer would be declined if dull-looking.® The more demand;

restrained decorations from Europe failed to satisfy popular

here, as elsewhere, a two-tier market appeared, as the austere de-

signs and high quality artefacts from Europe pleased the wealthy eager to distinguish their consumption patterns from the shoddy, cheap and cheerful

goods made in China or Japan for the poor. This was true of paint as well: in

the 1910s German imports were successful because they corresponded to a popular preference for bright colours; paints imported from other countries

were considered to be dull. Loud colours would spread like a rash with the

advent of plastic in the 1940s and °50s: as one of the founders of the plastics

company Star Industrial Co. in Hong Kong explained, the bright red, blue

and yellow of their domestic plastic-ware was dictated by customers in Asia,

Africa and the Middle East, who did not like the more restrained brown and

cream colours popular among the middle classes: ‘made in China’ provided

the global poor with cheap but cheerful imitations of the luxury goods en-

joyed by global elites.”

Beauty was found in the most ordinary objects, and even spittoons were often richly decorated with traditional landscapes: the Hwa Feng Company in

Shanghai produced enamel spittoons with a rockery décor, as well as enamel washbasins." Spittoons spread during the late Qing, and lavishly decorated opium houses often boasted white copper ones.” By the republican period, they were considered indispensable attributes of a hygienic modernity, and some municipalities even passed laws prescribing their provision in teahouses:

this was the case in Chengdu in 1926 and again in 1932.” As is so common

with objects borrowed across cultures, the actual uses of the spittoon could be different from those envisaged by their creators: in China they served more often than not as chamberpots. On the other hand, in Canton mouths were rinsed over the spittoon at the end of a meal.”'

Chopsticks never disappeared, yet more ‘modern’ ways of eating al-

tered the rituals around the table. Already in the 1880s the beauties inhabit-

ing the imaginary world of Shanghai pictorials would hover in traditional

dress around a table laid out with knives, forks, spoons, plates and glasses as well as salt and pepper: a clock inevitably occupied the centre of the man-

telpiece.” Real cutlery quickly followed: even during the Boxer rebellion

Eating and Drinking banquets with foreigners involved not only German cakes, American candies and French fondants, but also individual plates, knives and forks as well as ivory chopsticks.” In well-to-do households,a family would sit around a table cov-

ered by a white cloth; although the dishes would be traditional, they could be served the ‘modern’ way, each having its own chopsticks and spoon with which to serve it—the same sticks no longer being used to convey the food to the mouth and serve oneself from the common dishes in the centre.”* Hu Binxia, educated in the United States and later to become chief editor of the

Women’s Magazine, felt that local banquets were wasteful and ‘unhygienic’ (bu

weisheng). At her own banquets the guests were given cold starters, cooked meat and vegetables, soup, pickles and fruits, accompanied by a small pot of tice wine each. Tables were covered with a tablecloth, a cup and a pair of chopsticks, and three plates were laid out for each guest. Guests were asked

to tuck their napkin into their clothes, while cutlery was changed four times

during the banquet, which concluded with tea and cigarettes in an adjacent

room.’ As new norms of hygiene were gradually disseminated among the modernising elites, the habit of sharing several plates at dinner parties was no longer considered sanitary. In some cases even top restaurants like the Dong

Xinlou in the East City of Beijing would on request serve Chinese dishes in Western style with five to seven courses for each guest with knives and

forks.”

EATING

OUT

Foreign food and new objects could also be encountered during the occa-

sional trip to an exotic restaurant. The first European restaurants appeared

shortly after the first Sino-British war and were known as ‘foreign food inns”

(fancaiguan).With the growth of a resident foreign population in Shanghai and Beijing, European restaurants also appeared in foreign concessions from the

1860s onwards. In the capital they were located around the embassy district,

while in Shanghai they were concentrated in the Hongkou and Xujiahui

area. Most customers were foreign, but a few local individuals also took to foreign food, roast lamb and small snacks being the most popular dishes de-

spite their prohibitive cost.” English and French food in particular became prestige objects for wealthy families in the 1880s, and foreign restaurants,

fully equipped with tablecloths, napkins, cutlery and plates, mushroomed in Shanghai in consequence.™ Most of the food presented as ‘Western’ in China was prepared from tinned food and seasonings by Cantonese chefs. Culinary

exchange went both ways: many of these chefs introduced ‘Western’ cooking

methods, ingredients and dishes into ‘Chinese’ kitchens. Some dim sum dishes

Eating Out

eaten today, such as roast pork puff and custard tart, were first introduced from abroad.” An all-time favourite in China—fried egg with tomato—was also created as a part of this process of gastronomic bricolage. Canned food facilitated this two-way traffic: as a commercial agent of the Department of Trade observed in 1915, a favourite dish in many restaurants consisted of

canned peas served with small shrimps, while asparagus was also a popular addition.”’

While banquets of this nature were common among a small number

of wealthy elites educated abroad, even ordinary restaurants from the late Qing onwards started to serve set meals in foreign style for smaller parties.

In Shanghai before the fall of the Qing a group of four people would be

presented with four small dishes and two larger ones, always including a soup:

this was known as hecai, a combination of local and foreign eating habits which became widespread after 1911."' ‘Western-style’ restaurants became

fashionable in coastal cities because they often looked cleaner than most

ordinary eateries, Bright and nicely decorated, with comfortable chairs rather

than stools to squat on, they attracted the growing middle classes who took

pride in following the more ‘civilised’ ways appropriate in an era of moder-

nity. The tablecloths were regularly changed, and customers were provided

with steaming towels, clean and perfumed, with which to refresh their hands and faces. Children were given high chairs. Private rooms had curtains and

even electric bells to summon the waiters. Staff often dressed in clean outfits

and were required to maintain a high standard of personal hygiene.” By the

start of the Second World War foreign restaurants could be found in most

cities. Several hundred emerged in Shanghai alone, more than thirty vied for

customers in Canton, and a dozen catered for the social and political elites of

Tianjin.” In Chongqing foreign food could be found all over the city." Local

restaurants were

also modernised:

usually they were two-storey

buildings with carved and ornamental fronts designed to attract attention. The kitchens were on the ground floor, and a broad staircase often covered

with beaten brass plates might lead to the second floor, where large parties could be given, since most people did not entertain at home but in the restau-

rant."* More up-market restaurants considered modern interior design essen-

tial. When Dong Zhujun (1900-98) opened her legendary Jinjiang restaurant

in Shanghai in 1935, she paid special attention to interior decoration. The

public dining room and the twenty sound-proof private rooms all had walls

covered with black ceramic tiles. The neon light outside was cream-coloured,

a hue carefully chosen as being the most elegant at the time. A golden velvet

curtain hung at the front door of the restaurant. The handrails of the stairs were sprayed with red paint to look bright and smooth and to complement

229

Eating and Drinking

the red carpet covering the staircase. At the bottom of the stairs a carved table with a glass lamp illuminated the reservation board, while the booking room with the telephone was divided by a false wall. Imitation antiques were highlighted with neon lamps, a combination regarded not as ‘kitsch’ but, on the contrary, as conveying tranquillity and taste. From the ceiling in the lobby hung a huge crystal chandelier with a European landscape painting on

the wall. The central piece on the second floor landing was a fish tank, the

floor being covered with oak imported from the Philippines."* Some of these restaurants became favourite meeting places for local elites: this was the case

83. Open-air restaurant in Shenyang (Mukden), January 1948.

of the French Chez Rovére (Luowei fandian), commonly known as the ‘Red

House’ (Hong fangzi), which emerged as a cultural point of contact for the

city’s cosmopolitan inhabitants."’ The elite status of such restaurants is evident from a line in a poem by Liu Shiliang about the Jufeng restaurant in Chengdu,

which introduced ice cream to the city:‘Jufeng now serves both Chinese and

Western food... 1 can only gaze through the glass window." When was the menu introduced? In Europe the first restaurants to offer

a variety of dishes to be selected from a menu probably date back to the late

eighteenth century.” In China specialist restaurants appeared much earlier and were more widespread: a guide to Nanjing dated around 1775 recorded

a whole panoply of eating houses, inns, taverns and restaurants where visitors could order meals before setting out on river trips to admire the local gardens

of rich salt merchants.” In small restaurants a limited variety of dishes might be

served, and customers would point out the food they wished to order if they did not already know what was on offer, or a greater variety might be listed

on the wall in more imposing establishments. Menus probably spread further

in the treaty ports, marking a shift away from a single host ordering on behalf of a whole group towards broader participation in the choice of dishes. Ge

Yuanxu—intrepid observer of new mores—thus noted the menu (liezhang) in 1876, although he did not specify whether or not it was printed. In a society which put great emphasis on the presentation of the written word, menus

were probably carefully calligraphed.”' Elaborate menus thus appeared by the

end of the nineteenth century in elite restaurants such as the Xinghualou in

Shanghai.” A few decades later the famous calligrapher Zhang Daqian was reputed to have written the menu for several elite restaurants, some customers

coming specifically in order to see, and presumably buy, the menu.”

How representative were these social trends? In the absence of detailed

sociological surveys, it is difficult to evaluate how ordinary people were ex-

posed to new fashions: many of the poor could hardly feed themselves, let

alone visit a restaurant. Eating places for the poor, when they could afford it,

were grey places with rough wooden tables and trestles on a mud floor, the 230

Eating Out

84. Dried fish on public bench.

cook at the entrance stirring huge metal cauldrons over a brick stove or fry-

ing in deep oil that exuded acrid fumes.” This does not diminish the value

ofa historical analysis of eating habits among social elites: as Sidney Mintz

has argued, the very polarities which marked the differential uses of food

between the rich and the poor in many societies were nutritional and social

realities which cannot be overlooked. Maybe an analysis of the very contrast

between the rich, dining on champagne and luxury dishes, and the poor, wolfing down a bow! of thin gruel, would be more rewarding than the study

of the movement over time of certain foods up and down the social ladder.” Yet it was also true, as observed by Julean Arnold, a trade representative for the United States, that besides the large modern hotels which served the middle and upper classes, a panoply of restaurants of all sizes, types and varieties,

including itinerant cooks carrying their stoves, ovens, fuel and dishes on their

shoulders, could serve anything from Dutch soup to freshly baked bread at an

instant’s notice (figure 83).” After the Second World War a number of popular street

cafés emerged in Shanghai which often consisted ofa long table

covered with a white cloth and equipped with glass cups, porcelain saucers, a

hot water flask and a coffee jug, as tins of American light cream were piled up next to cocoa, bread, clotted cream and fruit jam.” As early as 1921 a Beijing

newspaper conducted a consumer survey and found that 77 per cent of those

questioned preferred local food, others expressing a penchant for foreign food, which included “Western-style Chinese food’ (xishi zhongcan) and ‘Sino-

Western food’ (zhongxishi).*

Eating and Drinking Chow Chung-cheng was one who enjoyed regular outings to foreign

restaurants. She recalled enjoying dinners in the European restaurant of the public park in Tianjin, although her family were almost the only customers:

not only did a ‘European’ meal cost more than a ‘Chinese’ one, but few locals would actually seek out a modern restaurant in the middle of a park. The

meal consisted of toast and butter and jam, oxtail soup, crayfish fried in bread-

crumbs, pork chops, potatoes and salad, pudding, fruit and coffee.” Lin Xi, who also lived in a modern house in Tianjin, explained that bread and milk

for breakfast was not simply a matter of show: it was convenient because no

traditional pancakes could be found in his neighbourhood. Chen Dingshan

reminisced in the 1960s how he enjoyed eating foreign food served by beautifully dressed waitresses before 1949, although he also remembered some

embarrassing moments, such as when his companion did not know a word of

English and could only order by pointing at the menu: he was given a jar of

pepper.” ‘Ordering dishes’ (diancai) was indeed one of the dreaded rituals in foreign restaurants against which popular literature warned, since it ruthlessly

sorted the wheat from the chaff."

DRINKING

CULTURES

Tea and the thermos flask

Objects can be used for radically different purposes from those intended by their inventors, and the rubber hot water bottle (reshuidai) is a good example.

Designed for medical purposes in the hospital and at home in Europe, it was

used in China as a cheaper version of the thermos flask. The Wing On depart-

ment store imported two varieties of hot water bottles and advertised them widely with bright neon signs: they were an instant success.'"> Hot water was

cheaper to buy than to boil in China: whether in Shanghai or in Chengdu it

was more cost-effective to visit a hot water stand, which could be found on almost any street. Two or three ladles cost a copper: rubber bottles were indispensable to carry the water back home and keep it hot." Local factories

in the coastal cities soon started producing imitations, and by the 1930s 4,000

were turned out in a day."’ The hot water bottle never suffered from the

medical connotation it acquired in Europe, and as late as 1948 an advertise-

ment in the magazine Family praised the product as ‘bright, colourful, durable

and an excellent present for family and friends’." The

vacuum

flask was first invented by Sir James Dewar

in 1892 and

commercially produced by a German company in 1904 as the ‘Thermos’. It

was taken up in Europe and the United States by explorers on expeditions

and scientists to store vaccines and serums; workers could use them to take

Drinking Cultures their lunch to the factory and children to take a meal to school. Thermos

bottles were at first imported but produced locally from the 1930s onwards. Vacuum flasks were made in Hong Kong in 1933, leading to a whole gamut of ornaments, either classical in style or in streamlined forms with Chinese

the most successful products to be exported from China with the commercial

revolution of the republican era. Produced by the Lixing Vacuum Flask Factory in Shanghai (founded in 1937), they came in 1-litre or 1.5-litre sizes and were made of pyrex glass.'* Thermos bottles, like enamel spittoons and washbasins, came richly decorated to appeal to a variety of tastes, some being cov-

ered with auspicious motifs while others boldly displayed an airplane up into the sky (figure 85)."” The Butterfly brand was decorated with ern beauty striking a pensive pose,'” while Great Wall bottles were with gay flower motifs.'"' While the thermos was used specifically for outdoor activities in

soaring a modsprayed

Europe

and the United States, it travelled in and out of the house in China, where boundaries between the private and the public were far more permeable. Tea culture in particular was served very well by the thermos, as Innes Jackson

noted:‘I saw so many thermos flasks that I began to blink... it is terrible to think how hard social life must have been before its invention. By its means tea can

be produced for every guest on all occasions with abracadabra rapidity."

Thermos flasks were also used when travelling by train: already in the 1920s passengers commonly carried Japanese ones in the south,'"? one foreign observer calling it the most popular travelling companion of train passengers.''* In the Chinese theatre actors would have tea served to them by a thermos

man, a personal servant who would bring his master his tea at the climax of

every battle scene or court ceremonial on the stage.''’ The writer Mao Dun

recalled that in the 1920s public parks in Shanghai were often full of families on picnics with their thermos flasks and food baskets.'"® Like so many other

successful things modern, the thermos was both portable and versatile, adapting particularly well to the need to serve tea anywhere at any time. It was cheap, many

costing as little as 75 cents.''’ The

thermos

flask was also a

signifier of health and hygiene:""* as an advertisement proclaimed in the Young Companion, depicting a young beauty pouring a cup of tea out of a thermos

flask, After a bath has washed away all the dirt and dust one feels happy; now

with the thermos flask one can also make a cup of fresh tea after taking a bath. It keeps hot water at the exact temperature one’s heart desires."

In dwellings generally devoid of central heating or air-conditioning, the

thermos

bottle was the only space

within

which

temperatures

could

be

RERRMEDED

motifs.'”’ ‘Great Wall’ vacuum flasks were not only hailed on the mainland in the late 1930s, but welcomed in many parts of the world, becoming one of

85. Advertisement for

a thermos bottle.

86.A coolie drags a heavy cart loaded with the personal possessions and their owner atop, the thermos bottle ready.

ee

f

Eating and Drinking

controlled, and control of temperature was indeed viewed as an indispensable step forward towards civilisation. Any respectable household, according to the Ladies’ Magazine in 1917, should have a thermometer: it could be used to

check the temperature of the water in a bath to avoid scalding, when boiling

eggs to achieve perfect cooking, and when making hot beverages for children

to ensure that the temperature was right.'*’ These prescriptions may seem unrealistic outside the wealthy circles in the large coastal cities, where running water, let alone the hot bath, was rare, yet they pointed at the symbolic nature of the thermometer as a device visualising subtle changes in the environment,

quantifying hitherto subjective feelings of heat and cold, imposing a readable

grid on nature, and normalising variations in temperature by declaring that

body heat should be 37.0 Like other modern objects in an increasingly intertwined world—the clock and the ruler—it spread standardisation.

While the thermos was overwhelmingly used to serve tea, coffee also attracted some followers, although it was invariably served with milk and

accompanied by sweet cakes or candies to disguise its bitter taste (the artist Jiang Xiaojian, who had studied in France and liked his coffee without sugar,

was exceptional).'"! And coffee was not only a prestige item for conspicuous

Drinking Cultures consumption in fancy restaurants: returned emigrants in Fujian and Guangdong drank coffee at home every day, for breakfast and to entertain guests,

whether children or adults. Others were persuaded to switch to coffee by

family members working abroad: as a fifty-five-year-old returnee in a small

village explained, ‘[my sons] encouraged me to drink coffee in the morning, as it is said that it can wake you up. So I tried it and I really feel that what they said is true.” Dutch water

Tea varied widely in price and quality, from rare leaves brewed with imported

water down to cheap jasmine tea made with ordinary rainwater, and was ideal as an indicator of elite status. Discerning customers distinguished between different regions, types and even parts of the leaf, while certain varieties such

as Pu’er tea attained the status of luxury items. High-quality tea remained

a relatively expensive beverage well into the twentieth century, since clean water was beyond the means of many people; in Suzhou it was obtained from

selected wells and canals by special boats.'”* With

the advent of aerated water, however, new opportunities for re-

freshment presented themselves to a thirsty public keen to avoid contami-

nated water and eager to display status. The British pharmacyJ. Llewellyn and

Co. Ltd was the first to start aerating water in Shanghai in the early 1860s.

Soda (called Dutch water, or Helan shui) and lemonade, both aerated, were

immediately popular beyond the expatriate community, although danger lurked beneath these new pleasures: as Ge Yuanxu noted in 1877, ‘When

opened, the lid flies off, and care should be taken not to be hit in the face or

eyes. It should be drunk immediately, and is very cooling.""* Urban legends

about the dangers of Dutch water survived well into the twentieth century,

for instance in the story published before 1911 about a shop owner who

died after being hit by the flying cork of a bottle that broke in an accident.'* Despite these reservations, by the 1890s the expansion of the soft drinks in-

dustry was such that many other pharmacies and companies started producing

their own brands. The Aquarius Company specialised in the manufacture of effervescent waters in 1892: its soda waters, root beers, mineral waters, ginger

ales, ginger beers, tonic waters, potassium waters and lemonades served a variety of purposes, some taken on their own, others served with meals, a few

mixed with alcohol.'”* In the early twentieth century Tianjin also emerged as a centre for the production of fizzy drinks, Shuijing being a popular brand.'””

a

By the 1910s aerated water was big business in China, as foreign trade representatives made clear. Even in the bazaars in Beijing, crowds drank ‘pink lemonade’ consisting of various shaded waters in different coloured

Eating and Drinking

87. Label for Cherry Cola.

bottles with long slender necks, which were used afterwards as horns.'”” Deng

Yunxiang recalled how as a child in the capital he went on excursions armed with small bottles of aerated water rather than tea: ‘The aerated water bottle was very special. It had a glass stopper the shape of a ball on the lid. To open

the bottle one had to use a wooden plug to push the stopper down, and the gas

would shoot out: it was great fun...A bottle cost five coins only, much cheaper than tea.” Locally produced drinks in Beijing came in six flavours—lemon,

banana, grape, orange, cola and ‘sandstone’, made from the root of a South American plant: they could be bought from small taverns, restaurants, shops

and stalls throughout the city. While the city had many respectable lemonade

producers—besides the many imports available from hotels and foreign shops—some cheap varieties using adulterated air or contaminated products could lead to an unpleasant taste or even poisoning.'"'

Further south a dozen types of lemonade could be found in Hangzhou,

ranging from banana- or grape-flavoured sodas to locally produced Coca-

Cola.'* Huiquan made mandarin-flavoured lemonade sold in glass bottles shaped like oranges.'** Watson's of Shanghai, China's biggest producer, a local company established in 1903 by the A. S. Watson group and run by Qu Chen (Qu

Chen shi), brought

relief to many

during the sweltering summers:'**

when the tarmac was melting, customers swarmed around the lemonade and ice cream parlours which traded next to the department stores." Lemonade even penetrated the countryside: 1,880 bottles of aerated water were con-

sumed in impoverished Ding county, Hebei province, in 1934—as well as a 236

Drinking Cultures massive quarter ofa million bottles of spirits, which puts drinking patterns in the hinterland in perspective.'*

Several factors account for the rapid spread of fizzy drinks in the large

coastal cities after 1911: the availability of raw materials, including sugar and

fruit, the improvement in transportation, the use of advertisements and the

advent of new forms of leisure all meant that a growing number of customers

became familiar with soft drinks. The market was important enough for Coca-Cola,a company which failed to have much success in Britain between the two World Wars,'”” to approach the Shanhaiguan Soda Water Company in 1918 for possible cooperation,'® leading ten years later to the first CocaCola bottling operation in China. By the 1940s the beverage had become so popular that many soft drink companies went bankrupt (it remained popular

in Hong Kong after 1949, where it can be had heated with ginger as a medication to this day)."°

‘Open the champagne’ When expensive opium served in rare jade or ivory pipes ceased to be a viable way for respectable families to welcome an honoured guest, and tea served from a thermos had limited appeal in a culture of ostentation, cham-

pagne appeared in the reception rooms of the rich and powerful. In the early

republican period, high officials and wealthy merchants often opted for fo-

reign liquors as the choice beverage for their banquets, since they were much

more expensive than local spirits and thus more effective as an indicator of

wealth (500 grams of rice wine from Zhejiang cost 30-40 cents, as against a normal price of $10 for a bottle of foreign liquor).'” Already in 1904

William Geil, who travelled all over China, was invited to drink champagne not only by reform-minded dignitaries like Duanfang, but even by local officials in hinterland yamens."*! Katherine Carl, who stayed with the empress dowager to paint her portrait for the St Louis Exposition, was provided with

a constant supply of the beverage.'? At the wedding of Puyi, China’s last

emperor, special orders of European liquors were placed with the Beijing Hotel. By the 1920s champagne was regarded as a necessity for all major

banquets. This was observed by Georg Wegener, travelling through China in

the mid-1920s and noting that a certain cosmopolitan prestige was attached to people who could adorn themselves with a number of European attributes, none more so than champagne: ‘The Chinese adore this sweet, fizzy drink, and the scholar-officials are aware that the Europeans of the coastal cities would not allow a banquet to be celebrated without sparkling wine. This is

the reason why, whenever possible, they will present Europeans with this beverage... in the interior sparkling wines of dubious quality are being peddled

Eating and Drinking by agents of European and Japanese firms, with names unheard of [abroad].” He complained less about the impeccable Carte d’Or by Roederer offered to

him in the Yangzi valley."

Champagne also flowed in the dancehalls of Shanghai: dancing girls often

encouraged their customers to buy the beverage in return for a fee.To ‘open

the champagne’ (kaixiangbin) thus gradually became synonymous with the hooking of a client.'* Yet in the cities of the hinterland too, champagne was

fashionable with the well-heeled: in Chengdu during the annual flower fairs

in the 1920s, champagne flowedfreely, leading to many cases of inebriation."**

Needless to say, champagne was hardly known in the countryside: even in the 1930s brandy and champagne were entirely new to the locals of Yangyuan

county in Hebei province, despite their reputation for hard drinking.'** In Shandong

many

starved during a famine in 1927 while a local governor

drank champagne out of cut glass ordered from Belgium—as Hallett Abend

indignantly reported for the New York Times." The cost of imported spirits remained prohibitive, even for amateurs of

foreign drinks, and good liqueurs (créme de menthe, curacao) and sweet wines

were retailed in small fancy vials, as a few drops of the liquid were added to

local beverages.'** However, other factors besides price must have contributed to the success of champagne: its relative sweetness was no doubt one reason,

while the bubbles already present in aerated soft drinks may also have facilitated its spread.'*° Foreign traders had long known that there was almost no demand

for foreign spirits in China: as early as the 1840s one merchant of Fenchurch

Street, London, was advised, “We have for years past urged on our friends the impolicy [sic] of sending out large quantities of Wines and such articles to a country like this, where no demand

exists for them beyond the few

hundred individuals composing the foreign community.'® Gin, rum, brandy,

whisky and other distilled drinks never became popular in imperial China,

unlike beer and sweet wines at the end of the Qing. Zhang Deyi, diplomat to Europe in the 1860s, described the taste of red wine as acid (suan) and bitter

(se), and could only swallow it with water added.'’ In South America, by contrast, fine wines were all the rage among republican elites in their quest for ‘imported civility’. Not only were vins bourguignons and other expensive

vintages imported in large quantities, but cuttings of the famous cabernet sauvignon and merlot rootstock were brought over from Bordeaux, more

ambitious nouveaux riches from Chile even building their own chateaux in the

Maipo and Aconcagua valleys. Further down the social scale drinkable wines,

called viriedos del pais, also appeared for ordinary people.'*

Were drinks mixed? In an anthropological analysis of drinking in Japan,

Stephen Smith has shown how drinks are generally taken on their own, not

Drinking Cultures for reasons of taste or expense but because social drinking emphasises the unification of individuals into a community.'** Mixed drinks not only require special preparation that involves an inappropriate amount of attention

being lavished on the demands of each individual drinker, but can result in socially awkward decisions having to be made in a situation which seeks

group consensus: to pour a round from the bottl—whether champagne or

beer—avoids these issues. A similar logic was no doubt at work in republican

China, given the success of non-mixed drinks at all levels of society, from lemonade to champagne.

239

10 SEEING AND

LISTENING

Alistair Shearer has a point when he observes that people are serious about

the material in China, while enjoyment is valued instead in Thailand:' this book

certainly shows

how attitudes about material objects could be very

pragmatic. However, ‘fun’ in China is just as important an element of social interaction as the sterner notion of ‘face’, often invoked by cultural anthropo-

logists. Qu wan, ‘to go out and have fun’, wan, ‘to have fun’, haowan, ‘fun’: expressions conveying a sense of enjoyment regularly punctuate day-to-day life, whether exchanging jokes in the paddy field or thronging the market. As we have seen, switching on electricity, riding a bicycle, taking a train, visiting a department store, eating out or attending an exhibition were often perceived as occasions for fun, as the advent of modernity seemed to offer endless opportunities for wonder and amusement. Consumption in modern

China was characterised by exuberance and enchantment, while shopping

could resemble a carnival, as commerce and amusement were inextricably

linked. Even the poor on occasion could ‘have fun’, for instance by attending free trials at greyhound races or strolling through busy streets and depart-

ment stores: as Chapter 4 pointed out, simply sitting on a stool to watch the iron locomotive roar past was an occasion for enjoyment. Ears and eyes in

particular found new forms of leisure thanks to mechanical means of reproduction: whether the camera or the gramophone, sight and sound in every-

day life were enriched by new technologies eagerly appropriated by people

across the social spectrum. As the introduction has argued, all too often an

analysis of images in advertising or publishing fails to capture the diverse ways in which viewers themselves experienced new modes of representation, and

photography offers an exceptional opportunity to get much closer to the different ways in which images were used, to the negotiations which took place between photographers and sitters, to the multiple meanings of visual

artefacts, and to the fragile and unstable links between image and context. 241

Seeing and Listening After all, ordinary people were not merely spectators when it came to photographic imagery: they themselves produced an enormous amount of visual material by patronising the many photographic studios which mushroomed. in large cities and small towns alike. While this layer of material culture may

have escaped the gaze of the historian, since few archives and libraries have

preserved ordinary family snapshots,

aspects of tions have world, and analysis of

constituted one of the most cherished everyday life in the republican era. Recent technological innovaplaced China among the most camera-obsessed countries in the the roots of this phenomenon are explored below, followed by an the cinema, the radio and the gramophone. THE

CAMERA

AND

THE

SECOND

I

The reflective power of the mirror,it was noted in Chapter 7, ensured its widespread popularity, in particular as a tool to enhance the fengshui ofa house-

hold. The camera was also seen as a magic mirror, and was destined rapidly to conquer a willing population, as the ubiquitous use of all varieties of cameras

on all sorts of occasions in China today demonstrates. First appeared the daguerreotype, exposing a

silver plate to light, the image being developed

over mercury and fixed in a solution of salt. Its use was observed in Canton

in the 1840s by Zhou Shouchang: ‘People sit on a platform and face a mirror, the artist captures their shadow from the light, immerses it into a solution, and

embeds it with glass so that no gas can escape; beards, whiskers and clothes

can all be discerned, and the result is extremely realistic, surpassing even what

an excellent painter can achieve.” Maybe his observations were based on the work of Jules Itier, who took a daguerreotype of governor-general Qi-

ying and several other dignitaries and merchants in Canton in 1844.) Guo Liancheng, returning from his pilgrimage to Rome in 1860, also reported

that the locals of his home town in Hubei flocked in amazement around a

“Western reflector lens’ (xiyang yingxiangjing).* While visiting the Chinese city in Shanghai, Wang Tao noted in 1859 that the local studio produced pictures which were relatively cheap, and superior to the ones taken by foreigners

based in the concessions; he named Luo Yuanyou as one of the best photo-

graphers in Shanghai at the time.’ Sun Cigong, a contemporary of Wang Tao, also praised photography as ‘its portrayal of human features is so real and alive

as to be magic, while chemicals work wonders... Looking through the camera

lens one sees a lovely beauty, and the photo on the wall is as good as the real thing.” By the 1870s photography, described as a ‘mirror of truth’ (‘it cap-

88. Portrait studio in Shanghai,

1940s,

242

tures every detail of beautiful girls’), was already said to be eagerly bought for

display on walls in Shanghai.”

The Camera and the Second I

The camera was also discovered in the 1860s by imperial envoys to the

West: Linzhen was one of the first to buy photographic equipment. He

referred to the camera as a‘magic mirror’ (shenjing) and learned how to‘borrow

light to capture flowers, birds and people’.* Yang Renshan, who accompanied

Zeng Jize on an official mission to Britain and France in 1875, also brought

back photographic equipment, even providing some of the studios in Shang-

hai with their first cameras. He took family pictures, which were taken on slow-acting wet plates with the lens uncovered for a set period of time.”

With an increased flow of goods and people during the last third of the

nineteenth century, studios were gradually established in most large cities. In the late nineteenth century Archibald Little travelled along the Yangzi in

Sichuan, and was photographed by a local artist who had initially been

brought from Shanghai by a British traveller, had settled in Chongqing and

apparently did a thriving business.'° Not far away the first photographic shop

had opened in Chengdu in 1883, while a few years later Liang Xiaoshan, a Cantonese, carried a camera with an eight-inch tripod in a basket on his back to Chengdu and opened another photographic shop in that city.'' The first photo studio in Wuhan, the Ronghua studio, was also opened by a Cantonese in 1872."

During the New Policies initiated after the disaster of the Boxer rebel-

lion, the Qing government and the Imperial Palace adopted photography to record the appearance of all their employees, and several volumes of profiles

are kept in the Imperial Archives of palace officials, eunuchs and servants.'* As

early as 1901 the Imperial Household even considered hiring a professional

to record the birthday of the empress dowager Cixi and take the portraits of a number of ministers—a task traditionally performed by painters. The

government argued that ‘there is a shortage of renowned painters at present,

and photography is far superior in comparison to traditional painting’"* Cixi herself, after some resistance, welcomed photography and hired a professional to take her portrait inside the Summer Palace.'* Like other royalty around

the globe, Queen Victoria being the prime example, she was eager to distrib-

ute photographs of herself: she gave them to foreign dignitaries as a sign of

friendship, while more popular ones circulated widely before the 1911 revolution—as a visit to any fair in mainland China will reveal.’

The camera was multivalent, capable both of consolidating established social norms and producing divergent forms of identity. Group pictures, for instance, could foster a sense of community: traditional families were often

large, and up to several dozen members all had to stand still and hold their breath after much arranging around and posing, including babies and small

children.” On the other hand, as the example of Sheng Cheng shows, the

Seeing and Listening camera was instrumental in the exploration of the self. When sent to school

in Nanjing a year before the fall of the empire, he discovered photography, as

his ‘reflection stayed fixed upon the mirror’s face’. He had his picture taken

several times to show his mother how he looked.'* After 1911 photographs

were liberally attached to the walls in student dormitories, although generally

not those of parents, friends or lovers but of themselves, ‘perhaps an expres-

sion of the students’ interest in their own recently discovered personalities’,

as Olga Lang astutely observed." In Hangzhou, photographers had signs in great gold characters announcing ‘The Second I’, apparently capitalising on

the discovery of the self."

Even outside the large cities of the coast, photographs appeared in the

houses of farmers. In the 1920s and ’30s peasants in easy financial circum-

stances adorned their walls with photographs of family members. In Jianying,

a small village in the north of China, hardly any home in the early 1920s did not have at least a few framed photographs of members of the family.?! Even

nuns in Buddhist temples by the 1920s could have several framed photos

displayed next to sparse bedding, all taken in a photographic studio.” Skilled

workers in Yunnan in the early 1940s had photographs of pin-up girls and of their families on the wall.” From an exotic item owned by a handful of foreign envoys in the nine-

teenth century, the camera itselfbecame a truly popular object: China imported

photographic material worth $1.5 million as early as 1921. Photography was at first an expensive hobby among the well-to-do: Xie Baozhang, a naval officer who fought in the Sino-Japanese war in 1894, was fond of photo-

graphic equipment, and acquired everything necessary to develop pictures:

many decades later his daughter Bing Xin still cherished a glass funnel which

had survived from her childhood.” The camera became an increasingly com-

mon sight during the 1920s, Kodak’s ‘A’ model being prominently displayed

in pictorials.** These same magazines fuelled a desire to take pictures by printing images that most readers could easily relate to, in particular shots of babies

and toddlers.” By the early 1930s portable cameras appeared with improved

resolution and ever-shrinking size, weight and price. In Shanghai some

workers even had a simple camera before the start of the Second World War.””

Home cinema equipment—reserved for the rich as the camera became less

rare—also appeared in the 1930s, including the Ciné-Kodak.”

The success of the camera may have been helped by the complemen-

tarity of photography with existing illustrative traditions. Local inflections transformed the uses and meanings of the camera, which incorporated more

established media, calligraphy and painting in particular.As in India,” sophisti-

cated techniques and inventive procedures led to distinct local styles of visual

244

The Camera and the Second I

culture: photos were often painstakingly tinted by hand, while a number of

artists even applied oil colours to efface the boundary between ‘photography’

and ‘painting’. The use of calligraphy was culturally specific to photographic

practice in China: in a country where mastery of the written language was a sign of social distinction, the educated would add a carefully calligraphed

verse on to a carte-de-visite, while artists wrote entire poems on to sepia-toned photos of landscapes and added a red chop signature. Kang Youwei thus wrote verses on the side of his photographic portrait.’ Collage, composite printing

or deliberate blurring during development further complicated the bound-

ary between traditional landscape painting and landscape photography. Lang

Jingshan went further than most in composing collage photographs in which many of the ‘traditional’ signifiers such as herons, rockery, rivers, cloudy peaks

and a lonely sage carrying a walking stick were brought together in one image, accentuating each photograph with calligraphy in the manner of a painting. Ordinary people could have their portraits taken in the many shops to be found in bazaars, department stores and public parks. In the Dongan Market in Beijing, for instance, haters, shoemakers and drapers proliferated along the

ground floor of the Zhonghua Market, while teashops, barbers and photo-

graphers could be found on the first floor. In Central Park cafés, restaurants, a greenhouse, a billiard house and several exhibition halls competed with a photographer's studio for the public’ attention.** Photographers lined the road

to the temple grounds in Hangzhou,” while in Shanghai dozens of studios

responded to public demand, prominent names including Zhonghua, Zhaofang, Guanlong, Wangkai and Baoji.” In scenic Suzhou thirteen competed for the tourist trade (the first one had opened in 1882),* while Hangzhou

in 1934 Beijing Ikon to enough

had no less than thirty-five—not counting itinerant photographers.” had forty-eight studios in 1931, ranging from Kodak, Agfa and Zeisslocal shops established as early as the 1870s." The prices were low to be affordable to the many, even if poor households could only

make a trip to the studio once in a lifetime. In Chengdu several dozen photo-

graphers competed for the market in 1909, charging one to two taels for a six-inch portrait.*' Twenty years later in Hangzhou two copies of a simple 4 by 4-inch portrait with a matt finish cost a mere 70 cents, prices gradually

increasing to $20 for a 10 by 48-inch portrait on high-quality gloss. The

quality of the cameras, lenses, plates and paper varied from studio to studio,

although most equipment was produced by Kodak and Agfa.? Studios also offered tinted portraits which were very popular with the wealthy, wedding

portraits being painstakingly touched up by hand.

89. Two northerners posing inside the studio.

Seeing and Listening Inside the studio efforts were often made to recreate a‘modern’ atmosphere.

A few years after the 1911 revolution a long tea-table occupied the end of the room, a counterpane was used as tablecloth, and cups and saucers of German origin were placed on the table as for a school treat. Ready-made costumes for the benefit of customers dangled from hooks and nails, two foreign suits being in great demand, the collars and shirt fronts greasy and grey with use.

A bouquet in a foreign glass vase, some walking sticks and English books completed the mise en scéne."* Even in a studio in remote Xining in the mid-

1930s, a considerable number of Tibetans would pose wearing their Homburg

hats and heavy boots with upturned toes; among the scrolls, spittoons and

rickety chairs, they would stand rigidly in front of a faded, tattered backcloth with segments

of outlandish

architecture signalling modernity.“

In

the language of backdrops, cars signified progress, used for instance by the

Huachang studio.*®

If commitment to the modern was often conveyed by carefully posed

photographs with meticulously engineered decors, tradition was also invented

via the medium of the camera. The grandfather of Bing Xin posed in a long

gown with a fan in a studio decorated as a teahouse in the early 1900s, show-

ing that the lure of the photo was no longer the preserve of the young and

modern even before the fall of the empire.“ Baoji (Pow Kee), from Shanghai,

produced a cabinet card with an elderly lady in traditional hairdo standing pensively in front of a mirror, her legs covered by a garb long enough merely

to hint at small feet.” Dresses could also be lent to customers: following the success of a popular play in Chengdu, the Dongya photographic shop rented out a wedding dress copied from the nightgown worn by a famous actress.**

Accessories were important, not only for ordinary people who dressed up for the occasion, but also for the imperial elites. Katherine Carl, who painted Cixi’s

portrait for the St Louis Exposition, thus noted that the empress dowager

periodically checked her work as she found the accessories as important as

the portrait itself (after seeing the finished painting Cixi decided not only to have it photographed, but to have photos taken of herself ).”

Not only did the language of backdrops play a far more important role than in Europe, but the way in which people posed could vary. In Europe the

subject’s eyes generally looked away from the camera in studio portraits, while the photo captured the upper part of the body only.” In China most people looked straight at the camera and were photographed in full, whether stand-

ing or sitting: clothes offered visual evidence of wealth and status, while full

body photography captured a larger part of the all-important backdrop. Since funeral photographs were always half-body, it is likely that a general taboo developed against their use in and out of the studio.

246

The Camera and the Second I Photos were always related to wealth and status: the poor had small black-

and-white portraits on simple cardboard mounts, while the rich had large portraits which were hand-tinted and displayed in elaborate wood or silver frames.

In a country of widespread poverty, studios often offered special services,

for instance enlarged pencil or charcoal drawings produced from small photos:

because many customers could only afford a small photo, a large hand-drawn

copy was advantageous (this is still done in parts of China, when nothing

but a small photo remains of the deceased and the family seeks a larger por-

trait—always in black and white).*' Poor or rich, with few exceptions faces

remained expressionless: the photo was a record of the person rather than the personality, and before the 1940s smiles were rare. In other cases, and contrary to the European custom, the scholar could even recede from the centre of the image to appear as a mere addition in the corner of a photo of his private garden, the better to convey both his wealth and his taste (figure 90).

Photographs family pictures children in the arching sense of

were at the core of the social representation of identity, and were especially popular objects, as parents posed with their photo studio. In a country where lineage provided an overidentity, and family size was a matter of social prestige, col-

lective portraits could be so large that they had to be taken outside, as the

photo of the Jiang lineage from Hangzhou, in which seventy-six members

are gathered, demonstrates.” Ritual ce

emonies around ancestor worship,

on the other hand, were greatly simplified by the discovery of photography,

members of the family regularly coming together, bowing to the picture of the immediate progenitor, and making some simple offerings.* In the early

1920s Harry Franck witnessed a man in foreign dress kowtowing before an

up-to-date photograph

of his father and offering the hungry spirit of the

90, Hand-painted photograph of

Y. C. Kuan

in front of his home,

late 1930s,by F Kao, Beijing

247

Seeing and Listening deceased a bowl of American apples.* Funeral processions in northern cities would carry the enlargement of a photograph of the deceased in portable

pavilions, which would be placed in the mourning hall next to (modern) candlesticks.**

Photography was also central to the modern wedding (figure 91):in Xi'an

gold rings and wedding photos were essential. Photographs of girls were also sent to families considering an arranged marriage

for their sons, and

dozens could be examined before a candidate was selected.*” Pictures of men,

on the other hand, were less frequently required, although Liang Yen was

shown a dozen from whom to choose when she was being considered for an arranged marriage. The last emperor had the special privilege of selecting his future consort from photographs: lining up a row of maidens was no longer

thought to be suitable, and he was sent four photos instead, and casually drew

91. Wedding portrait,

tinted by hand, 1920s.

a circle on a pretty face after close examination.*” On the other hand, as some contemporary observers noted with apprehension, photography became particularly popular with courtesans, as ‘customers who visit prostitutes strive to buy their pictures’.” In Shanghai by the 1870s photos of courtesans, which

often came with names and full addresses, were popular: ‘Clients rush to buy

[them], and use these pictures to find the girls’*' Some customers would stick

the objects on mirrors or hang them on walls; others had their photo taken

together with their favourite courtesan." Sex photos were popular by the early twentieth century, and one journalist described in 1902 how they were sold in Shanghai:‘Men and women, the learned and the illiterate, all lose their minds and have become infatuated by them... street vendors go around claim-

ing to sell ordinary pictures, but they will slip some dirty photos into a small

bag... The price varies from 5 or 6 jiao to one silver dollar’ Albums were also

on sale, often presented as small folders, such as the twelve explicit photos of a

full nude posing in a studio made by Zhuang Tiande before 1911: concise but rude verses inscribed on the pictures conferred a sense of ‘tradition’."*

If courtesans were among the first to use photographic pictures for advertising in the late nineteenth century, cartes-de-visite were widespread among

the rich and wealthy by the republican period. In the 1920s and '30s famous actresses and movie stars also appeared on postcards, while 10 cents was

enough to purchase a small folder of fifteen photos of such exotic destinations

as Switzerland from the Liangyou Company. The rich and famous not only

liberally circulate images of themselves among family and friends, but also

frequently appeared in illustrated magazines which catered for an audience

interested in the lives of the wealthy. Such personalities as screen actresses, so-

ciety ladies, political leaders, famous artists and wealthy industrialists covered the pages of pictorials like the Young Companion and the Peiyang Pictorial News, 248

The Camera and the Second I

92. Group photograph with splendid display of hats, gowns and shoes, 1920s, their portraits captured by professional photographers or sent to the editor with a signature on the front or the back. President Li Yuanhong ordered

5,000 copies of his portrait to be distributed in 1922, while Jiang Jieshi regularly sent autographed photos to meritorious soldiers."” Much as the number

of images of the Buddha was a sure indicator of religious merit and political power in the Maitreyan tradition, the quantity of photos in circulation of a

given individual indicated his social standing and political power.

Others would offer photos of themselves to friends and family, often as a souvenir with a dedication on the back. Liang Shiqiu commemorated rare

events during his university days in the 1920s with a photo, multiple copies

being routinely ordered.* He was not alone: in Beijing students would not hesitate to spend their dollars to have a graduation picture taken soon after the 1911 revolution.” Li Xianwen (1902-76), for instance, graduated from

high school in the capital in 1919 and had his picture taken on his return home to Chengdu.” Inevitably, in a country which put so much emphasis

on social connections, montage photography thrived: it was common knowI-

edge that the famous courtesan Fu Caiyun had faked a photo of herself in

the company of the empress dowager in order to raise her status.”! Photos of famous courtesans and important politicians were not only collectables among

the wealthy, but also appeared in the slide shows which reached even remote

villages in republican China, as the next section shows.

249

Seeing and Listening

93. Peepshow, 1940s.

my

Me

Row sl LS ay GIRS

Ba Bal Bie wl ete Ae eee po eho att ol $56 of a Rn) oe dake aly HL ak

_ AG

Magic Lanterns and Moving Pictures MAGIC

LANTERNS

AND

MOVING

PICTURES

Slide shows, or the ‘magic lantern’ (huandeng or layangpian)—not without affinity with shadow theatre (yingxi)—attracted a popular audience as soon as they appeared in China. Wang Tao, one of the first to witness a slide show in

Europe in the 1860s, described it as a shadow theatre with landscapes, people,

towers and buildings, ‘brought to life in the twinkling of an eye, truly inge-

nious beyond belief’, so much so that he ‘suddenly felt as if I was conjured on

the scene myself ’.” Several years later imperial envoy Zhang Deyi was also impressed by a show in Europe which projected slides of insects: ‘When the

leg of a spider is placed on the glass and the slide is illuminated, it is over three

foot in length with hundreds of small joints.A mosquito eye becomes the size ofa wheel... fleas, ants and crickets are as large as pigs. The belly of a scorpion

is transparent like glass and every midge it swallowed could be seen.” Slide

shows soon found their way to China, and already in the 1860s brought exotic

wonders of a foreign world to many villages: the projectors were usually

fitted with a series of lenses in front, through which the eye of the spectator could visualise the pictures. In a culture of portability, the whole apparatus

was extremely light and could easily be folded and carried on the shoulder: visions were sold like noodles, made to order by the itinerant merchant.” Guo Liancheng encountered a slide machine in Shanghai in the 1860s,

operated with a strong lamp and a glass plate for inserting pictures: human beings and animals, weather phenomena, depictions of heaven and hell, and ghosts and spirits were all popular, the viewers peeping through a narrow

opening.”> Several decades later a local scholar from Canton described the appeal of the slide show: ‘From drawings of grand pavilions to beautifully

carved pillars, all the riches of the world appear like a spring dream and can be enjoyed within one show.”* People from the countryside who had never travelled learnt about foreign

places through the slide show, discovering the world beyond their village: in Nanchong, Sichuan province, locals marvelled at the West Lake in Hangzhou by watching slides, as ‘the eyes take [the audience] to many places.” In Shandong,as in Sichuan, slide shows were called ‘foreign mirrors’ (xiyangjing), many

of which were of nude women; six slides could be seen for one copper in the years before the collapse of the Qing.” Even in Shanghai the humble slide

show survived until the city was cleansed by the communists in the 1950s:

yy

many were very simple devices with a magnifying glass and a few slides selected by the viewers themselves."

Seeing and Listening The slide show also thrived thanks to complex local roots, in particular

popular culture, as the performer would either sing or tell a story following the rotating images: in Beijing some would also play a traditional instrument

to accompany their chant."' In Shandong in the early 1920s large coloured

photographs of women nude to the waist were inserted in the double-panel screens used by storytellers to illustrate their chanted tales.

Electric shadows Once new techniques allowed images to be shown in quick succession, they

seemed to move to the human eye. Film appeared in China by 1897, called ‘electric light slide show’ (dianguan yingxi), in contrast to the popular peepshow. Sun Baoxuan was an early enthusiast who confided the excitement

of his first experience to his diary: ‘Suddenly all the lights went out, horses, carriages, people and all sorts of things appeared on the white screen, coming

alive with movement like a miracle... I forgot that none of it was real. In

Beijing Zhang Xiao was also enthralled by the ‘strange creatures and weird things’ to be seen in the cinema, which ‘felt just like a dream.

Like the slide show, films were considered from the start as popular en-

tertainment: teahouses were the venue for projections before the first cinema

appeared in Shanghai. The Hongkou theatre, opened in 1908, could accom-

modate 250 viewers. A more luxurious edifice—the Victoria Cinema—was

built a few years later.** 86 In Hangzhou too the first movies were shown in the open air, but there were so many fights and disputes over the lack of space that the experience lasted only for two seasons in 1924; more formal cinemas

would open their doors in the following years." A similar move up the social ladder can be observed in Beijing: movies were at first projected in popular

entertainment grounds that included fairs and brothels. One of the first local in-door cinemas was no more than a marquee supported by bamboo. Erected

by Qian Bingnan and his brother in 1933 near the Xidan department store, it could accommodate 200 viewers. After it was destroyed by fire, the Qian brothers built a modern cinema near Tiangiao in 1935, introducing advanced technology and a sound system. As in other popular sites of male

sociability—

opium houses and teahouses—women were not admitted in the early years,

but in response to popular demand special seats for ladies were later added,

clearly separated from the male seating area with a row of red lights in the

middle. Shows cost a mere copper per person. The projector was a hand-held

Pathé, although an electric motor was later added to operate it. It made a loud noise which did not seem to deter the audience, perhaps because noise was always associated with festive occasions. Following the success of the Tianqiao

i a

Cinema, the Qian brothers built three more theatres and cinemas in the old

Magic Lanterns and Moving Pictures

imperial capital.** However, a focus on the larger cities along the coast would obscure the fact that deep inland the movies were just as popular: in Chengdu, Fu Chongju bought a projector from Japan and showed moving pictures in

public in 1904, tickets being sold for 20 cents (figure 95).*”

Movies and talkies could be found in all large cities in republican China:

300 moving picture houses existed by 1930, including fifty-five equipped for

sound reproduction.” By 1936 there were more than 320 moving picture theatres concentrated in the three provinces of Jiangsu, Hebei and Guangdong.”! Detailed statistics show that in Nanjing alone almost a million people

went to ‘the pictures’ in 1933, far more than any other form of entertainment,

including traditional opera.”? Nanjing may have been the capital, but many

other cities boasted similar numbers: over halfa million people went to see the 166 movies shown in Kunming in 1935;”' they had much more choice than their descendants halfa century later under the so-called “economic reforms’.

Seats came in three classes, the cheapest costing 10 cents.”

Travelling exhibitions also attracted a large public in small villages, as peo-

ple swarmed to see films and occupied every inch of the narrow wooden

trestle seats: as William Sewell shrewdly observed, foreign vulgarity and local

frankness made a powerful combination, as the public roared with laughter at

the more intimate scenes of third-rate Hollywood movies.”* The majority of films were indeed foreign during the first decades of the twentieth century,

although ‘The First Tram in Shanghai’ (Shanghai diyiliang dianche xingshi) made in March

1908 and ‘The Funeral of Cixi and the Guangxu

emperor’ (Xi-

taihou Guangxu da chusang) made in November 1908 were two of the earliest

local films.” Audiences in Harbin watched silent films in the 1920s from Russia, Japan, Germany and America, foreign stars finding their way into the dreams of local people.” When both English and Chinese characters were not directly subtitled, as was often the case, they would be shown on a small

screen at the side simultaneously with the English caption on the large screen

(this is still the case today at the cinema in the Hong Kong Arts Centre): in

Chengdu this was known as ‘showing the glass slides’ (daboban).”” When some

films started providing subtitles, the audience would sometimes read out aloud

the words during the projection.” In Chengdu the Daguangming cinema

also invited local interpreters to do spontaneous translations. Occasionally the interpreter would use humorous expressions or local slang to make the

audience laugh: translation was part of the show.'"" At the YMCA

in Fuzhou

epics such as Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments flickered before the eyes of

the audience in the 1920s with a translator standing on a platform." Diversity of experience and the ability to appropriate and delight in a foreign medium characterised the republican era. As one visitor observed, ‘It is not uncommon

95.A camera show in Chengdu, early 1900s.

Seeing and Listening for an American to attend an English-owned theatre in the ex-German Concession of Tientsin and find himself seated with a Frenchman on his left, an

expatriate White Russian on his right, a Chinese family behind him, and a Japanese girl in native costume in front of him, all laughing equally at the an-

tics of Harold Lloyd or Charlie Chaplin—Chia Po Ling, as the Chinese call

him. A modern cinema projecting a movie starring Bebe Daniels could thus

attract an exclusively local audience.'”

Not only did the film industry grow with vigour in the 1930s, but new uses

were found for the cinema in response to consumer demand. Half a century

before the appearance of karaoke in the 1980s, the Guomin cinema in Chengdu provided a sing-along facility by projecting the words of popular

tunes on to the screen with a projector. This was popular with young people who emulated famous stars such as Zhou Xuan, Li Lihua and Bai Guang."

Tinted photographs, as we have seen, were highly valued, and experiments

with colour were also made in the film industry. In the 1930s the Ming-

xing Film Co. in Shanghai began to experiment by adding colour to copies

of black and white films. Audiences were impressed, even if the quality of the

colouring was poor and colours sometimes appeared in the wrong places. When an audience in Chengdu first saw red dresses appear on the screen, they were so surprised that some started clapping with excitement.'® In cinemas where the aisles were so narrow that it was inconvenient for customers to go to the toilet during the show, young kids or old women some-

times peddled bamboo tubes: men could urinate into the tubes and empty them in the toilet on their way out.'® The quality of the seating, besides the shows on offer, was an important factor in attracting customers: joined

wooden pews, offered for instance by the Daguangming cinema inside a Chengdu park, were cheap but not very popular. The Zhongyang Theatre, on

the other hand, built during the Second World War, boasted single or twin chairs

and was patronised by university students and young couples.""” Whatever their

level of comfort, most cinemas reserved five or six seats in the back for the police, while shareholders could also enter free of charge." The equipment also imposed its limitations on the experience of cinema: the Daguangming

in Chengdu only had a single spool, so each time a film was changed the

audience simply had to wait. Moreover, in the summer the projector would overheat after constant use, often burning the film." Power cuts occurred

regularly, and some cinemas bought or borrowed second-hand electric

generators for backup: in some cases these too would fail, bursting into flames

during a projection." Tea could be purchased during the show, the cups

fixed by a hook attached to each seat in some cinemas: as always in a culture

of dearth in which all movable property could disappear, a deposit had to be

Magic Lanterns and Moving Pictures paid for the cup.'"' Larger cinemas were the first places to have air-conditioning, which proved so popular that long intermissions had to be introduced to persuade customers to leave.'!? Most theatres, on the other hand, were dominated by old plays in tradi-

tional style, and only a few theatres in the big cities like Shanghai, Canton,

Beijing and Hankou presented modern plays. Local versions of foreign plays

such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and La Dame aux Camélias were popular, while dramatisations of historical characters like Napoleon and Julius Caesar were

well received by the educated public. Modern plays even penetrated the school

system, as boys and girls in advanced institutions staged plays written by themselves for the entertainment of visitors at the end of the school year: stories

were adapted from Shakespeare or The Arabian Nights, and modern plays were

also popular.'?

Contrary

to the old theatres, where

men

and women

were

strictly segregated, wealthy customers could mix in a separate box on the upper floor in new establishments.''+ Even traditional theatres, however, were

keen to modernise their premises, like the one in Tianjin which had cubist window ledges and its name in magenta-coloured neon lights; the tip-up chairs inside were hard but tickets were cheap.''* SINGING

MACHINES:

THE

GRAMOPHONE

AND

THE

RADIO.

Chow Chung-cheng remembers how her family possessed three foreign ob-

jects which fascinated her. One was a large musical box which had to be wound up and then played for quite a long time as ‘notes fell like raindrops’.

The second was a gramophone on which European marches were played.

The last was a small projector which showed rural scenes and a film of a European face with a nose which grew longer and longer.''* The phonograph and gramophone had a huge impact in modern China, no doubt because players easily crossed social barriers and could play any type of record: Italian

opera in the lounge, Beijing opera in the market. The gramophone was both portable and versatile, reproducing both familiar airs and alien soundscapes.

The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas A. Edison and was

encountered the same year by Guo Songtao and Zhang Deyi in London.'” One of the first households in China to enjoy one was that of Yang Renshan,

who purchased his equipment during official tours to Europe in the 1880s. In 1904 he bought a His Master's Voice machine with a horn, and the family

would often gather and listen to music while stories were being told. If the phonograph was the focus of social venues in his house, outside the compound ordinary people could pay two coppers to listen to a song on a cylindrical

phonograph through a stethoscope at temple fairs.'"*

Seeing and Listening

96, Members ofa Chinese

women’s orchestra, ¢. 1915.

Gramophones, invented in 1887 by Emile Berliner by using shellac discs which provided better sound and were more durable than cylinders, soon

followed. They could be obtained in Shanghai during the First World War, the classic model being the Victor Victrola player (His Master's Voice). Eas-

ily transportable, the Victrola promised invariable quality and countless hours

of entertainment.'"” Reliable sound quality and elegance rather than mobility were the hallmarks of the Pathé cabinet player. As with the Victor/ HMV trade-mark dog, patrons were advised to look out for the Pathé rooster—an indication of how

local imitations were beginning to threaten the market po-

sition of imported commodities.'' In 1927 the first ‘jukebox’ was introduced

in China: an automatic gramophone capable of storing and changing up to twelve records.'*! The Cantonese businessman Lao Yanruo contributed to the

popularisation of the ‘singing machine’ (changji) by improving the quality of cabinet phonographs and portable record play ers. The gramophone was a symbol of family intimacy among the wealthy, indicating not only disposable wealth but also new attitudes towards leisure

from the comfort of the home rather than in public. The gramophone allowed a privileged relationship between individual and artist abstracted from the traditional social contexts within which music was produced and consumed.

The film star Tang Tiansui listened to the gramophone at home as a hobby,'?>

Singing Machines: The Gramophone and the Radio

but gramophones also reached far beyond the compounds of the rich. They were particularly successful in public markets, where they were used to attract

customers. The traditional noise which inevitably accompanied popular events

may have encouraged the use of the gramophone, which produced loudness

effortlessly and continuously, in contrast to the gong and the firecracker, and apparently to the delight of the many. In faraway Chengdu gramophones

were on sale even before the collapse of the empire in 1912.'* A few years

later a newly installed gramophone became a major attraction in Chengdu’s annual flower fair, as the crowds listened to it playing traditional music and

opera in respectful silence.'?> Dozens of farmers in remotest Gansu province would gather around a phonograph in 1925.'°

In large cities like Hankou gramophones with loudspeakers played records

of local stars to advertise the special sale of goods in the 1930s.'”” Foreigners were regularly taken aback by the blare of recorded singsong music from stores. The gramophone of the Grand Hotel in Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi

province, ceaselessly played a limited repertoire of Chinese records, to the chagrin of foreign guests.'* On some railways a phonograph would play operas in first- and second-class carriages.'” Gramophones with loudspeakers were also installed in public parks,as happened in the 1930s in Chengdu: as record-

players were still relatively rare in the city, ordinary people would come to the park to listen to the loudspeaker playing operas and other music.'” As gramophones started being produced locally, their price came down: nine factories in Shanghai alone produced gramophones in 1933, costing between $27 and $200.'*! Records produced in Shanghai were sold for between $1.70

and $2.00,Victor records being significantly more expensive.'” The radio followed the gramophone, often being the first piece of science

that well-to-do families owned. News of the first radio broadcasting in America on 21 November 1920 was enthusiastically received. The Eastern Miscellany wrote: ‘Families can hear the news at the turn of a switch. One can

even listen to the radio while having breakfast, and it is much more convenient

than reading a newspaper... [in the evening] people can dance along to music,

as a band is no longer required.’ A rich household would proudly display its wireless set, although even the best technology could suffer from atmospherics, as no regulations existed and stations could send out their programs as they

pleased." Wealthy families placed a radio in the living room for the enjoyment of the head of the household, although the appliance—which had to be updated periodically as technology progressed and fashion changed—also provided entertainment for the rest of the family: like the piano, the radio symbol-

ised middle-class domesticity and a new notion of homely leisure.""* As one 257

Seeing and Listening

97. Recreational room for staff at the Anshan Steel Company, 1930s.

admirer of the radio exclaimed, ‘The feeling of quiet seclusion is vastly su-

perior to visiting an amusement centre, where the din will make your head spin.’ The Yamei company captured the scene:

The husband returns from work, Leading the children with a smile, He turns on the radio [purchased at] Yamei, And the whole family sits in a circle to hear The Pagoda, the Dragonfly, and the White Snake.” Up till the 1930s wireless sets were large pieces of furniture which could not be integrated into a corner of the living room: the RCA-Radiola, advertised as ‘the most noble and fashionable leisure product of the home’, still had a large receiver encased in a horizontal wooden structure in 1927.'* As in

Europe and the United States, the first radios were built to look like pieces of furniture, helping the unfamiliar object to become part of the household

by giving it the appearance ofa cabinet which blended with the other furniture. Wooden

cabinets were first designed by established furniture makers,

until Murphy started producing structures which were visibly modern and

instantly recognisable as a radio set.” In China ornate wooden cabinets were soon replaced by smaller radios in the late 1920s, Philips introducing a highly

popular and more streamlined version in 1928.

Singing Machines: The Gramophone and the Radio Broadcasting stations mushroomed, the first radio station being launched

in Shanghai in 1923: for the first time many people heard the live voice of

Sun Yatsen. Ordinary people were indeed the target audience of the station, which broadcast practical information such as daily prices of vegetables and

daily news as well as operas. Radio broadcasting grew rapidly within the next ten years. According to an estimate in 1936, there were eighty-three short-

wave broadcasting stations all over China, a figure which increased to 132 by 1949.'° Canton’s first radio station was inaugurated in 1927. It broadcast news and

music, weather reports, exchange

quotations, market

trends,

lectures of educational value such as aerial defence, the revival of the silk and tea industries, public sanitation and personal hygiene; all were broadcast in

Cantonese, although some news was delivered in English and Mandarin in the evening.'*' Dozens of other local stations followed, even Buddhist prayers

by a ‘radio-priest’ being transmitted to a radio audience by the wireless in the

1930s. Singsong girls in modern garb would sing American jazz." Story-

telling appealed to a broad audience,"* as an old genre found a new medium

capable of transcending the teahouse to reach the interior of people’s homes.

As ‘listening in’ became popular with all social categories, a growing demand for radio sets and parts led to millions of dollars worth of radio

equipment being imported. In greater Shanghai in the 1930s rooftops were

covered with aerials as the radio craze hit the city, 200,000 radio sets being

used in homes and businesses.'*5 Many were used by shops, some of the more

prosperous attempting to lure customers with crackling dance tunes or extracts from the opera.'*

Mechanical means of reproduction, from the photograph to the record, have become one of the most important means of communication in the twentyfirst century, although a social history of their uses and meanings among a

quarter of humankind has yet to be undertaken. General readers can easily find books which present photographs of people and places in China produced by foreigners, but what happened when local people controlled the camera to create images for local audiences? This chapter has attempted

to examine how and why photographs were taken in China, showing how

photographic images permeated everyday life, whether snapshots of ordinary

sitters taken in studios and hung on walls, photos of the dead used in ancestral

halls, portraits of political leaders displayed in public places, collective pictures

of students, office workers or prison guards, images of criminals posted in

railway stations, news photos reproduced in pictorial magazines, photos of courtesans printed on postcards, or amateur snapshots of babies exhibited by

Seeing and Listening

photography associations. As with other objects analysed in this book, some of their uses were suggested by the objects themselves while others were more

open to cultural inflection. Some of the techniques deployed in producing photos were peculiar to China, including the use of calligraphy to write tra-

ditional poems on to photos of people or landscapes, or the addition of a traditional red seal when

a photographer signed his product. The extensive

use of backdrops was also striking, as ordinary people would pose as if driving

an expensive car, or even flying through the skies in a modern plane. Poor or rich, with few exceptions poses remained formal: the photo was a record

of the person rather than the personality, and smiles remained rare till the

1930s. The gramophone, just as much as the camera, was open to differential use: among the wealthy it could indicate not only disposable wealth but also

a new attitude towards leisure, to be enjoyed from the comfort of the home

rather than in the crowded spaces dominated by the working classes. But the gramophone was also ubiquitous in popular markets, where it was played to attract customers. Where gongs and firecrackers were traditionally used to produce the raucous and joyful noise which accompanied popular events, the gramophone engendered loudness effortlessly and continuously, to the delight of the many.

200

CONCLUSION The preceding chapters have mapped the changes that occurred in the material landscape of modern China from the middle of the nineteenth century to the advent of communism in 1949. They show that, far from being self-

contained, the everyday was already inextricably linked to global trends by the last decades of the nineteenth century, from the yarn of clothes, the iron

of tools and the oil in lamps among ordinary farmers to electric fans imported phonographs among wealthy elites. ‘Foreign’ has long signified perior’, if only because exotic goods generally came from distant lands were thus highly valued. Just as early modern Europe was spellbound by

and ‘suand the

technical wizardry and fine skills behind Oriental commodities, late imperial China praised the intricate craftsmanship and exotic appearance of ‘foreign

goods’. Emperor Yongzheng

even took to wearing a foreign wig in the last

years of his life, while Qing palaces filled up with all kinds of European bric-a-

brac. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, however,as dominant groups came to locate modernity in Europe, things local were increasingly

rejected as signifiers of backwardness, while imported goods were welcomed instead as prestige symbols: modernity had to be brought home in order to propel the country into the universe of ‘civilised’ nations and join a universal

march towards progress. Foreign was no longer merely exotic: to buy ‘foreign’

was to be ‘modern’. In contrast to other parts of the world such as Africa and South America, the material goods and technological innovations associated with foreign modernity were not merely imported for elite consumption, but were copied

locally and quickly made available to much larger sections of the population.

A long-standing tradition of manufacturing goods from foreign patterns,

the use of component parts produced by individual workers in assembling

complex

objects, the spread of small enterprises in an expanding market

from the sixteenth century onwards and the availability of cheap labour in a rapidly growing population: these different factors facilitated the domestica-

tion of foreign goods, as desirable objects from abroad were copied at low 201

Conclusion cost to address the needs of a large but relatively poor population. A two-

tier economy appeared in which wealthy circles bought foreign goods and

ordinary people welcomed cheap imitations, from the enamel washbasin to the metallic flashlight. A nationalist movement of import substitution in the first decades of the twentieth century further encouraged copy culture: economic nationalism eased the transformation of ‘foreign goods’ into ‘national goods’ within less than halfa century.A relatively low intake of foreign goods—in contrast to Russia, the Ottoman Empire, South America, Africa and Southeast Asia—was not an indication of a lack of interest in things foreign, let alone ‘hostility to alien things’, but rather a measure of their success,

as they were quickly appropriated and transformed into local products.

The advent of a new economy shaped by imperial powers not only failed to

turn modern China into a country dependent on the importation of machine-

made goods from industrial Europe, but it actually consolidated the opposite

trend, namely the importation of unprocessed materials from Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia to fuel China’s export trade. In some cases

continuities in design and manufacture could stretch over several centuries:

the metal spittoons made by Lucky Enamel Factory in Hong Kong in the 1940s were directly inspired by designs for cuspidors drawn in the Netherlands

and sent to Canton in 1763 to be produced and decorated for export back

to Europe: they were now made for a local market but also exported to other

parts of the world in response to a demand for cheap goods.'

While modernising elites, by virtue of their closer familiarity with the

foreign, most conspicuously started to appropriate foreign objects by the end

of the Qing, ultimately ordinary people, thanks to their distance from the

centres of power, were the least inhibited about acquiring new goods which

were perceived to be meaningful and useful. Working men and women, by

small if often tightly constrained choices on how their hard-earned money

should be spent, incrementally changed the material landscape of modern

China. In a country marked by opposition between the dearth of the many

and

the riches

of the few, luxury imports

were

used by elites as visual

evidence of social status, while cheap imitations satisfied the demand for new

products among ordinary people: both were included in a culture which

worshipped the tangible and craved the new. The poor participated in a thriving culture of bricolage which could turn metallic waste from Europe into everyday items painted in lively colours, from

lamps and kettles to bowls and brushes. As kerosene conquered China, the tins in which the fluid was carried were endlessly recycled, as even unskilled

hands could turn them into buckets. Yarn also penetrated every corner of the

country, and by the 1920s even the very poor were likely to wear clothes spun

262

Conclusion

from imported yarn, while a rickshaw puller could afford a cheap straw hat and shoes with rubber soles. And even if more expensive objects remained beyond the reach of the poor, they were rarely beyond their sight: exhibitive culture put on show material modernity, as parks, museums, schools and even

prisons devoted space to the display of new goods in an educative mission

of enlightenment. The visibility of modern objects was also enhanced by the

graphic revolution, which brought images of the modern to every home in the shape of posters, adverts and cigarette cards. The appropriation of objects associated at first with the foreign increased cultural diversity, contrary to the popular but misguided notion that globalisa-

tion leads to cultural uniformity. In clothing women of all social backgrounds selected scarves, skirts, blouses, gowns and corsets from a growing range of

sartorial possibilities, using them in combinations which were often strikingly

original: the use of the one-piece gown with a scarf and coat is but one ex-

ample. The very staple of food, often seen as the aspect of life least accessible to foreign influence, changed in taste and aspect as rice, sugar and wheat were

increasingly produced industrially, white being the desired colour. The existing culinary repertoire expanded hugely thanks to the use of tins, making

food available across regions and seasons for rich and poor alike. The ther-

mos flask allowed tea culture to thrive, while enamelware, richly decorated

to appeal to a variety of tastes, was cheaper and stronger than earthenware and porcelain. Here, as elsewhere, a two-tier market appeared, as the austere

designs and high quality artefacts from Europe pleased wealthy elites eager to distinguish themselves from the ordinary farmers who bought shoddy but

gaily decorated imitations. Gaudy colours would spread even further with the

advent of plastic in the 1940s and ‘50s: the founders of the plastics company

Star Industrial Co. in Hong Kong observed that the bright red, blue and

yellow of their domestic plastic ware was dictated by customers in Asia, Africa

and the Middle East, who disliked the more restrained brown and cream

colours popular among the middle classes:?‘made in China’ provided the glo-

bal poor with cheap but cheerful imitations of the luxury goods enjoyed by

the global rich. Today, as we know, cheap goods made in China can be found from Marrakech to Manila and London to New York.

The book has argued that the mere appearance of novel objects from Eu-

rope tells us very little about the varied ways in which they acquired different

meanings and were used for different purposes in China: a shared object

often becomes the subject of resignification and differential use, even if the object itself imposes a limit on the possible uses. Mass production of the mirror in the republican era reinforced rather than displaced cosmological

conceptions about spatial relationships and spiritual forces, as cheap mirrors 263

Conclusion were placed outside the door to keep malign spirits from entering the house.

The slide show also thrived thanks to complex local roots,in particular popular

culture, as the performer would either sing or tell a story following the rotating

images: in Beijing some would also play a traditional instrument to mark their chant. Among the wealthy the gramophone was a symbol of family intimacy,

indicating not only disposable wealth but also a new attitude towards leisure

from the comfort of the home. But gramophones were also successful in popular markets, where they were used to attract customers. The traditional

noise which inevitably accompanied popular events invited the gramophone which, to the delight of the many, produced loudness and continuously, unlike the gong and the firecracker. Another differential use is the syringe, deployed as a symbol of medical chic

use of the effortlessly example of by the rich

in Shanghai, but first used by the poor to inject cheap morphine when opium

was no longer affordable on the black market. Social practices or material uses

could flow up the social ladder rather than merely trickle down, as the case of the syringe shows. The first films were shown in popular entertainment

grounds, including fairs and brothels. More formal cinemas only opened their doors a few years later, as the craze for moving pictures caught on. Differential use of an array of objects shows that new objects were not

confined to a few circles of ‘modernised’ professionals in the coastal cities. The ‘dual economy’ thesis, according to which the rural economy remained unaffected by global flows while capitalism thrived in the cities along the coast, has long been discarded by economic historians,’ although it still holds sway amonga number of China scholars who equate ‘modernity’ with ‘urban’. Yet already before the collapse of the empire the majority of yarn used by

peasant households to make their clothes was machine-made. Several decades

later the market in impoverished Zouping, Shandong province, offered hun-

dreds of items from the factories in Qingdao, Shanghai, Tianjin, Japan, Europe and the United States. Another example we have seen is Zhonghechang, a small market town of 15,000 farmers in rural Sichuan, where on market days

simple stalls offered an infinity of new goods by the 1940s, from soap, towels, cream, powder and rouge to spectacles—not counting a dozen shops dealing

exclusively in luxury goods.

Since Shanghai has been promoted by the Chinese Communist Party as

an alternative to colonial Hong Kong, not a few historians have followed

suit by reducing ‘modernity’ to ‘Shanghai’: for every hundred articles on the history of Shanghai there is one on Wuxi, the third most industrialised city in China in the 1930s with tens of thousands of factory workers. The equivalent

would be to have throngs of historians from the People’s Republic of China

write on the modern history of London while ignoring the significance of 264

Conclusion Manchester. As this book illustrates, cities like Tianjin, Wuhan

and Canton

were huge accretions of material goods with electric lamps, metalled roads, stone houses, copper wires, running water, glass windows and soaring sky-

scrapers. According to Olga Lang, even distant cities like Lanzhou, far away in Gansu province along the old Silk Road, had libraries, power plants, electric light, flour mills, soap factories, asphalted roads, neon lights, telegraph and telephone installations, and modern schools, colleges, hospitals and hotels: half of Russian cities in the mid-century did not even have a library.* The extraordinary complexity of material culture, produced by endless acts of creative appropriation, can hardly be explained in terms of ‘hybridity’. As we have shown, the notion of the ‘hybrid’ fails to take into account the perspectives of historical agents, who did not necessarily see a clash in the juxtaposition of different objects. In south Fujian and east Guangdong osten-

tatious buildings called ‘foreign houses’ were put up by returned emigrants

as visual evidence of economic success: these dwellings not only gave material

form to the social status of their owners but also incorporated their social

cosmologies, leading to a range of subtle variations in design, layout and

placement which departed from the ‘foreign houses’ from which inspiration

was sought. The interiors happily mixed foreign and local, since few migrants believed that there was anything odd about having traditional landscape paintings, calligraphy scrolls and door leaves hanging next to kitsch oil paintings and modern advertisements. Old and new continuously interacted in ways which may have seemed incongruous to outsiders but appeared perfectly natural to local people. Ordinary people often marvelled at things new such as the camera and the

bicycle, and sometimes even viewed them as magic objects: the attribution of magical qualities to material objects was part of a social cosmology which

animated things with spiritual value.A sense of enchantment characterised the relationship between people and goods, one which is still to be found as one

walks through popular markets in many parts of the world today. In modern

China the ticking of clocks delighted myriads of people, while millions were

fascinated by electricity. To a country which made an abundant display of

lanterns carried on bamboo poles at traditional festivals and important social occasions, abundant electric bulbs seemed both propitious and decorous. The

sources are replete with examples of wealthy merchants and ordinary farmers

marvelling at mechanical objects as if they were animate, whether it was the imposing sight ofa huge locomotive steaming by or the simple switching on

of a light to expel darkness. Exuberance and enchantment in material goods

were widespread, and consumers appeared to spend—when they could— with less guilt and ambivalence than their counterparts in Europe and the 265

Conclusion United States, an observation that remains today. For many in modern China

machinery stood for modernity: intricate and progressive, but also desirable and attractive, the sewing machine and the portable ginning machine had

already found easy acceptance by the end of the nineteenth century. There was also fascination with the machine at the top of the social ladder. Ba Jin

happily declared in 1933: ‘I love machines and I love so-called material civilization. Machines are full of movement, full of warm energy, full of speed and strength.* Even Mao Dun, a writer with communist sympathies, described machinery as ‘beautiful’.

In contrast to Japan, often seen as the spearhead of modernity outside

Europe and the United States, it is striking how rapidly the foreign in China

has been domesticated to blend into the local, so much so that both have often

become indistinguishable from each other: the popular expression zhongxi hebi, meaning ‘integrating Chinese and Western elements’, had positive con-

notations. In Japan a division between ‘Japanese’ (wa) and ‘non-Japanese’ (yo)

objects is even reflected in everyday language, with two syllabaries commonly

in use—katakana is specifically devoted to the transliteration of non-Japanese terms while hiragana is used for Japanese words. Rooms with carpet, chairs and

sofa, called yoshitsu, can coexist in the same house with a tatami-covered room with futon, called washitzu.The salience of this division often surprises outsiders, as even rice served in ‘foreign’ restaurants is referred to as raisu (written in

katakana) while the same rice served in a local dining place is called gohan (written in hiragana). Boundaries between ‘Japanese’ and ‘non-Japanese’ are of course continuously shifting, as sukiyaki served by kimono-clad waitresses to guests sitting on tatami was a dish borrowed from meat-eating Europeans, but

they are constantly policed, vigilantly observed and widely acknowledged.’ Few

comparable barriers have been erected in China, even if a sense of distinction between ‘Chinese’ and ‘non-Chinese’ is widespread: rather than contain the foreign, this distinction contributes to its spread,as local (t) is often perceived

as inferior and foreign (yang) as superior.

‘We could be bold and take this observation a step further. We noted in the introduction how the notion of the gift, tied up with a profoundly Christian

notion of the spiritual, may not be adequate when looking at the complex ways in which people relate to things outside Europe and the United States.

In a pathbreaking study of garage sales Gretchen Herrmann has shown how

important the personal memories of objects can be for buyers and sellers in the United States. Not only do objects become part of an extended sense of

self (‘this was my dress’), as sellers are concerned about placing their posses—

sions in good homes, but buyers too purchase goods with a similar view in mind: they will assure the sellers that their pretty dress or juice blender will

266

Conclusion be appreciated and treated with due care. The fact that the goods on offer

have been used and have a history as somebody else’s erstwhile possession is one of the principal attractions of the garage sale: ‘Such shoppers may prefer

garage sales to other outlets for secondhand goods such as rummage sales

or flea markets precisely because, in the former, they encounter the original owners of what they have bought and so can claim to be taking away something of the previous owners with their purchases.*

Similar trends can be found in Europe: the fashion editor of Elle magazine,

Maggie Alderson has a house in Hastings full of second-hand stuff, as she loves

the patina of age on things that have been used. She would even wear vintage

clothes if she could, although this proves difficult because the fabrics have become stiff and women have changed in shape over time.’ If secondhand markets are hard enough to find in China, where new is generally preferred

to old (except for a limited number of goods considered to be collectables), the world of garage sales, including the notion that there is a sympathetic law of magical contagion by which objects transmit the relative success of their

previous owners, seems even more alien outside ofa Christian context. The

newness of things, as Adrian Forty has pointed out, is often resisted by socie-

ties in which a free market has taken hold."A much more pragmatic attitude

towards material goods seems to prevail in China, where most consumers buy the new and reject the old without too many misgivings. Even deities de-

mand material rewards such as temples, although when they lose their powers

they too altars are low cost objects."'

can be discarded by their devotees, while statues displayed on family periodically thrown out, if the spirits have departed, thanks to the of carving gods: a very pragmatic attitude thus extends even to sacred If an intrinsic element of a rapidly changing world is the capacity to

overcome resistance to novelty, could China be more in tune with modernity

than Europe?

267

[pp. 1-4]

NOTES INTRODUCTION

Johan Gunnar Andersson, The dragon and the foreign devils, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1928, pp. 242-3. Min-ch'ien Tuk Zug Tyau, China awakened, New York: Macmillan, 1922, p. 85 E. R. Hughes, The invasion of China by the Westem world, London: Black, 1937, pp. 282 and 287. Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, power, history: Latin America’s material culture, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 150-64. See two delightful books, namely Louis Frédéric, La vie quotidienne au Japon au début de l’ére moderne (1868-1912), Paris: Hachette, 1984, and

6

Edward

Seiden-

sticker, Low city, high city: Tokyo from Edo to the earthquake, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Luigi Barzini, The Europeans, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983, pp. 35-41; Luigi Barzini, The Italians, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964, p. 59. Virgil Kit-yiu Ho, ‘The limits of hatred: Popular attitudes towards the West in republican Canton’, Far Eastern History, no. 2 (1991), pp. 87-104.

Maurizio Peleggi, Lords of things: The fashioning of the Siamese monarchy’s modern image, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002, pp. 21-2

Xu Shiying, Xu Shiying huiyilu (Reminiscences of Xu Shiying), Taipei: Renjianshi yuekanshe, 1966, p. 2.

Ww J.G. Cormack, Everyday customs in China, Edinburgh: Moray Press, 1935. " Elisabeth Enders, Swinging lanterns, New York: Appleton, 1923, p. 83.

Gretchen Mae Fitkin, The great river: The story of a voyage on the Yangtze Kiang, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1922, pp. 62-4; Elisabeth Enders, Temple bells and silver sails, New York: Appleton, 1925, p. 243. Hanchao Lu, Beyond the neon lights: Everyday Shanghai in the early twentieth century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999; see also Wang Di, Street culture in Chengdu: Public space, urban commoners, and local politics, 1870-1930, Stanford

14 15 16

University Press, 2003.

Richard P. Dobson, China cycle, London: Macmillan, 1946, p. 173.

Albert Gervais, A surgeon's China, London: Hamish

Hamilton, 1934, p. 11.

Hallett E. Abend, My life in China, 1926-1941, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943, p.7 269

[pp. 4-7]

Notes

17 C.LTinling, Bits of China: Travel-sketches in the Orient, New York: Fleming Revell, 1925, pp. 13 and 92.

18 Gerald Yorke, China changes, London: Jonathan Cape, 1935, p. 157. 19 Liu Shengmu, Changchuzhai suibi (Jottings from the carambola studio), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998, pp. 593-4. 20 William Martin, Understand the Chinese, London: Methuen, 1934,p. 11. 21 Peter Fleming, One’s company:A journey to China, London: Jonathan Cape, 1934, p. 300.

22 Nathaniel Peffer, China: The collapse of a civilization, London: Routledge, 1931, pp. 124, 181 and 221. 23. Ibid, p. 123. 24 Ibid., pp. 181 and 221 25 A. E. Grantham, Pencil speakings from Peking, London: Allen and Unwin, 1918, pp. 26-7. 26 A good example is Robert J.C. Young, Colonial desire: Hybridity in theory, culture and race, London: Routledge, 1995. The reduction of modern China to a ‘hybrid’ in which ‘Western’ and ‘Chinese’ mixed is so widespread that it would be unfair to provide specific examples; see, however, Jonathan Hay, Painting and the built environment in late-nineteenth-century Shanghai’ in Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G. Smith (eds), Chinese art, modern expressions, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001, pp. 60-101. 27, Jacqueline Duvernay-Bolens, ‘Un trickster chez les naturalistes. La notion d'hybride’, Ethnologie Francaise, 23, no. 1 (Jan.—March 1993), pp. 144-52; for an overview of recent uses of the notion of hybridity see Deborah A. Kapchan and PaulineT. Strong, ‘Theorizing the hybrid’, Journal of American Folklore, 112, no. 445 (summer 1999), pp. 239-53. 28 Keith Whinnom, ‘Linguistic hybridization and the special case of pidgins and creoles' in Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages, Cambridge University Press, 1971, p.91, quoted in Kingsley Bolton, Chinese Englishes:A sociolinguistic history, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 190. 29 An excellent study which examines the continuing link between racial theory and the study of language is Christopher M. Hutton, Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-tongue fascism, race and the science of language, London: Routledge, 1999. 30 Kenneth Lo, The feast of my life, London: Doubleday, 1993, p. 54. 31 Serge Latouche, The Westernization of the world, London: Polity, 1995; see also Tony Spybey, Globalization and world society, London: Polity, 1995. 32, Theodore H. von Laue, The world revolution of Westernization: The twentieth century in global perspective, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 43-5. 33. Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz, ‘The individuation of tradition in a Papua New Guinean modernity’, American Anthropologist, 98, no. 1 (March 1996), pp. 114-26; see also the pioneering work by Daniel Miller, Modernity: An ethnographic approach, Oxford: Berg, 1994. 270

Notes 4

[pp.7-11]

Marshall Sahlins,‘On the anthropology of modernity; or, some triumphs of cul-

ture over despondency theory’ in Antony Hooper (ed.), Culture and sustainable development in the Pacific, Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, 2000.

Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard and Pierre Mayol, The practice of everyday life: Living and cooking, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998, vol. 2, p. 256. 36 Michel de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984, p. xiii. 7 Kwame Anthony Appiah, In my father’s house: Africa in the philosophy of culture, Ox~ ford University Press, 1992, p. 9. a Ibid., p. 157. 39 Liang Zhangju, Tii’an suibi (Notes from a withdrawn hut), juan 7, p. 8a, repr. in Biji xiaoshuo daguan, Taipei: Xinxing shuju, 1977, vol. 1, p. 172. 40

Thorstein Veblen, The theory of the leisure class, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books,

4

For a critique see Jeffrey James, ‘Positional goods, conspicuous consumption

1998,

and the international demonstration effect reconsidered’ in Daniel Miller (ed.), Consumption: Critical concepts in the social sciences, vol. 3, Disciplinary approaches to

consumption, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 289-319. This interpretation is critically examined by Richard Wilk, ‘Consumer goods as dialogue about development’ in Daniel Miller (ed.), Consumption: Critical concepts in the social sciences, pp. 34-53. 43 Frank Dikétter, Lars Laamann and Zhou Xun, Narcotic culture:A history of drugs in China, London: Hurst; University of Chicago Press, 2004. 4 Colin Campbell, ‘Understanding traditional and modern patterns of consumption in eighteenth-century England:A character-action approach’ in John Brewer

and Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the world of goods, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 40-1.

Lorna Weatherill,“The meaning of consumer behaviour in late seventeenth- and

46

early cighteenth-century England’ in Brewer and Porter, Consumption and the world of goods, p. 208.

‘Amanda Vickery, ‘Women and the world of goods: A Lancashire consumer and

her possessions, 1751-81’ in Brewer and Porter, Consumption and the world of goods, pp. 275-6. 7 Joy Parr, Domestic goods: The material, the moral, and the economic in the postwar years, University of Toronto Press, 1999, pp. 5-6. 8 Vickery,*Women and the world of goods’ in Brewer and Porter, Consumption and the world of goods, p. 274. 49

30

The terms ‘user’ and ‘consumer’, in this book, describe individuals as distinct

from the social spaces where transactions take place, namely the market, contrary to common usage in economic theory.

See, for instance, Yeh Wen-hsin, ‘Shanghai modernity: Commerce and culture in a republican city’, China Quarterly, no. 150 (June 1997), pp.375~94; Leo Ou-fan Lee,

271

[pp. 12-16]

51

Notes

“The cultural construction of modernity in urban Shanghai: Some preliminary explorations’ in Yeh Wen-hsin (ed.), Becoming Chinese: Passages to modernity and beyond, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000, pp. 31-61. Daniel Miller, ‘Appropriating the state on the council estate’ in Daniel Miller (ed.), Consumption: Critical concepts in the social sciences, vol. 4, Objects, subjects and mediations in consumption, London: Routledge, 2001, p. 123. Marshall Berman, All that is solid melts into air: The experience of modernity, London: Verso, 1982; Janet Ng, The experience of modernity: Chinese autobiography of the early twentieth century, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Paul M. Graves-Brown, ‘Introduction’ in Paul M. Graves-Brown (ed.), Matter, materiality and modern culture, London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 1-9; see also Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The social life of things, Cambridge University Press, 1988. Igor Kopytoff, The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as process’ in Daniel Miller (ed.), Consumption: Critical concepts in the social sciences, vol. 3, Disciplinary approaches to consumption, London: Routledge, 2001, p. 23. See also Arjun Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value’, Appadurai (ed.), The social life of things, pp. 3-63. James Carrier, Gifts and commodities: Exchange and Western capitalism since 1700, London: Routledge, 1995, p. 110; see also Nicholas Thomas, Entangled objects: Exchange, material culture, and colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, and Arjun Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value’ in Appadurai (ed.), The social life of things, pp. 6-16. Mark Osteen, ‘Gift or commodity?’ in Mark Osteen (ed.), The question of the gift: Essays across disciplines, London: Routledge, 2002, p. 235. Don Ihde, ‘The experience of technology: Human-machine relations’, Cultural Hermeneutics, 2, no. 3 (Nov. 1974), pp. 267~79. J. Dyer Ball, The Chinese at home, London: Religious Tract Society, 1911, p. 240; C.R. Boxer (ed.), South China in the sixteenth century: Being the narratives of Galeote

39

6 61 62

wy r

63

Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, and Fr, Martin de Rada, London: Hakluyt Society, 1953, p. 120. Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko and Robert Gardella (eds), Contract and property in early modern China, Stanford University Press, 2004; see also Valerie Hansen, Negotiating daily life in traditional China: How ordinary people used contracts, 600-1400, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Guomin zike tushuo (Citizen's illustrated glossary), Shanghai: Huiwentang, 1915. A sense of magic and enchantment was also common in early modern Europe; see Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic: Studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.

Don J. Cohn, personal communication, 20 September 2004; Don Cohn has bought tens of thousands of illustrated children’s books in China for the Cotsen Children’s Library; see his Virtue by design: Ilustrated Chinese children’s books from the Cotsen Children’s Library, Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Occasional Press, 2000. Keith G. Stevens, personal communication, 10 March 2004. Keith Stevens has

Notes

[pp. 16-25]

spent decades chasing the gods, rescuing discarded deities from temples in most

regions of China and Southeast Asia; see Keith G. Stevens, Chinese Gods: The un-

ot

seen world of spirits and demons, London: Collins and Brown, 1997. This example was given to me by Hsiung Ping-chen, whose study of children in imperial China touches on many aspects of material culture; see Hsiung Ping-

chen, Youyou: Chuantong Zhongguo de giangbao zhi dao (The care of infants in traditional China), Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1995. 65 This was observed by Sarah P. Conger, Letters from China, with particular reference to the Empress Dowager and the women of China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909, p.71, 66

Valerie Hansen, Changing gods in medieval China, 1127-1276, Princeton Univer-

67

Keith G. Stevens, personal communication,

sity Press, 1990, p. 161.

10 March 2004; see also Stephan

Feuchtwang, Popular religion in China: The imperial metaphor, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2000.

Bauer, Goods, power, history, p. xv. Lou Xuexi, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang (Conditions of industry and commerce in Beijing), Beijing: Beiping shi shehuiju, 1932. 70 Fei Hsiao-tung and Chang Chih-i, Earthbound China:A study of rural economy in Yunnan, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948, p. 85. 7 Frances Wood, No dogs and not many Chinese: Treaty port life in China, 1843-1943, London: John Murray, 1998. E.J. Dingle, Across China on foot: Life in the interior and the reform movement, Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1911, pp. 217-25. 73 Jing’an, ‘Chengdu zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Chengdu) in Yang Xie et al., 68 69

Chengdu zhuzhici (Chengdu bamboo verses), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chuban-

14

she, 1982,

p. 197.

On archives for the republican period, see Frank Dikétter, Crime, punishment and

the prison in modern China, London: Hurst; New York: Columbia University Press,

8

2002, pp. 18-19. T. H. Breen, ‘The meaning of things: Interpreting the consumer economy in

the eighteenth century’ in Brewer and Porter, Consumption and the world of goods,

76

p.251.

Thomas Schlereth, Cultural history and material culture: Everyday life, landscapes, mu-

seums, Charlottesville, VA: University Press ofVirginia, 1992, p. 89. CHAPTER

TWO

For instance Maxine Berg,‘Asian luxuries and the making of the European consumer revolution’ in Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, Luxury in the eighteenth century: Debates, desires and delectable goods, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003, pp. 228-9.

Edward H. Schafer, The golden peaches of Samarkand, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1963, p. 28 273

[pp. 26-8] 3

Notes

John Kieschnick, The impact of Buddhism on Chinese material culture, Princeton

University Press, 2003, pp. 222-75.

John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig, East Asia: Tradition

and transformation, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1973,p. 178. Michael Greenberg, British trade and the opening of China 1800-42, Cambridge University Press, 1951, p. 4; a more recent but awkward translation appears in

James Hevia, Cherishing men from afar: Qing guest ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995, p. 188.

See, for instance, Rhoads Murphey, The treaty ports and China's modernization”

in Mark Elvin and G. William Skinner (eds), The Chinese city between two worlds,

Stanford University Press, 1974, pp. 17-71. These three approaches are reviewed

in Gary G. Hamilton, ‘Chinese consumption of foreign commodities:A compar-

ative perspective’, American Sociological Review, 42, no. 4 (Dec. 1977), pp. 877-91;

see also Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence: Europe, China, and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton University Press, 2000. Liang Zhangju, Tii’an suibi (Notes from a withdrawn hut), juan 7, pp. 78a, repr.

in Biji xiaoshuo daguan, Taipei: Xinxing shuju, 1977, vol. 1, p. 172. Quoted in Liang, Tui’an suibi, vol. 1, p. 172.

10 nT 12

Ibid., vol. 1, p. 173.

Chen Zuolin, Yangzi xianzhao’ (Omens in foreign script) in Jinling suozhi (Notes on the Nanjing region), Nanjing: Shizhuzhai yinben, 1963, part 2, vol. 5, section 1,p. 10.

Duan Guangging, Jinghu zizhuan nianpu (Autobiography), Beijing: Zhonghua

shuju, 1960, p. 103.

Qu Dajun, Guangdong xinyu (New words on Guangdong), Beijing: Zhonghua

shuju, 1985, pp. 37 and 432.

13 Qian Yikai, Linghai jianwen (Record of a visit to the south), Canton: Guangdong

gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 1992, p. 54.

14

‘Wang Shizhen, Chibei outan (Random notes from the north of the pond), Beijing:

15

Wilt L. Idema, ‘Cannon, clocks and clever monkeys: Europeana, Europeans and

Zhonghua shuju, 1982, pp. 516-17 and 631.

Europe in some early Ch’ing novels’ in E. B.Vermeer (ed.), Development and decline of Fukien province in the 17th and 18th centuries, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990,p. 466. 16 Cao Xuegin, Hongloumeng (Dream of the red chamber), Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1982, p. 45; see also Fang Hao, ‘Cong Hongloumeng suo ji Xiyang wupin kao gushi de beijing’ (An analysis on the narrative background based on Western objects as recorded in the Dream of the Red Chamber), Shixue jikan, 1 7 18 19

(1969), pp. 117-42.

Cao, Hongloumeng, p. 573. Ibid., pp. 188, 750 and 1311. Yang Qiqiao, Jiekai Yongzheng huangdi yinmi de miansha (Tearing away the secret mask of the Yongzheng emperor), Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2000, p.215

274

Notes

(pp. 28-31]

20 Jonathan D. Spence, ‘The dialogue of Chinese science’ in Chinese roundabout:

Essays in history and culture, New York: W.W. Norton, 1992, p. 151. 2 J. L. Cranmer-Byng, An embassy to China: Being the journal kept by Lord Macartney during his embassy to the emperor Ch’ien-lung, 1793-1794, London: Longmans, 1962, pp. 125, 261 and 355. Katharine A. Carl, With the empress dowager of China, New York: Century, 1907, pp. 36-7 and 185-6. 23 George N. Kates, The years that were fat: The last of old China, Cambridge, MA: M.LT. Press, 1967, pp. 197-200; see also Geremie Barmé, The garden of perfect 24

brightness: A life in ruins, Canberra: Australian National University, 1996.

T’ien-ts¢ Chang, Sino-Portuguese trade from 1514 to 1644:A synthesis of Portuguese

and Chinese sources, New York: A.M.S. Press, 1973, pp. 62-3. Louis Dermigny, La Chine et I’Occident. Le commerce 4 Canton au XVIIle siécle, 1719-1833, Paris: S.E.V.PE.N., 1964, vol. 2, pp. 695-723; opium and its many uses are examined in Frank Dikétter, Lars Laamann and Zhou Xun, Narcotic

culture:A history of drugs in China, London: Hurst; University of Chicago Press, 26 27 28

2004, William Milburn, Oriental commerce, London: Black, Parry and Co., 1813, vol. 2,

p.479. Dermigny, La Chine et I’ Occident, vol. 3, pp. 1237-40.

Hosea B. Morse, The chronicles of the East India Company: Trading to China 16351834, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926, vol. 2, pp. 262-3.

Morse, The chronicles of the East India Company, vol. 2, p. 363. Li Zhangli, Wan Qing Shanghai shehui de biangian (Social change in Shanghai during the late Qing), Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 2002, pp. 52-3. 3 Morse, The chronicles of the East India Company, vol. 2, p. 278. 32 Ng Chin-keong, Trade and society: The Amoy network on the China coast 16831735, Singapore University Press, 1983, p. 169. 29 30

33

34 35 36 37

Among recent revisionist studies which emphasise the degree of openness of

the Qing to maritime trade is Huang Guosheng, Yapian zhanzheng qian de dongnan sisheng haiguan (Customs in China’s four southeastern provinces before the Opium War), Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 2000.

Morse, The chronicles of the East India Company, vol. 2, p. 28. Greenberg, British trade and the opening of China 1800-42, p. 87. Zhaolian, Xiaoting zalu (Various notes from the whistling pavilion), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980, pp. 468-9. Liang Zhangju, Langji congtan (Collected notes on marks left behind by the

waves), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981, p. 390.

38 Qian Yong, Liiyuan conghua (Notes from the garden of footsteps), Beijing: Zhong39 40

hua shuju, 1979, p. 321.

Alfred Chapuis, La montre chinoise, Geneva: Slatkine, 1983, pp. 41-4.

George Leonard Staunton, An authentic account of an embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, London: Nicol, 1797, vol. 2, pp. 340-1.

[pp. 31-6] 4 42 43 44

46

47 48

49 50

Notes

Kates, The years that were fat, pp. 197-200.

Hamilton, ‘Chinese consumption of foreign commodities’, p. 882. Matthew Turner, Made in Hong Kong: A history of export design in Hong Kong, 1900-1960, Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1988, pp. 7-8. Peter Herbert and Nancy Schiffer (eds), Chinese export porcelain: Standard patterns and forms, 1780 to 1880, Exton, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 1975; Thomas V. Litzenburg, Chinese export porcelain in the Reeves Center Collection, London: Third Millennium, 2003. Jennifer W. Cushman, Fields from the sea: Chinese junk trade with Siam during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Ithaca, NY: S.E.A.P,, 1993, pp. 86-8; Sarasin Viraphol, Tribute and profit: Sino-Siamese trade, 1652-1853, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 190. A similar story could be told for other regions in Asia: statues of Ganesha displayed during the Hindu festival of Diwali in Uttar Pradesh are now imported from China, where local factories make them from brightly coloured plastics after photographs of the idols sent by merchants from India; shops in India are also awash with other goods, from umbrellas, toys and locks to fancy light bulbs in eye-catching designs; see ‘Chinese-made icons swamp Hindu festival’, Sunday Morning Post,7 Nov. 2004, p. 3.

Turner, Made in Hong Kong, pp. 7-8. Imperial Maritime Customs, Catalogue of the collection of Chinese exhibits at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St Louis 1904, St Louis, LA: Shallcross Print, 1904, p. 347; curiously, not a word is said about export commodities displayed by the Qing at world fairs in Susan Fernsebner,‘ Material modernities: China’s participa~ tion in world’ fairs and expositions’, doctoral dissertation, University of California at San Diego, 2002. S. W. Williams, The Chinese commercial guide, orig, 1863, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1966. John F Davis, China:A general description of that empire and its inhabitants, London: John Murray, 1857, vol. 1, p. 41, quoted in Cushman, Fields from the sea, p. 80. Mark Elvin, The pattern of the Chinese past, London: Methuen, 1973, p. 285. D.F Lunsingh Scheurleer, Chinese export porcelain, London: Faber and Faber, 1974, pp. 24-8. Lothar Ledderose, Ten thousand things: Module and mass production in Chinese art, Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 1. Keith G. Stevens, personal communication, 10 March 2004. Guo Yunjing, Qingdai shangye shi (A history of commerce during the Qing),

56 37

276

Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe, 1994, p. 100. Ng, Trade and society, pp. 119 and 136. Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, power, history: Latin America’s material culture, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 132-3. On the quest for tariff sovereignty see Stanley F Wright, China's struggle for tariff autonomy, 1843-1938, Cambridge University Press, 1938.

Notes

[pp. 36-40}

Thomas Rawski, Economic growth in prewar China, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989, pp. 5-7. Ibid., pp. 6-8.

Jack Gray, Rebellions and revolutions: China from the 1800s to the 1980s, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 168.

The silver teapot was in turn appropriated in China from the late nineteenth

century onwards in well-to-do circles, but with a few important modifications: rather than manufacture the entire teapot out of silver, an outer silver body with

a lid was constructed within which the porcelain teapot could be placed, both handle and spout protruding form the contraption, thus maintaining the advan-

tage of china in holding heat and benefiting from silver for display; they are still used in the China Club in Hong Kong.

63 John Styles, ‘Product innovation in early modern London’, Past and Present, 64

no. 168 (Aug. 2000), pp. 124-69.

Miles Orvell, The real thing: Imitation and authenticity in American culture, 18801940, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989, p. 49.

Eugen Wolf, Meine Wanderungen, Im Innern Chinas, Stuttgart, Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1901, p. 260. An introduction to its aesthetic and technique, London: 66 Chiang Yee, Chinese calligraphy: Methuen, 1938, pp. 190-1. 07 Qian, Liyuan conghua, p. 51. 68 See, for instance, Duan, Jinghu zizhuan nianpu, p. 102, Chen Qiyuan, Yongxianzhai biji (Notes from the Yongxian studio), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989, p. 273, Liang, Langji congtan, p. 15. 65

69

Ting-yee Kuo and Kwang-ching Liu, ‘Self-strengthening: The pursuit ofWestern

technology’ in Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds), The Cambridge history of China, Cambridge University Press, 1978, vol. 10, part 1, pp. 520-4; the technological sophistication of these projects is highlighted in Benjamin A. Elman, On their own terms: Science in China, 1550-1900, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-

n 72 73 74 5 76

Ibid.,p. 15.

Karl Gerth, China made: Consumer culture and the creation of the nation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

wvS q

m0

versity Press, 2005. Zheng Guanying, Shengshi weiyan (Warnings to a prosperous age), Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe, 1994, p. 239. Ibid., p. 241. Chen Chi, Chen Chi ji (Collected writings of Chen Chi), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997, p. 224. Su Shaobing, Shanzhongj, quoted in Pan Junxiang, Zhongguo jindai guohuo yundong (The national goods movement in modern China), Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1996, p. 3. Pan, Zhongguo jindai guohuo yundong, p. 8.

[pp. 51-4]

Notes CHAPTER

THREE

Jean Dickinson, Observations on the social life ofa north China village, Beijing: Department ofSociology, Yenching University, 1924, p. 9. Tu Shipin, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Zhongguo tushushe, 1948, vol. 3, p. 91.

Hu Piyun, Jiujing shizhao (Historical photographs of old Beijing), Beijing: Beijing

chubanshe, 1997, p. 264. John Logan, China old and new, Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, 1982,

p-35.

‘Report on the trade of Ningpo, for the year 1868’, Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1868, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1869, p.46.

Imperial Maritime Customs, Port catalogues of the Chinese customs’ collection at the Austro-Hungarian Universal Exhibition, Vienna, 1873, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime

Customs Press, 1873, p. 103.

‘Report on the trade of Chinkiang, for the year 1869’, Report on the trade at the

ports of China for the year 1869, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1870, p. 39.

‘Report on the trade of Chefoo, for the year 1880’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1880, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1881, p. 29.

“Report on the trade of Shanghai, for the year 1891°, Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1891, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1892, 10 ul 12 13 14 15

p-210.

Fu Chongju, Chengdu tonglan (Guide to Chengdu), orig. 1909, Chengdu: Bashu

shushe, 1987, vol. 2, pp. 130-1.

RudolfP. Hommel, China at work, New York: John Day, 1937, p. 15.

‘Report on the trade of Samshui, for the year 1902’, Report on the trade at the ports of

China for the year 1902, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1903,p. 720. W.E. Geil, Yankee on the Yangtze, New York: Armstrong, 1904, p. 106.

W.G. Sewell, The land and life of China, London: Edinburgh House Press, 1945, p38. “Report on the trade of Kiungchow, for the year 1887’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1887, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1888, p. 448.

Hua Mengyang and Zhang Hongjie, Lao Beijingren de shenghuo (The daily life of

people in old Beijing), Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 2001, pp. 262-3.

Tuhua ribao (Pictorial daily), Shanghai: Shanghai guji shudian, 1999, vol. 2, p. 152. 18 Mao Zedong, Report from Xunwu, Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 108-9. 7

Yang Ching-kun,A north China local market economy:A summary of a study of periodic markets in Chowping Hsien, Shantung, New York: Institute of Pacific Relations,

1944; see also the seminal work of G. William Skinner, ‘Cities and the hierarchy

280

Notes

[pp. 44-7]

97 Gerth, China made, pp. 329 and 356. 98 Beiyang huabao, no. 277 (2 Feb. 1929). 99 Gary G. Hamilton and Chi-kong Lai, ‘Consumerism without capitalism: Con-

sumption and brand names in late imperial China’ in H. J. Rutz and B, S, Orlove

(eds), The social economy of consumption, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989, pp. 253-79. 100 ‘Report on the trade of Kiungchow, for the year 1882’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1882, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1883, p.356;Report on the trade of Kiungchow, for the year 1883’, Report on the 101

trade at the ports of China for the year 1883, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1884, p. 360. ‘Report on the trade of Pakhoi, for the year 1882’, Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1882, p. 370.

102 Carl Crow, Four hundred million customers, New York:

p17.

Halcyon

House,

1937,

103 Franklin H. Smith, China and Indo-China markets for American lumber, Washington,

DC: Government Printing Office, 1915, p. 24.

104 Julean Arnold, Far Eastern markets for American hardware, Washington, DC: Gov-

ernment Printing Office, 1919,p. 31.

105 J. W. Sanger, Advertising methods in Japan, China, and the Philippines, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1921, p. 66.

106 Ralph M. Odell, Cotton goods in China, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1916, pp. 77-80.

107 ‘Report on the trade of Chefoo, for the year 1902’, Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1902, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1903, p.93.

108 ‘A history of the external trade of China, 1834-81’, Decennial reports, 1922-31,

p.115.

109 Charles Denby, China and her people: Being the observations, reminiscences, and conclusions of an American diplomat, Boston, MA: Page, 1906, vol. 2, p. 37.

110 Arnold, Far Eastern markets for American hardware, p. 96.

111 Georg Wegener, Im innersten China. Eine Forschungsreise durch die Provinz Kiang-si, Berlin: August Scherl, 1926,p. 119. 112 Tom O. Jones, Motor vehicles in Japan, China, and Hawaii, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918, p. 49. 113 ‘Report on foreign trade for the year 1914’, Trade Reports, 1914, pp. 4-5.

114 115. 116 117

Crow, Four hundred million customers, p. 271. Ibid., p. 274. ‘Canton’, Decennial reports, 1922-31, p. 188. Ministry of Trade, China industrial handbooks: Kiangsu, Shanghai: Bureau of Fo-

reign Trade, 1933, p. 337. 118 Turner, Made in Hong Kong, p. 7.

279

[pp. 51-4]

Notes CHAPTER

THREE

Jean Dickinson, Observations on the social life of a north China village, Beijing: Department ofSociology, Yenching University, 1924, p. 9.

Tu Shipin, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Zhongguo tushushe, 1948, vol. 3, p. 91.

Hu Piyun, fiujing shizhao (Historical photographs of old Beijing), Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1997, p. 264.

John Logan, China old and new, Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, 1982, p.35.

‘Report on the trade of Ningpo, for the year 1868’, Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1868, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1869, p. 46.

Imperial Maritime Customs, Port catalogues of the Chinese customs’ collection at the

Austro-Hungarian Universal Exhibition, Vienna, 1873, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs Press, 1873, p. 103. ‘Report on the trade of Chinkiang, for the year 1869", Report on the trade at the

ports of China for the year 1869, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1870, p. 39. “Report on the trade of Chefoo, for the year 1880’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1880, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1881, p. 29.

“Report on the trade of Shanghai, for the year 1891", Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1891, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1892, p.210. 10 Fu Chongju, Chengdu tonglan (Guide to Chengdu), orig. 1909, Chengdu: Bashu " 12 13 14

shushe, 1987, vol. 2, pp. 130-1.

RudolfP. Hommel, China at work, New York: John Day, 1937, p. 15.

“Report on the trade of Samshui, for the year 1902’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1902, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1903, p. 720.

W.E. Geil, Yankee on the Yangtze, New York: Armstrong, 1904, p. 106.

W.G. Sewell, The land and life of China, London: Edinburgh House Press, 1945, p.38. 15 ‘Report on the trade of Kiungchow, for the year 1887’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1887, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 16

1888, p. 448. Hua Mengyang and Zhang Hongjie, Lao Beijingren de shenghuo (The daily life of

people in old Beijing), Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 2001, pp. 262-3.

Tuhua ribao (Pictorial daily), Shanghai: Shanghai guji shudian, 1999, vol. 2, p. 152. 18 Mao Zedong, Report from Xunuu, Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 108-9. 7

Yang Ching-kun,A north China local market economy:A summary of a study of periodic

markets in Chowping Hsien, Shantung, New York: Institute of Pacific Relations,

1944; see also the seminal work of G. William Skinner, ‘Cities and the hierarchy

280,

Notes

(pp. 55-8]

of local systems’ in William Skinner (ed.), The city in late imperial China, Stanford

University Press, 1977, pp. 275-351; G. William Skinner, ‘Marketing and social

structure in rural China: Part I’, Journal of Asian Studies, 24, no. 1 (Nov. 1964), pp. 3-43; G. William Skinner, ‘Marketing and social structure in rural China: Part

II’, Journal of Asian Studies, 24, no. 2 (Feb. 1965), pp. 195-228; G. William Skinner,

20 aa 22 23 24

‘Marketing and social structure in rural China: Part III’, Journal of Asian Studies, 24, no. 3 (May 1965), pp. 363-99. Susan Naquin and Evelyn S, Rawski, Chinese society in the eighteenth century, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, pp. 83-8. Geil, Yankee on the Yangtze, p. 268. “Report on the trade of Szemao, for the year 1902’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1902, p. 842. Yang, A north China local market economy, pp. 26, 35-7. M.B.Treudley, The men and women of Chung Ho Ch'ang, Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971, p.95.

Kwan Man Bun, ‘Mapping the hinterland: Treaty ports and regional analysis in modern China’ in Gail Hershatter, Emily Honig, Jonathan N. Lipman and Ran-

dall Stross (eds), Remapping China: Fissures in historical terrain, Stanford University

26

Press, 1996, pp. 181-93.

“Report on the trade of Chefoo, for the year 1898’, Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1898, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1899, pp. 55-6. 27 Treudley, The men and women of Chung Ho Ch’ang, p. 42. 28

W.Y. Fullerton and C. E. Wilson, New China:A story of modern travel, London:

Morgan and Scott, 1910, p. 93. 29 ‘W. Barclay Parsons, ‘From the Yang-tse Kiang to the China Sea’, The Geographical Journal, vol. 19 (March 1902),p. 722. 30 W.E. Geil, Eighteen capitals of China, London: Constable, 1911, pp. 148 and 268; “Report on the trade of Changsha, for the year 1904’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1904, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 3 32 33 Rr

1905, p. 232. Geil, Yankee on the Yangtze, p. 89.

Fu, Chengdu tonglan, vol. 2, pp. 226-30.

Wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui (ed.), Xinhai geming huiyi lu (Reminiscences

about the revolution of 1911),

Beijing: Wenshi ziliao chubanshe, 1981, p. 366.

Francis H. Nichols, Through hidden Shensi, New York: Charles Scribner, 1902,

p.171. 35 Edward A. Ross, The changing Chinese, New York: Century, 1911, p. 279. 36 Dong Zhujun, Wode yige shiji (My century), Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1997, p.89. 7 Jermyn Chi-hung Lynn, Social life of the Chinese in Peking, Beijing: China Booksellers, 1928, pp. 83-8.

[pp. 58-61]

Notes

38 Wellington K. K. Chan, ‘Personal styles, cultural values, and management: The

Sincere and Wing On companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong 1900-1941" in Kerrie L. MacPherson

(ed.), Asian department stores, Richmond: Curzon, 1998,

pp. 66-7; see also Wellington K. K. Chan, ‘Selling goods and promoting a new commercial culture: The four premier department stores on Nanjing Road,

1917-1937"in Sherman Cochran (ed.), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial culture

in Shanghai, 1900-1945, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Programme, 1999, pp. 19-26, and Madeleine Yue Dong, Republican Beijing: The city and its histories, 1911-1937, University of California Press, 2003.

39 Shanghai baihuo gongsi (ed.), Shanghai jindai baihuo shangye shi (A business his-

tory of department stores in modern Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai shehui ke-

40

xueyuan, 1988, p. 13.

Wellington K. K. Chan, ‘Personal styles, cultural values, and management: The

Sincere and Wing On companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong 1900-1941’ in Kerrie L. MacPherson

(ed.), Asian department stores, Richmond: Curzon, 1998,

pp. 66-7. 41 Xianshi gongsi ershiwu zhou jiniance (Twenty-fifth anniversary of the Sincere Company), Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1924. 42. Yen Ching-hwang, Studies in modern overseas Chinese history, Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1995, p.213;see also Yen Ching-hwang,‘ Wing On and the Kwok Brothers:A case study of pre-war Chinese entrepreneurs’ in MacPherson, Asian department stores, pp. 47-65.

43. Shanghai shehui kexueyuan jingji yanjiusuo (ed.), Shanghai Yongan gongsi de chan-

sheng, fazhan he gaizao (The birth, development and reform of the Wing On

Company), Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1981, p. 27. 44 Shanghai baihuo gongsi, Shanghai jindai baihuo shangye shi, pp. 137-8. 45 Yen, Studies in modern overseas Chinese history, pp. 216-17. 46 Carl Crow, Handbook for China, orig. 1933, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 10.

47 H.A.Van Dorn, Tiventy years of the Chinese republic: Tivo decades of progress, New York: Knopf, 1932, pp. 282-3. 48 Yang Jiayou, Shanghai laofangzi de gushi (The history of old houses in Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1999, p. 278. 49 D.S. Hosie, Portrait of a Chinese lady, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929, pp. 172-5.

50

51

D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, p. 190.

Zhu Wushu, Jinshi chuanglianshu (Modern window dressing), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1925; Zhu Wushu, Chuanglianshu (Window dressing), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1930. 52 William Leach, ‘Strategists of display and the production of desire’ in Simon J. Bronner (ed.), Consuming visions, New York: W. W. Norton, 1989, pp. 102-3.

53 J. Dyer Ball, The Chinese at home, London: Religious Tract Society, 1911, pp. 282-5.

Notes 54 55

57 58

60 61 62 63 64 65

67 68

69 70 1 2

[pp. 61-6]

“Diandeng guancan’ (Electric lights shine brightly), Shenbao, 27 July 1882, p. 2. Maurice Dekobra, Confucius in a tail-coat: Ancient China in modern costume, London: Werner Laurie, 1935, pp. 152-3; an excellent article on recycling in Beijing is Madeleine Yue Dong, ‘Juggling bits: Tiangiao as republican Beijing's recycling center’, Modern China, 25, no, 3 (July 1999), pp. 303-42. Carl Crow, Four hundred million customers, New York: Halcyon House, 1937, pp. 74-5. Tuhua ribao, vol. 2, p. 152. ‘Shoumai zilaihuo kongxia’ (Collecting empty matchboxes), Shenbao, 18 Jan. 1878, p. 5; see also ‘Zhaoshou yangping’ (Collecting foreign bottles), Shenbao, 1 July 1876, p.6. Jianshe weiyuanhui diaocha Zhejiang jingji suo (ed.), Hangzhou shi jingji diaocha (Investigation into the economy of Hangzhou), Hangzhou: Jianshe weiyuanhui diaocha Zhejiang jingji suo, 1932, p. 446. Treudley, The men and women of Chung Ho Ch’ang, p. 98. Ball, The Chinese at home, p. 240. Xishen, ‘Feiwu liyong yu jiating shenghuo’ (Recycling and family life), Funii zazhi, 4,no. 12 (Dec. 1917), pp. 1-2. Cuizhen,‘ Huayangbu de feiwu liyong’ (Recycling printed cloth), Jiating zazhi, no.7 (1923),p. 1. “Wuzhi liyong’ (Make use of things), Funii yu jiating, 1,no. 5 (Dec. 1939), p. 210. “Qiyouting zuocheng de zizhilou’ (Use a petrol can to make a waste basket), Jiating, 3, no. 3 (Aug. 1938), p. 8. John Styles, ‘Product innovation in early modern London’, Past and Present, no. 168 (Aug. 2000), pp. 165-7. “Nanyang quanyehui shiwusuo tonggao ge chupinxiehui wuchanhui diyici yijianshu’ (Guidelines and suggestions for manufacturers and organisations wishing to enter the Nanyang exhibition), Shenbao, 6 Sept. 1909, 4:2. See ‘The Nanking Exhibition’, North China Herald, 25 Feb. 1910, p. 419; ‘The Nanyang Exhibition’, North China Herald, 3 June 1910, p. 529; ‘The Nanyang Exhibition’, North China Herald, 10 June 1910, p. 601-2;"The Nanyang Exhibition: China’ first great national show’, Far Eastern Review, 6, no. 4 (April 1910), pp. 503-7. *Gansheng wuchan zonghui zhi buzhi’ (Arrangements and decorations at the trade fair of Jiangxi province), Shenbao, 30 March 1910, 1:4. Pan Junxiang, Zhongguo jindai guohuo yundong (The national goods movement in modern China), Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1996, p. 16. ‘Wang Cheng-hua,‘In the name of “Chinese culture”: The Institute for Exhibiting Antiques in the 1910s’, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Sept. 2003. John S. Service, Golden inches: The China memoir of Grace Service, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989, pp. 109-10. 283

[pp. 66-9]

Notes

Ma Zhixiang and Zhang Henshui, Lao Beijing liixing zhinan: “Beijing liixing zhinan” chongpaiben (Travel guide for old Beijing: Revised edition of the ‘Beijing Travel Guide’), Beijing: Beijing yanshan chubanshe, 1997, pp. 190-1. 74 Gerth, China made, pp. 232-4. 7

78

For example Zhuang Yu, ‘Jingshi zhongxiao xuexiao chengji zhanlanhui jiliie’ Grief record of the Beijing Exhibition of Schools’ Achievements), Jiaoyu zazhi,

6, no. 3 (June 1914), pp. 6-8; for photographs of other exhibits which show the range of products on display, see fiaoyu zazhi,8, no. 11 (Nov. 1916), p. 161; Jiaoyu zazhi, 9, no. 2 (Feb. 1917), p. 35; Jiaoyu zazhi, 11, no. 5 (May 1919), p. 75; Jiaoyte zazhi, 4, no.6 (June 1912), pp. 110-12; Jiaoyu zazhi, 8, no. 6 (June 1917), p. 101; Jiaoyu zazhi, 6, no.3 (June 1914),p. 40. 76 Sifabu jianyusi (ed.), Jianyu chupin chenliechu chengli shimo ji (Record of the story

of the setting up of an exhibition hall for prisoners’ products), Beijing: Sifabu

7 78 79

80 81

jianyusi, 1921. Gerth, China made, pp. 237-9. ‘Lun Meiguo juxing saizhenhui shi’ (About the exposition in America), Shenbao, 9 Jan. 1902, p. 1. “Quanyehuichang zhi jianwenlu’ (Observations and news from the exhibition ground), Shenbao, 18 July 1910, 1:2,‘Quanyehui kaimuhou sizhi’ (Four reports on the industrial exhibition after the opening ceremony), Shenbao, 10 June 1910, 1:5, Nanyang quanyehui youji (Travel diary to the Nanyang industrial exhibition), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1910, 1:1, 2:4-14 and 23. Nanyang quanyehui youji, 1:1, 2:4~14. We lack a history of the graphic revolution, which was spread to many modest concerns in distant cities throughout the country by the use of small and portable

printing machines, including for instance in prisons.As a consequence of an uncritical reliance on communist sources which emphasise ‘capitalist production’

in Shanghai, this crucial point is overlooked in Christopher A. Reed, Gutenberg

in Shanghai: Chinese print capitalism, 1876-1937,Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2003.

D.K. Lieu, The growth and industrialization of Shanghai, Shanghai: China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1936, pp. 57-9. a3 See Ye Xiaoging, The Dianshizhai pictorial: Shanghai urban life, 1884-1898, Ann

Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003, and Barbara Mittler, A newspaper

for China? Power, identity, and change in Shanghai’s news media, 1872-1912, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 84 Wu Youru, Haishang baiyan tu (A hundred beauties of Shanghai), Changsha: Hunan meishu chubanshe, 1998, pp. 23, 32 and 80. On calendars, see the thoroughly researched book by Ellen Jokson Laing, Scl-

ling happiness: Calendar posters and visual culture in early-twentieth-century Shanghai,

86

284

Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004.

Wu Lingjun, Meific shiyou gongsi zai Zhongguo (1870-1933) (The Standard Oil Company in China, 1870-1933), Taipei: Daoxiang, 2001, p. 40.

Notes

[pp. 69-74]

87

Julean Arnold, China:A commercial and industrial handbook, Washington, DC: Gov-

88 89

Crow, Four hundred million customers, p. 65.

”

Shi Shengren, ‘Chengdu niilii zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Chengdu’s women) in Yang Xie et al., Chengdu zhuzhici (Chengdu bamboo verses), Chengdu: Si-

ernment Printing Office, 1926,p. 76.

Francis L. K. Hsu, Under the ancestors’ shadow: Chinese culture and personality, New York: Columbia University Press, 1948, p. 38.

chuan renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 163.

Wu Hao, Duhui modeng: Yuefenpai (1910s-1930s) (Calendar posters of the modern

Chinese J. Alexis Printing Chiang 4 95,

woman: Shriver, Office, Monlin,

1910s-1930s), Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1994, pp. 9-11, 60-3. Canned-goods trade in the Far East, Washington, DC: Government 1915, p. 16. Tides from the West:A Chinese autobiography, New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press, 1947, p. 34.

Feng Yiyou (ed.), Lao xiangyan paizi (Old cigarette cards), Shanghai: Shanghai

huabao chubanshe, 1996,p. 2. Reed

Darmon,

Made

in China, San

Francisco, CA:

Chronicle

Books, 2004,

pp. 36-7. 96 Feng, Lao xiangyan paizi, pp. 134-5. 97 Beiyang huabao, no. 52 (5 Jan. 1927), p. 2. 98 Lei Shaoxi, ‘Shua yanghuapian kan lianhuantu’ (Playing with cigarette cards and

reading comics) in Feng Zhicheng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu (Old Chengdu

in the memories of locals), Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1999, pp. 2079; on cigarette cards distributed by the British American Tobacco, see Sherman

Cochran, ‘Transnational origins of advertising in early twentieth-century China’

in Sherman Cochran (ed.), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Programme, 1999, pp. 53-4. 99 Liang Jingwu et al. (eds), Lao guanggao (Old advertisements), Beijing: Longmen shuju, 1999, p. 10.

100 Darmon, Made in China, pp. 47-8. 101 Don J. Cohn, Virtue by design: Illustrated Chinese children’s books from the Cotsen

Children’s Library, Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Occasional Press, 2000, p. 22. 102 Guomin zike tushuo (Citizen's illustrated glossary), Shanghai: Huiwentang, 1915, 7:23b and 6:23a.

103 Tongsu jiaoyuhua (Illustrated popular education), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1916.

CHAPTER

FOUR

Yang Ching-kun,A north China local market economy:A summary of a study of periodic markets in Chowping Hsien, Shantung, New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944, pp. 26, 35-7. William Martin, Understand the Chinese, London: Methuen, 1934, p. 191. 285

(pp. 74-6]

Notes

Innes Jackson, China only yesterday, London: Faber and Faber, 1938, pp. 204-5. Harold Speakman, Beyond Shanghai, New York: Abingdon Press, 1922,p. 16. Gretchen Mae Fitkin, The great river: The story of a voyage on the Yangtze Kiang, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1922, p. 7. Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China, 1933-35, London: Stationery Office, 1935, p. 60. Margaret T. Simkin, Letters from Szechwan, 1923-1944, Burnsville, NC: Celo Press, 1978, p. 105. W. G. Sewell, The land and life of China, London: Edinburgh House Press, 1945,

pp. 31-3.

Lee Bing-shuey, Modern Canton, Shanghai: Mercury Press, 1936, pp. 1-2, 20.

Ibid., pp. 40-4. Harry A. Franck, Roving through southern China, New York: Century, 1925, pp. 203-6. 12 ‘Nanning’, Decennial reports, 1922-31, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1933, p. 300. 13 Yu Guifen, Xifeng dongjian: Zhong-Ri shequ xifang wenhua de bijiao yanjiu (The ar10 MW

rival of the West:A comparative study of Western culture in China and Japan),

14

Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2001, p. 197. Guo Liancheng, Xiyou biliie (Notes from a voyage to the West), Shanghai: Shang-

15

Li Jingshan, ‘Zengbu dumen zayong’ (Augmented poems on Beijing) in Lei

hai shudian chubanshe, 2003, p. 15.

Mengshui et al. (eds), Zhonghua zhuzhici (Bamboo verses of China), Beijing: Bei-

jing guji chubanshe, 1997, vol. 1, p. 235. Ke Zhiyi and Ke Peiding,‘Luchuan zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Jiaxing) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 3, p. 2042. Quoted in Anne Reinhardt, ‘Navigating imperialism in China: Steamship, semi-

colony, and nation, 1860-1937", doctoral dissertation, Princeton University,

2002, p. 206; see also Liu Kwang-ching, Anglo-American steamship rivalry in China: 1862-1874, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.

‘Report on the trade of Amoy, for the year 1883’, Report on the trade at the ports of

China for the year 1883, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1884, p. 294. ‘Report on the trade of Kiungchow, for the year 1893’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1893, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1894, p.551. ‘Report on the trade of Canton, for the year 1883", Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1883, p. 333. 2 “Report on the trade of Ningpo, for the year 1891', Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1891, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1892,p. 271. Hu Zijin, ‘Guangzhou zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Canton) in Lei, Zhonghua 23

286

zhuzhici, 1997, vol. 4, p. 2897.

D. S. Hosie, Portrait ofa Chinese lady, London: Hodder and Stoughton,

pp. 57-8.

1929,

Notes 24 25 26 2 28 29 3 32 33

a7 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

46

[pp. 76-80]

Quoted in Reinhardt, ‘Navigating imperialism in China’, p. 213. Isabella L. Bird, The Yangtze valley and beyond, London: John Murray, 1899, p. 56. Liang Yen, The house of the golden dragons, London: Souvenir Press, 1961, pp. 105-8. Simkin, Letters from Szechwan, p. 6 and 34. Speakman, Beyond Shanghai, pp. 77-9. Reinhardt, ‘Navigating imperialism in China’, pp. 213-14. Joseph K. Goodrich, Our neighbors: The Chinese, Chicago, IL: Browne and Howell, 1913, p. 237. Gong Debai, Gong Debai huiyi lu (Reminiscences of Gong Debai), Taipei: Longwen chubanshe, 1989, p. 11. Lena E. Johnston, China and her peoples, London: Church Missionary Society, 1925, p. 118.

Hiroyuki Hokari, ‘Donghua yiyuan yu huaren wangluo’ (The Tung-Wah Hospital and Chinese networks) in South China Research Center and South China Research Circle (eds), Jingying wenhua: Zhongguo shehui danyuan de guanli yu yunzuo (Managing culture: Chinese organizations in action), Hong Kong Educational Publishing Co., 1999, pp. 229-43. W. Barclay Parsons, An American engineer in China, New York: McClure, Phillips and Co., 1900, p. 221. Lucy Soothill, A passport to China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931, pp. 286-7. Paul Myron, Our Chinese chances through Europe's war, Chicago, IL: Linebarger, 1915, p. 17. Victor Purcell, Chinese evergreen, London: Michael Joseph, 1938, p. 103. W.W.Yen, East-West kaleidoscope, 1877-1944: An autobiography by W.W2Yen, New York: St John’s University Press, 1974, p. 38. John B. Powell, My twenty-five years in China, New York: Macmillan, 1945, p. 26. Juliet Bredon, Peking:A historical and intimate description of its chief places of interest, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1922, p.51. Edward T. Williams, China yesterday and to-day, London: George Harrap, 1923, p.140. Franck, Roving through southern China, pp. 230-1. Lee, Modern Canton, pp. 12-22. Franck, Roving through southern China, p. 231. William Kirby,'Engincering China: Birth of the developmental state, 1928-1936" in Yeh Wen-hsin (ed.), Becoming Chinese: Passages to modernity and beyond, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000, p. 140. City Government of Nanking, Nanking: The capital of China, Nanjing: City Government of Nanking, 1930, p.47; North China Herald,27 May 1930, p. 363;in comparison, ‘coloured lights’ were only introduced in London to replace policemen in 1930, to the great reluctance of many drivers; traffic lights first appeared in Ohio in 1914;in Ohio, London and Nanjing, red and green dominated instead of blue and red, even if up to ten per cent of the population was colour-blind; on the history

[pp. 80-2]

47 48 49 50 51 53 34 55 56 57 58 59 61 62 63 64

66 67 68 69

288

Notes

of traffic lights, see C. McShane, ‘The origins and globalization of traffic control signals’, Journal of Urban History, 25, no. 3 (March 1999), pp. 379-404.

Department of Overseas Trade, Economic conditions in China to September 1st, 1929,

London: Stationery Office, 1930, p. 26. Department of Overseas Trade, Economic conditions in China to August 30th, 1930, London: Stationery Office, 1930, p. 36. Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China, 193 1-33, London: Stationery Office, 1933, p. 74. Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China, 1933-35, pl. Purcell, Chinese evergreen, p. 103. Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China, 1933-35, p.5l. Department of Overseas Trade, Tiade and economic conditions in China, 1935-37, London: Stationery Office, 1937, p. 38. Harrison Forman, Changing China, New York: Crown, 1948, p. 242. D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, p. 88. Emil S, Fischer, Travels in China, Tianjin: Tientsin Press, 1941,p. 205. Sewell, The land and life of China, pp. 13-14. Purcell, Chinese evergreen, pp. 152, 173-4, 191, 244. Department of Overseas Trade, Tiade and economic conditions in China, 1933-35, pl. Waxi shizheng, no. 3 (Dec. 1929), p. 27. Hu,‘Guangzhou zhuzhici’, p. 2897. Ni Dengying, ‘Zaixu Yangzhou zhuzhici jieyugao’ (New preface for the remnant manuscripts of bamboo verses on Yangzhou) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 2, p. 1604.

City Government, Nanking, pp. 83-6. Kunming shizhengfu mishuchu (ed.), Kunming shi shizheng tongji (Statistics of municipal administration in Kunming), Kunming: Kunming shizhengfu mishuchu, 1935, gonguu 5. Huan Yingging, ‘Houcheng malu zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on the new road in the Chinese city of Hankou) in Xu Mingting (ed.), Wuhan zhuzhici (Bamboo verses on Wuhan), Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1999, p. 157. Changsha shizhengchu, Changsha shizhengchu shizheng jiyao, p.9. Peter Carroll, Between heaven and modernity: The late Qing and early republican (re)construction of Suzhou urban space’, doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1998, pp. 65 and 78.

““Our” Bund’, North China Herald, 14 March 1925, p. 450. Excellent discussions of the rickshaw appear in David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City people and politics in the 1920s, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 1989; Lu Hanchao, Beyond the neon lights: Everyday Shanghai in the early twentieth century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999, pp. 67-108.

Notes 70 n 72 73 74 75

76 n 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 9% 1

[pp. 83-5)

Ge Yuanxu, Huyou zaji (Miscellany tour of Shanghai), orig. 1876, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989, p. 16. Deng Yunxiang, Yanjing xiangtu ji (Local customs of Beijing), Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 1986, p. 338. Ibid. Hua Mengyang and Zhang Hongjie, Lao Beijingren de shenghuo (The daily life of people in old Beijing), Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 2001, p. 168. Deng, Yanjing xiangtu ji, p. 338. Liu Shiliang,‘Chengdu zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Chengdu) in Yang Xie et al., Chengdu zhuzhici (Chengdu bamboo verses), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 99, and Jing’an, ‘Chengdu zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Chengdu) in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhic, p. 196. Jin Zhaoyang, ‘Jiuyangiao yishi’ (Old stories by the Nine Holes Bridge) in Feng Zhicheng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu (Old Chengdu in the memories of locals), Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1999, p. 7. Hosie, Portrait ofa Chinese lady, p. 68. Fung Chi-ming, ‘History at the grassroots: Rickshaw pullers in the Pearl River delta of South China, 1874-1992’, doctoral dissertation, Hong Kong University, 1996, p. 39. *Haishang wentan’ (News about Shanghai), Shenbao, 11 Aug, 1911, 2:3. Hosie, Brave new China, p. 128. Zhang Deyi, Ou Mei huanyouji (Travel diary to Europe and America), Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 706. Ibid.,p. 728. Li Changli and Liu Zhigang (eds), Jindai Zhongguo shehui wenhua biangian lu (Record of social and cultural changes in modern China), Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1998, vol. 1, p. 258.

Ge Yuanxu, Shanghai fanchang ji (Notes on Shanghai), orig. 1877, Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1988, pp. 93-4. Emily Hahn, The Soong sisters, London: Robert Hale, 1942, p. 26. Fu Chongju, Chengdu tonglan (Guide to Chengdu), orig. 1909, Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1987, vol. 2, p. 230. W.Y. Fullerton and C. E. Wilson, New China:A story of modern travel, London: Morgan and Scott, 1910, p. 86. Luo Han, ‘Hankou zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Hankou) in Xu Mingting (ed.), Wahan zhuzhici (Bamboo verses on Wuhan), Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1999, p. 246. Fu, Chengdu tonglan, vol. 1, p. 307. Jermyn Chi-hung Lynn, Social life of the Chinese in Peking, Beijing: China Booksellers, 1928, pp. 83-88. Sidney D. Gamble, How Chinese families live in Peiping, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1933, p. 172.

289

[pp. 85-7]

Notes

92 Department of Sociology and Social Work, Ching Ho: A sociological analysis, Beijing: Yenching University, 1930, p. 78. 93 Lee, Modern Canton, appendix no. 8. 94 Liu Shanlin, Xiyang feng: Xiyang faming zai Zhongguo (Inventions from the West in China), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999, p. 27. 95 Li Jinghan, Dingxian jingji diaocha yibufen baogaoshu (Report on an economic investigation of Ding county), Beijing: Hebei sheng xianzheng jianshe yanjiuyuan, 1934, p. 30.

96 See, for instance, the many bicycles in front of the Zhengyangmen Tower in Bei-

jing in 1945; Hu Piyun, Jiujing shizhao (Historical photographs of old Beijing). Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1997, p. 13. 97 Zhang Sibing,‘Manhua Chengdu de zixingche’ (About the bicycle in Chengdu) in Feng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu, p. 112. 98

Ibid.

99 Yang Ruisheng,‘Zixingche qilei you qi, qilei you qi’ (Riding a repainted bicycle, painting a used bicycle) in Feng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu, pp. 309-10. 100 Mao Fei, ‘Bainiangian de “Shanghai youleyuan” (The ‘Shanghai Amusement Park’ one hundred years ago) in Shi Fukang (ed.), Shanghai shehui daguan (An

overview of Shanghai society), Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2000, p. 276.

101 Gao Wen, Hou Shiwu and Ning Zhiqi (eds), Mianzhu nianhua (New year pictures from Mianzhu), Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1990, figure 87.

102 Reed Darmon, Made in China, San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2004, p. 92.

103 Liangyou, no. 137 (May 1938), n. p.

104 Tuhua ribao (Pictorial daily), Shanghai: Shanghai guji shudian, 1999, vol. 6, p. 223.

105. For instance Beiyang huabao, no. 1012 (16 Nov. 1933),p. 2.

106 Zhang,‘Manhua Chengdu de zixingche’,p. 112. 107 Xu Qingying, ‘Chengdu zhuzhici’ (Chengdu bamboo verses) in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhici, p. 193.

108 Hou Youpo, ‘Chengdu zhuzhici” (Chengdu bamboo verses) in Yang, Chengdu

zhuzhici, p. 178. 109 John Logan, China old and new, Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, 1982. pp. 13 and 31.

110 ‘Jiaotache jianglai bi shengxing’ (The bicycle will become very popular in the future), Shenbao, 1 April 1898.

111, Zhang Xiaowo, ‘Shoudu zayong’ (Miscellany poems on Beijing) in Lei, Zhonghua

zhuzhici, vol. 1, p. 430.

112 Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p. 113 Xu Gangyi (ed.), Lao Suzhou (Old Suzhou), Suzhou: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 2001, p. 86. 114 Liangyou, no. 93 (Sept. 1934), pp. 14-15. 115 Liangyou, no. 27 (June 1928), p. 35. 290

Notes 116 Zhang

(pp. 87-92]

Yuanxun, ‘Gudu zayong’ (Miscellany poems about the old imperial capi-

tal) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 1, p. 378.

47 Olga Lang, Chinese family and society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 118,

1946, p. 75.

Don Ihde, ‘The experience of technology: Human-machine relations’, Cultural hermeneutics, 2, no. 3 (Nov. 1974), pp. 267-79.

119

Tim Dant and Peter J. Martin, "By car: Carrying modern society’ in Jukka Gronow

120 121 122

Deng, Yanjing xiangtu ji, p. 204. Ibid., p. 224. Hu Linsheng, ‘Dangguan buru dangchang, dangchang buru congliang’ (Officials were worse than prostitutes, though the most corrupt were those in charge of

and Alan Warde (eds), Ordinary consumption, London: Routledge, 2001, p. 153.

food), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), 12 (Nov. 1982), pp. 21-2.

123 Gamble, How Chinese families live in Peiping, p. 237. 124 George N. Kates, The years that were fat: The last of old China, Cambridge, MA:

MLLT. Press, 1967, p. 52.

125 Tom O. Jones, Motor vehicles in Japan, China, and Hawaii, Washington, DC: Gov-

ernment Printing Office, 1918, pp. 44, 49, 56-8. 126 Hu, Jiujing shizhao, p.59.

127 Hu, ‘Dangguan buru dangchang’, p. 22. 128 Zhong Bu and Chen Gengtao, ‘Experts debate the origin of Cixi’s car’, China Daily, 7July 1994;1 am grateful to Bernard Fuehrer for this reference.

129 Pu Yi, From emperor to citizen, translated by W. J. F Jenner, Beijing: Foreign Lan-

guages Press, 1964, p. 22.

Graham Peck, Tivo kinds of time, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1950, pp. 188-9. Zhong and Chen, ‘Experts debate the origin of Cixi’s car’. Lee,A half century of memories, pp. 109-11. Ling Shuhua, Gu yun (Ancient melodies), Beijing: Zhongguo huaqiao chubanshe, 1994, p. 82. 134 Zhang Shunian, Wode fugin Zhang Yuanji (My father Zhang Yuanji), Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 1997, p. 11. 135 Xingzhengyuan nongcun fuxing weiyuanhui, Jiangsu sheng nongeun diaocha (Investigation into the villages of Jiangsu), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1934, 130 131 132 133

136 137

p.75. Qi Bogi, ‘Chengdu shi zuizao chuxian de dapiche’ (The earliest motorbike in Chengdu) in Feng Zhicheng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu (Old Chengdu in the memories of locals), Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1999, p. 119.

Mao Liang, ‘Xinshi jiehun zhuzhici’ (New style wedding bamboo verses) in Chengdu zhuzhici, p. 191.

138 Nora Waln, The house of exile, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1933, p. 91. 139 Hou, ‘Chengdu zhuzhici’, p. 178. 140 Chen Bohuai, ‘Siyue bari you Wangjianglou zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on visiting

Chengdu’s park on 8 April) in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhici, 1982, p. 189.

291

[pp. 92-6]

Notes

141 Jing’an, ‘Chengdu zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Chengdu) in Yang, Chengdu 142 143

zhuzhici, p. 196. Chen Dingshan, Chunshen jiuwen (Notes on old Shanghai), Taipei: Shijie wenwu gongyingshe, 1967, p. 138. Zhang Shijie, ‘Zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 5, p. 3387. Forman, Changing China, pp. 250-1. Logan, China old and new, p. 57. Gamble, How Chinese families live in Peiping, pp. 172-3.

144 145, 146 147 Cecilia Sun Yun Chiang, The mandarin way, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1974,

p. 152.

148 Elisabeth Enders, Swinging lanterns, New York: Appleton, 1923,p. 143; Hosie, Portrait of a Chinese lady, p. 267.

149 Xin Ping, Cong Shanghai faxian lishi: Xiandaihua jinchengzhong de Shanghai ren jigi

shehui shenghuo (Discovering history from Shanghai: Social life in modernising Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1996, p. 388. 150 Xue Liyong, Jin Shanghai zujie shihua (History of the foreign concessions in old Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, 2002, pp. 130-1. 151 Xin, Cong Shanghai faxian lishi, pp. 388-9. 152 Chen Zonghe, ‘Qingyanggong huahui zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on the flower fair at the Qingyang temple) in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhici, p. 145. 153 Cai Jiu,‘Niuzi jiefang’ (Women’s liberation) in Xu, Wishan zhuzhici, p. 301. 154 Gerald Yorke, China changes, London: Jonathan Cape, 1935, p. 89. 155 Hua and Zhang, Lao Beijingren de shenghuo, pp. 172-3. 156 Lee, Modem Canton, p. 4 and appendix no. 8. 157 Harry A. Franck, Wandering in northern China, New York: Century, 1923, p. 259. 158 Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China, 1933-35,

p.51.

Anhui shengzhengfu, Anhui sheng gaikuang tongji (Statistical survey of Anhui), Huaining: Anhui shengzhengfu: tongji weiyuanhui, 1933. 160 Anhui sheng tongji nianjian (Statistical yearbook for Anhui province), Huaining: Anhui shengzhengfu tongji weiyuanhui, 1934, pp. 311-12. 161 Li Boxiong, ‘Yangfangzi zoulu’ (Foreign house walking), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), no. 48 (Nov. 1988), pp. 29-33. 162 Xie Kaiti, ‘Cheng Yu lushang huangyu lei’ (Tears of yellow fish on the road between Chengdu and Chongging), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), no. 122 (Feb. 2000), pp. 93-5. 163 Forman, Changing China, p. 250. 164 Purcell, Chinese evergreen, p. 102. 165 “Beijing qiche (cheshen) mache zhi zhizaoye’ (The manufacture of car bodies and

carriages in Beijing), Zhongwai jingji zhoukan, no. 170 (July 1926), pp. 15-16.

y 8

166 Jackson, China only yesterday, p. 243. 167 Yorke, China changes, p. 166.

Notes

[pp. 96-100]

168 Neville Bradley, The old Burma Road, a journey on foot and muleback, London: The

Travel Club, 1946, pp. 1, 3-4, 51-2. 169 Peter Fleming, One’s company:A journey to China, London: Jonathan Cape, 1934, p. 286. 170 Department of Overseas Trade, Economic conditions in China to September 1st, 1929,

p.26. 171 L. H. Dudley Buxton, China: The land and the people, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929, p. 139.

172 Fleming, One's company, p. 200.

173 Peter Fleming, News from Tartary: A journey from

Jonathan Cape, 1936, pp. 58-9. 174 Deng, Yanjing xiangtu ji, p. 206.

Peking

to Kashmir, London:

175 Yorke, China changes, p. 89. 176 Arnold, China,p. 113. 177 W. Barclay Parsons, An American engineer in China, New York: McClure, Phillips

and Co., 1900, pp. 248-50. 178 On railway development in China, see Ralph W. Huenemann, The dragon and the iron horse: The economics of railroads in China, 1876-1937, Cambridge, MA: Har-

179

vard University Press, 1984.

Department of Overseas Trade, Economic conditions in China to September 1st, 1929,

pp. 22-3. 180 Forman, Changing China, pp. 236-7. 181

‘Report on the trade of Tientsin, for the year 1892’, Report on the trade at the China for the year 1892, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1893, 182 ‘Report on the trade of Canton, for the year 1904’, Report on the trade at the China for the year 1904, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1905, 183 Franck, Roving through southern China, p. 388.

ports of p. 21. ports of p. 715.

184 Xingzhengyuan nongcun fuxing weiyuanhui, Henan sheng nongcun diaocha (Investi-

gation into the villages of Henan), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1934, p. 84.

185. ‘Huoche chengke guanchao zhisheng' (A celebrated occasion for railway passengers to watch tides), Shenbao, 17 Sept. 1908, 2:3.

186 Logan, China old and new, p. 32.

187 Elisabeth Enders, Temple bells and silver sails, New York: Appleton, 1925, pp. 175-6. 188 Eugen Wolf, Meine Wanderungen, Im Innern Chinas, Stuttgart, Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1901, p. 28. 189 Bao Tianxiao, Yi shi zhu xing de bainian biangian (A hundred years of changes in everyday life), Hong Kong: Dahua chubanshe, 1974, p. 74. 190 Ba Jin, Liitu suibi (Travel writings), Hangzhou: Zhejiang jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003, pp. 104-8. 191

Ibid., p. 110.

192 Fleming, One's company, pp. 282-3.

193 Jackson, China only yesterday, pp. 139-47.

194 Fleming, News from Tartary, pp. 41-3.

293

Notes [pp. 100-3] 195, Franck, Roving through southern China, p. 46.

196 Hallett E. Abend, My life in China, 1926-1941, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943,

p.62.

197 Fullerton and Wilson, New China, p. 115. 198 “A move for warmer railway coaches’, North China Herald, 21 Jan. 1930, p. 94. 199 Paul Hutchinson (ed.), A guide to important missionary stations in eastern Asia (lying 200 201 202 203 204

along the main routes of travel), Shanghai: Missionary Book Co., 1920,p. 16. Yen, East-West kaleidoscope, 1877-1944, p. 36.

Jackson, China only yesterday, pp. 42-3. Tinling, Bits of China, p. 134. Myron, Our Chinese chances through Europe’s war, pp. 21-2, 71.

‘Ji Huake chucheng huoche qingxing’ (The first time the Chinese took a train),

Shenbao, 3 July 1876, p. 2. 205 ‘Mingle huoche kaixing’ (People cheer the launching of the railway), Shenbav, 10 July 1876, p. 1. 206 ‘Tu Shipin, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Zhongguo tushushe, 1948, vol. 1, p. 36.

207 *Cheng huolunche zhi Wusong zuoge’ (A poem on taking the train to Wusong), Shenbao, 20 Oct. 1877.

208 The rather tendentious observation that it was ‘a popular metaphor of the cen-

tury’ that the traveller became a mere parcel, repeated throughout the book,

is based on one line by John Ruskin, notorious enemy of railways; Wolfgang

Schivelbusch, The railway journey: The industrialization of time and space in the 19th century, Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1986, pp. 54, 73 and 121. More

balanced and empirically grounded is Michael Freeman, Railways and the Victorian imagination, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.

209 Lei Diangong, ‘Shaonian jian’ (The experience of childhood), Libailiu, no. 140

(19 Dec. 1921), p. 22.

210 Quoted in Li and Liu, Jindai Zhongguo shehui wenhua biangian lu, vol. 1, p. 625. aut Bao, Yi shi zhu xing de bainian biangian, pp. 72 and 74. 212 ‘Report on the trade of Tientsin, for the year 1896’, Report on the trade at the ports of

China for the year 1896, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1897, p. 26.

213 Xia Yan, Xia Yan zizhuan (Autobiography of Xia Yan), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996, p. 7.

214 Zhang Henshui, Shanghai Express, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997, p. 89.

Zheng Yi, Huochaihe shang de Zhongguo xiandai shi (Modern Chinese history on matchboxes), Hong Kong: Mingchuang chubanshe, 1994,p. 19. 216 Wang Jianming, ‘Yangsheng tan’ (On longevity), Libailiu, no. 164 (10 June 1922), p.43. 217 Sheng Cheng, A son of China, London: Allen and Unwin, 1930, p. 172. 218 Min-ch’ien T. Z. Tyau, China awakened, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922,p. 173. 294

Notes

219 220 2214 222 223 224 225 226 227 28 229 230 231 232

[pp. 103-11]

Wang Fuming, ‘Making a living: Agriculture, industry and commerce in eastern Hebei, 1870-1937", doctoral dissertation, lowa State University, 1998, p. 154. Xue Fucheng, Chushi siguo riji (Diary in four countries), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, pp. 170 and 619. Martin, Understand the Chinese, pp. 187-8. “The Nanyang Exhibition: China’s first great national show’, Far Eastern Review, 6,no. 4 (April 1910), p. 504. He Qinze, ‘Xi'an shangshi xinyong’ (New poem on businesses in Xi'an) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhidi, vol. 5, p. 3674. Duan Juanyuan, Hangkong shenghuo (Life in the air), Shanghai: Shijie shuju, 1929, pp. 45-6. Lee, A half century of memories, p. 22. Zhongyang hangkong xuexiao, Hangkong shenghuo (Life in the air), Nanjing: Zhongguo de kongjun chubanshe, 1934, p. 68. ‘Tyau, China awakened, pp. 180-1. Department of Overseas Trade, Economic conditions in China to September 1st, 1929, p.30. Department of Overseas Trade, Tiade and economic conditions in China, 1933-35, p.57. Forman, Changing China, pp. 278-9. Hosie, Brave new China, p. 121. Shanghai Evening Post, 12 March 1937. CHAPTER

FIVE

However, some excellent insights into the built environment are offered in Madeleine Yue Dong, Republican Beijing: The city and its histories, 1911-1937, University of California Press, 2003; K. E. Stapleton, Civilizing Chengdu: Chinese urban reform, 1895-1937, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000; Qin Shao, Culturing modernity: The Nantong Model, 1890-1930, Stanford University Press, 2004; Wang Di, Street culture in Chengdu: Public space, urban commoners, and local politics, 1870-1930, Stanford University Press, 2003; see also Joseph W. Esherick, (ed.), Remaking the Chinese city: Modernity and national identity, 1900-1950, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000. Alfred H.-Y. Lin, Warlord, social welfare and philanthropy: The case of Guangzhou under Chen Jitang, 1929-1936’, Modem China, 30, no. 2 (April 2004), pp. 151-98. City Government of Nanking, Nanking: The capital of China, Nanjing: City Government of Nanking, 1930, pp. 83-6. David Strand,““A high place is no better than a low place”: The city in the making of modern China’ in Yeh Wen-hsin (ed.), Becoming Chinese: Passages to modernity and beyond, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000, pp. 98-136. Olga Lang, Chinese family and society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1946, p.78. 295

(pp. 111-14] 6

Notes

Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China, 1931-33,

London: Stationery Office, 1933, p. 120.

Min-ch’ien T. Z. Tyau, China awakened, New York: The Macmillan Company. 1922, pp. 98-9. D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, pp. 119—20; J. E. Spencer, ‘Changing Chungking: The rebuilding of an old Chinese city’, Geographical review, 29, no. 1 (Jan. 1939), pp. 46-60.

Paul Hutchinson (ed.),A guide to important missionary stations in eastern Asia (lying

10

along the main routes of travel), Shanghai: Missionary Book Co., 1920, p. 158.

‘Reconstruction in south China’, Far Eastern Review, 28, no. 11 (Nov. 1932),

pp. 526-8. uN Xingzhengyuan nongcun fuxing weiyuanhui, Henan sheng nongeun diaocha (Investigation into the villages of Henan), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1934,

p. 84; for another example, see Chen Guangfu, Chen Guangfic riji (Diary of Chen

12

Guangfu), Shanghai:

Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2002, p. 205.

On architecture an essential study is Jeffrey W. Cody, Building in China: Henry K. Murphy's “adaptive architecture,” 1914-1935, Hong Kong: Chinese University

Press, 2001, and Lu Hanchao, “The seventy-two tenants”: Residence and commerce in Shanghai’s shikumen houses, 1872-1951’ in Sherman Cochran (ed.),

Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Programme, 1999, pp. 133-84, and Lu Hanchao, Beyond the neon lights: Everyday Shanghai in the early twentieth century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.

E.R. Hughes, The invasion of China by the Western world, London: Black, 1937, p.273. 14 Lee Bing-shuey, Modern Canton, Shanghai: Mercury Press, 1936, p. 139. 3

15 J. Gunnar Andersson, China fights for the world, London: Kegan Paul, 1939, pp. 5-6. 16 Joseph Needham, Science and civilisation in China, Cambridge University Press, 17 18 19 20 21 22

1965, vol. 4, part 2, p. 65. Adrian Forty, Objects of desire: Design and society from Wedgwood to IBM, New York: Pantheon Books, 1986, pp. 11-28. RudolfP. Hommel, China at work, New York: John Day, 1937, p. 291.

Shuini gongye (The cement industry), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1947, p. 3. Zhang Baohua and Yang Xun, Shuinixue (Portland cement), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1910, p. 78.

Nong Gong,‘Shuo semendetu’ (About cement), Dixue zazhi,3,no.5 (June 1912), p. 14a.

Li Shutian, ‘Shuiniye yu kunnitu gouzao zhi youlai jigi fazhan’ (The develop-

ment and future of the cement and concrete industry), Kexue, 10, no. 11 (Dec.

1925), p. 1374.

Gerald Yorke, China changes, London: Jonathan Cape, 1935, p. 53. Hosie, Brave new China, p. 224. Ibid., p. 235. 296

Notes 26 27

29 30 3 32 33 34 35 36 7 38 39 40 4 42

43 44 45 46 7

48 49 50 51

[pp. 114-17]

Martin, Understand the Chinese, p. 200. Zhou Xiangxian (ed.), Hangzhou shizhengfu shizhou jinian tekan (Special publication on ten years of municipal administration in Hangzhou), Hangzhou: Shizhengfu mishuchu, 1937, pp. 3-4. Harry A. Franck, Roving through southern China, New York: Century, 1925, pp. 76. Ibid., p. 58. Liang Yen, The house of the golden dragons, London: Souvenir Press, 1961, p. 73. Innes Jackson, China only yesterday, London: Faber and Faber, 1938, p. 52. Harrison Forman, Changing China, New York: Crown, 1948, p. 223. China Monthly Trade Report, 1 July 1932, p. 22. Gilbert Collins, Extreme Oriental mixture, London: Methuen, 1925, p. 174. Liang, House of the golden dragons, p. 63. Lang, Chinese family and society, p. 79. Carlton Benson, ‘From teahouse to radio: Storytelling and the commercialization of culture in 1930s Shanghai’, doctoral dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1996, p. 85. William Martin, Understand the Chinese, London: Methuen, 1934, pp. 181, 194. C.LTinling, Bits of China: Travel-sketches in the Orient, New York: Fleming Revell, 1925, p. 147. Jackson, China only yesterday, p. 34. Lou Xuexi, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang (Conditions of industry and commerce in Beijing), Beijing: Beiping shi shehuiju, 1932, pp. 609-10. Robert Bickers,“The greatest cultural asset east of Suez”: The history and politics of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra and Public Band, 1881-1946" in Chihsiung Chang (ed.), Ershi shiji de Zhongguo yu shijie (China and the world in the twentieth century), Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2000, pp. 850-1. Hosie, Brave new China, p. 149. W.G. Sewell, The land and life of China, London: Edinburgh House Press, 1945, pp. 84-5. Gretchen Mae Fitkin, The great river: The story of a voyage on the Yangtze Kiang, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1922, p. 83. Tbid., p. ii. Department of Overseas Trade, Economic conditions in China to August 30th, 1930, London: Stationery Office, 1930, p. 43; on the new import duties, see D. K. Lieu, The growth and industrialization of Shanghai, Shanghai: China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1936, pp. 67-8. Min-ch’ien T. Z. Tyau, China awakened, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922, p. 206. Lieu, The industrialization of Shanghai, p. 98 Nathaniel Peffer, China: The collapse of a civilization, London: Routledge, 1931, p. 205. Ministry of Trade, China industrial handbooks: Chekiang, Taipei: Ch'eng Wen, 1973, pp. 123-4. 297

[pp. 117-20]

Notes

en)

Lieu, The industrialization of Shanghai, p. 99.

56 37

Ibid., p. 100.

China industrial handbooks: Chekiang, p. 771. Edward T. Williams, China yesterday and to-day, London: George Harrap, 1923, p- 182. Ke Zhiyi and Ke Peiding, ‘Luchuan zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Jiaxing) in Lei Mengshui et al. (eds), Zhonghua zhuzhici (Bamboo verses of China), Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 1997, vol. 3, 2042. Zhongguo zaoqi bolanhui ziliao huibian (Collection of primary sources on exhibi-

tions in modern China), Nanjing: Quanguo tushuguan wenxian suowei fuzhi zhongxin, 2003, vol. 2, pp. 282 and 325. 58 Ba Jin, Liitu suibi (Travel writings), Hangzhou: Zhejiang jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003, p.70. 59 Michael Adas, Machines as the measure of man: Science, technology and ideologies of 60 61 62 63 65 66 67

Western dominance, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Wu Youru, Haishang baiyan tu (A hundred beauties of Shanghai), Changsha:

Hunan meishu chubanshe, 1998, p. 76.

Julean Arnold, Far Eastern markets for American hardware, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919, p. 109.

“Report on the trade of Canton, for the year 1914’, Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1914, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1915, p.996. Mao Zedong, Report from Xunwu, Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 93. Liu Shanlin, Xiyang feng: Xiyang faming zai Zhongguo (Inventions from the West in China), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999, p. 175. He Qinze, ‘Xi'an shangshi xinyong’ (New poem on businesses in Xi’an) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 5, p. 3671. Lieu, The industrialization of Shanghai, p. 101. See Frank Dikétter, Crime, punishment and the prison in modern China, London: Hurst; New York: Columbia University Press, 2002,p. 296.

68 0

Ministry of Trade, China industrial handbooks: Kiangsu, pp. 435-45.

74

Lin Sung-ho, Factory workers in Tangku, Beijing: Social Research Department,

Thomas G. Rawski, China’s transition to industrialism: Producer goods and economic

development in the twentieth century, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1980, pp. 12-13. 70 Ministry of Trade, China industrial handbooks: Kiangsu, p. 347. n Harrison Forman, Changing China, New York: Crown, 1948, pp. 304-12. 2 Ministry of Trade, China industrial handbooks: Kiangsu, p. 107. 73 Tyau, China awakened, p. 217. 1928, pp. 30-4.

Shih Kuo-heng, China enters the machine age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1944, pp. 98-9.

298

Notes 16 7 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88. 89 90 1 92 93 4

97 98

[pp. 120-24]

Tien Ju-k’ang,‘Female labor in a cotton mill’ in Shih, China enters the machine age, pp. 188-9. Zao Xiangshi, ‘Choushe benyi gechang biaozhun qidi zouyi’ (Proposal for a standard use of whistles by factories in our city), Wuxi shizheng, no. 4 (an. 1930), pp. 13-14. Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p. Yuan Xiangfu, ‘Hushang zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Shanghai) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 2, p.799. "Xu kan Shanghai zhuzhici’ (Continued bamboo verses on Shanghai) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 2, p. 1014. Ge Yuanxu, Shanghai fanchang ji (Notes on Shanghai), orig. 1877, Taipei: Wenhai

chubanshe, 1988, p. 90. Zhou Yuxin, Richang diangi shenghuo (Electrical appliances in daily use), Shanghai: Shijie shuju, 1931,p. 109. Changsha shizhengchu, Changsha shizhengchu shizheng jiyao (Record of municipal administration in Changsha), Changsha: Changsha shizhengchu, 1932, p. 25. Beiyang huabao, no. 1148 (2 Oct. 1934),p. 2. Shanghai shizhengfu shehuiju, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu (The living standards of workers in Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai shizhengfu, 1934, p. 179. E.J. Dingle, Across China on foot: Life in the interior and the reform movement, Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1911, pp. 222-4. A.S. Roe, Chance and change in China, London: Heinemann, 1920, p. 116. G.L. Dickinson, Appearances: Being notes of travel, London: Dent, 1914, p. 68. Roe, Chance and change in China, p. 100.

Elizabeth VanderVen, ‘Village-state cooperation: Modern community schools and their funding, Haicheng County, Fengtian, 1905-1931", Modern China, 31, no. 2 (April 2005), pp. 204-35. 1.T. Headland, Home life in China, London: Methuen, 1914, pp. 305-6. Chen Jingyu and Li Jiahe (eds), Hankou gu’eryuan choubei zhi jingguo (The esta~ blishment of the Hankou orphanage), Hankou: Hankou gu’eryuan, 1932. Sili Nanjing gu’eryuan (ed.), Sili Nanjing gu’eryuan diyijie baogao (First report of the private orphanage in Nanjing), Nanjing: Sili Nanjing gu’eryuan, 1934. Martin C.Yang, A Chinese village: Taitou, Shantung province, New York: Columbia University Press, 1945, p. 148.

Feng Zikai, Feng Zikai zizhuan (Autobiography of Feng Zikai), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996, pp. 23-4. Zhao Yuanren, Zaonian zizhuan (Autobiography of my early years), Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1984, p. 34. Shen Congwen, Shen Congwen zizhuan (Autobiography of Shen Congwen), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1995, p. 39. S.A.M.Adshead, Material culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997, p. 195 299

[pp. 124-8]

Notes

99 Fu Chongju, Chengdu tonglan (Guide to Chengdu), orig. 1909, Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1987, vol. 2, p. 230. 100 ‘Yangbi yangzhi’ (Foreign pens and foreign paper), Libailiu, no. 533 (9 Dec. 1933), p. 688. 101 Liangyou, no. 48 (June 1930), p. 28; Jiang Weimin, Shimao waipo: Zhuixun lao

Shanghai de shishang shenghuo (Trendy grandma: In search of fashionable life in

102 103. 104 105.

old Shanghai), Shanghai: Sanlian shudian, 2003, pp. 78-9. Pan, Zhongguo jindai guohuo yundong, p. 228. ‘Yangbi yangzhi’, p. 688. Yang Xianyi, Lu Xun: Selected works, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1980, vol. 3, p. 363. Tu Shipin, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Zhongguo tushushe, 1948, vol. 3, p. 91.

106 Li Wei-t’ao, ‘Test of good citizenship’ in Wang Chi-chen, Stories of China at war, London: Oxford University Press, 1947, p. 94. 107 Vivian Hsieh, private collection. 108 Lothar Ledderose, ‘Aesthetic appropriation of ancient calligraphy in modern China’ in Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G. Smith (eds), Chinese art, modern expres-

sions, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001, pp. 232-3.

109 Thomas A. Russo, Office collectibles: 100 years of business technology, Atglen, PA:

Schiffer, 2000, p. 161.

110 Bruce Bliven, The wonderful writing machine, New York: Random

House, 1954,

p.215. 111 D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, pp. 100-1. 112 See Yeh Wen-hsin, ‘Corporate space, communal time: Everyday life in Shanghai’s Bank of China’, American Historical Review, 100, no. 1 (Feb. 1995), pp. 97-122.

113 J. Alexis Shriver, Canned-goods trade in the Far East, Washington, D overnment Printing Office, 1915, p. 18. 114 He Chongjie, Lang Jingshan, Chen Wanli and Cai Renbao, Xihu bolanhui jiniance (Commemorative album of the West Lake Exhibition), Shanghai: Commercial

Press, 1930, n. p. 115 Yuan Ang, Xiaoshe yu xiaoju (School buildings and equipment), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1937, pp. 78-80. 116 Adrian Forty, Objects of desire: Design and society from Wedgwood to IBM, New York: Pantheon Books, 1986, pp. 122-6. 117 Yuan, Xiaoshe yu xiaoju, pp. 78-80.

118 Dikétter, Crime, punishment and the prison in modern China.

119 Hosie, Brave new China, p. 222. 120 William Martin, Understand the Chinese, London: Methuen, 1934, p. 98. 121 Richard C. Kraus, Brushes with power: Modern politics and the Chinese art of calligraphy, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991. 122 Dikétter, Crime, punishment and the prison. 300

Notes

[pp. 129-35]

123 D. S. Hosie, Portrait of a Chinese lady, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929, p. 233.

124 Innes Jackson, China only yesterday, London: Faber and Faber, 1938, p.71. 125. Sifa xingzhengbu (ed.), Sifa tongji (1934 niandu) (Judicial statistics: 1934), Nanjing: Sifa xingzhengbu, 1936, pp. 2-29.

126 Ministry of Trade, China industrial handbooks: Kiangsu, p. 792. 127 Sifa xingzhengbu (ed.), Sifa tongji (1936 niandu) (Judicial statistics: 1936), Chongging: Sifa xingzhengbu, 1938, pp. 2-29. 128 Liang Yen, The house of the golden dragons, London: Souvenir Press, 1961, pp. 65-6, 11. 129 Adeline Yen Mah, Falling leaves: The true story of an unwanted Chinese daughter, London: Michael Joseph, 1997, pp. 8-9. CHAPTER

1 3

SIX

Sheng Cheng, A son of China, London: Allen and Unwin, 1930, p. 172. Liu Na’ou, ‘Fengjing’ (Scenery) in Liu Na’ou, Liu Na’ou xiaoshuo quanbian (Collected stories of Liu Na’ou), Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 1997, p. 14. Excellent studies on the social history of electricity include Alain Beltran and

Patrice A. Carré, La fée et la servante. La société francaise face a I’électricite, XIXe-XXe

siécle, Paris: Belin, 1991; David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social meanings ofa new technology, 1880-1940, Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1990; Wolfgang Schivel-

busch, Disenchanted night: The industrialisation of light in the nineteenth century, Ox4

ford: Berg, 1988.

Huang Shiquan, Songnan mengying lu (Collection of dream views of Shanghai), orig. 1883, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989, pp. 144-5.

rasa

Ibid.

‘Gaiyong diandeng’ (Change to electric lights), Shenbao, 19 Sept. 1882, n. p. “Diandeng guancan’ (Electric lights shine brightly), Shenbao, 27 July 1882,p. 2.

W.Y. Fullerton and C. E. Wilson, New China:A

story of modern travel, London:

9

Morgan and Scott, 1910, p. 156. Paul Myron, Our Chinese chances through Europe's war, Chicago, IL: Linebarger,

10 11

‘Dianxian da Su’ (Electric wires arrive in Suzhou), Shenbao, 15 Aug. 1881, p. 2. Liu, Xiyang feng, pp. 87-8.

12. 13.

1915, p.87.

Pi Mingxiu et al. (eds), Hankou wubainian (Hankou over five centuries), Wuhan:

Hubei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1999, pp. 87-8.

‘Report on the trade of Canton, for the year 1904’, Report on the trade at the ports of

China for the year 1904, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1905, 14 ‘Report on the trade of Wuhu, for the year 1908", Report on the trade at the China for the year 1908, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1909, “Report on the trade of Swatow, for the year 1909", Report on the trade at the

p.716. ports of p. 272; ports of

China for the year 1909, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1910, p. 561

301

[pp. 135-8] 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Notes

Lu Danlin (ed.), Shizheng quanshu (Compendium on municipal administration), Shanghai: Zhonghua quanguo daolu jianshe xiehui, 1928, p. 74. “Mukden electric lights works’, Far Eastern Review, 6, no. 5 (May 1910), p. 504. Lee Bing-shuey, Modern Canton, Shanghai: Mercury Press, 1936, pp. 51-61. "Xu Yangcheng zhuzhici’ (Sequel to the bamboo verses on Canton) in Lei Mengshui et al. (eds), Zhonghua zhuzhici (Bamboo verses of China), Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 1997, vol. 4, p. 3014. Edward T. Williams, China yesterday and to-day, London: George Harrap, 1923, p.185. John Logan, China old and new, Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, 1982, p31. Julean Arnold, China:A commercial and industrial handbook, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1926, p. 106.

Lee, Modem Canton, pp. 54. Richard P. Dobson, China cycle, London: Macmillan, 1946, p. 28. 24 Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p. 25 Hu Puan, Zhonghua quanguo fengsu zhi (Record on customs in China), orig. 1935, Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 1986, vol. 2, p. 6. 22 23

26 27

28 29 30 3 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Kunming ribao (eds), Lao Kunming (Old Kunming), Kunming: Yunnan renmin

chubanshe, 1997, p. 72. Chen Guangfuu, Chen Guangfu riji (Diary of Chen Guangfu), Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2002, p. 112. Kunming ribao, Lao Kunming, p.71. George G. Barnes, Enter China:A study in race contacts, London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1928, p. 134. Hu Xianghan, Shanghai xiaozhi (Notes on Shanghai), orig. 1930, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989, pp. 8-9. Harold Speakman, Beyond Shanghai, New York: Abingdon Press, 1922, p. 79. Heinz von Perckhammer, Peking, Berlin: Albertus Verlag, 1928, p. 177.

D. S. Hosie, Portrait of a Chinese lady, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929, p. 162. Dobson, China cycle, p. 173.

Lundquist, Electrical goods in China, Japan, and Vladivostok, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918, pp. 10-11. Thomas Sammons, Proprietary medicine and ointment trade in China, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1917, p. 8. *Chuczhi chupin xiehui huichang qingxing’ (The first impression of the Shanghai products exposition), Shenbao, 24 Nov. 1909, 3:4.

Ning Jennifer Chang, ‘Purely sport or a gambling disgrace? Greyhound racing and the formation of modern Shanghai’ in Peter Zarrow (ed.), Creating Chinese modernity: Knowledge and everyday life, 1900-1940, New York: Peter Lang, 2005 (in

press). an2

Notes

[pp. 138-42]

39

William Martin, Understand the Chinese, London: Methuen, 1934, p. 203.

4 42

Beiyang huabao, no. 259 (20 Dec. 1928), p. 2. Min Huiming,‘Hankou yuanye zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on the New Year's Eve in Hankou) in Xu Mingting (ed.), Wuhan zhuzhici (Bamboo verses on Wuhan), Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1999, p. 327. Beiyang huabao, no. 384 (15 Oct. 1929), p. 2. Maurizio Peleggi, Lords of things: The fashioning of the Siamese monarchy’s modern image, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002, pp. 114-19. Xiao Sai, ‘Mancheng zhengkan diandengran’ (The whole city is eager to watch the electric lights being switched on) in Feng Zhicheng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu (Old Chengdu in the memories of locals), Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1999, pp. 108-9. Wang Zehua and Wang He, Minguo shigi de lao Chengdu (Chengdu in the republican era), Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1999, pp. 41-2. Guo Moruo, Guo Moruo shaonian shigao (The early poems of Guo Moruo), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1979,p. 28. Daoshengyuan zhuren, ‘Xu Yangcheng zhuzhici’ (Sequel to the bamboo verses on Guangzhou) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 4, p. 3016. Ba Jin, Liitu suibi (Travel writings), Hangzhou: Zhejiang jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003, pp. 69-70. *Xinshi chubin’ (New style funeral), Shenbao, 14 Oct. 1911, 3:3. V.R. Burckhardt, Chinese creeds and customs, Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, 1953-58, vol. 3, p. 56. von Perckhammer, Peking, p. 182. Hu Zijin, ‘Guangzhou zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Canton) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 4, p. 2907. Wa Bingyan, ‘Xin Hankou zhuzhici shiershou’ (Twelve bamboo verses on new

43 45

46 47 48 49 50 31 52 54 35 56 57 58 59 6 62

Beiyang huabao, no. 175 (1 April 1928), p. 1.

scenes in Hankou) in Xu, Wuhan zhuzhici, p. 295.

He Qinze, ‘Qingmen zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Xi'an) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 5, p. 3677. Beiyang huabao, no. 648 (9 July 1930), p. 2. Wang Di, Street culture in Chengdu: Public space, urban commoners, and local politics, 1870-1930, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 137. Xiao Jun, Wo de tongnian (My childhood years), Harbin: Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 25. Xiao, ‘Mancheng zhengkan diandengran’, pp. 108-9. Adrian Forty, Objects of desire: Design and society from Wedgwood to IBM, New York:

Pantheon Books, 1986, pp. 190-1. Bing Xin, Bing Xin zizhuan (Autobiography of Bing Xin), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1995, p. 66. Sidney D. Gamble, How Chinese families live in Peiping, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1933, p. 159.

303

[pp. 142-4] 63 64 65 66 07 68 69 70 n

73 14 8 16 7 78 79 80 81 82 83 a4 85 46 87

304

Notes

Ibid. Shanghai shizhengfu shehuiju, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu (The living standards of workers in Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai shizhengfu, 1934, p. 153. D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, p. 63. Xu Tianyou, Jindai de deng (Modern lamps), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1948, p18. Pan Junxiang, Zhongguo jindai guohuo yundong (The national goods movement in modern China), Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1996, p. 178. “Electric lamp war in China’, North China Herald, 28 Feb. 1925, p. 345. Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China, 1935-37, London: Stationery Office, 1937, pp. 44-5. Zhongguo gongchengshi xuchui (ed.), Sanshi nianlai zhi Zhongguo gongcheng (Thirty years of engineering in China), Shanghai: Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui, 1946, p. 578. Hu Xiyuan, ‘Mugian diandengpao zhizhaoye zhi kunnan’ (The difficulties faced by the electric bulb industry), Libailiu, no. 524 (10 Oct. 1933), pp. 492-3. Julean Arnold, Far Eastern markets for American hardware, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919, p. 101; Lundquist, Electrical goods in China, Japan, and Vladivostok, p. 76. Lundquist, Electrical goods in China, Japan, and Viadivestok, p. 76. Victor Purcell, Chinese evergreen, London: Michael Joseph, 1938, p. 191. Olga Lang, Chinese family and society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1946, pp. 74-6. Harrison Forman, Changing China, New York: Crown, 1948, p. 187. Anor Adet and Meimei Lin, Daum over Chungking, New York: John Day, 1941, p.116. Carl Crow, Four hundred million customers, New York: Halcyon House, 1937, p. 308. Peter Fleming, News from Tartary: A journey from Peking to Kashmir, London: Jonathan Cape, 1936, pp. 41 and 52. Liangyou, no. 29 (Aug. 1928), p. 30.

Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p. Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui (ed.), Sanshi nianlai zhi Zhongguo gongcheng, p-580. China Monthly Trade Report, | Dec. 1930,p. 14. Min-ch’ien T. Z. Tyau, China awakened, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922, p. 94. Ba Jin, Family, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 25. Ibid., pp. 203 and 209. Ba Jin, Cold nights — Han ye: Chinese-English bilingual edition, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2002, pp. 496; Ba Jin’s fixation on light (electric, candle and natural twilight) and low temperatures is explained in the author's postscript, Cold nights — Han ye, p.515.

Notes 88 89 90 oT 92

94

96 7 98

[pp. 144-8]

Mao Dun, Midnight, orig. 1933, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1957, pp.9 and 282. Mao Dun, ‘First morning at the office’, Spring Silkworms and other stories, Beijing:

Foreign Languages Press, 1956, p. 258.

Mao, Midnight, p. 217. Ibid.,p. 336. A classic study on the conquest of water is Jean-Pierre Goubert, The conquest of water: The advent of health in the Industrial Age, Princeton University Press, 1989; see also Georges Vigarello, Concepts of cleanliness: Changing attitudes in France since the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1988. Ferdinand PW. von Richthofen, Baron Richthofen’s letters, 1870-1872, Shanghai: North-China Herald Office, 1903, p. 201. Ge Yuanxu, Huyou zaji (Miscellany tour of Shanghai), orig. 1876, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989, p. 41. Wang Tao, Yingrvan zazhi (Miscellany on Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989, p. 21. K. H. Li,'Public health in Soochow’, Zhonghua yixue zazhi, 9, no.2 (une 1923), p.124. Zhang Deyi, Hanghai shugi (Travels abroad), Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1985, pp. 454-5. Li Gui, Huanyou digiu xinlu (New records on my travels around the world), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 308.

9 Ge, Huyou zaji, p. 41. 100 Huang, Songnan mengying Iu, p. 145. 101 Hu, Shanghai xiaozhi, p. 8. 102 Li Pingshu, Li Pingshu qishi zixu (The autobiography of Li Pingshu), Shanghai:

Shanghai guiji chubanshe, 1989, p. 17.

103 Ibid., p. 18. 104 Nora Waln, The house of exile, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1933, p. 52. 105 Pi, Hankou wubainian, pp. 87 and 89. 106 Lee, Modern Canton, pp. 62-70. 107 Gamble, How Chinese families live in Peiping, p. 161. 108 City Government of Nanking, Nanking: The capital of China, Nanjing:

City Gov-

ernment of Nanking, 1930, p. 30. Shanghai shizhengfu, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu, p. 143. Hosie, Portrait ofa Chinese lady, p. 57. Paul Monroe, China:A nation in evolution, New York: Macmillan, 1928,p. 5. Guo Songtao, Lundun yu Bali riji (Diary of a mission to London and Paris), Changsha: Yuelu chubanshe, 1984, p. 326. 13 Xue Fucheng, Chushi riji xuke (Diary ofa diplomatic mission: A sequel), orig. 1892, Taipei: Huawen shuju, 1970, vol. 1, pp. 576-7. M4 ‘Hushang liyong deliifeng’ (Telephone used in Shanghai), Shenbao, 5 Dec. 1881, pl.

109 110 m1 112

305

[pp. 148-55] 115, 116 117

118, ng 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128, 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

Notes

Liu Jiantang and Tian Yutang (eds), Lishunde bainian fengyun (One hundred years of the Astor Hotel), Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1993, p. 311. Lee, Modem Canton, pp. 72-80. Li Ming and Qin Tan, ‘Minguo shiqi Hangzhou dianxun’ (Electronic communication in Hangzhou during the republican period) in Zhou Feng (ed.), Minguo shiqi Hangzhou (Hangzhou during the republican era), Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1997, pp. 361-2. Naval Intelligence Division, China proper, vol. 3, Economic geography, ports and communications, London: Geographical Handbook Series, 1945, p. 596. Liangyou, no. 112 (Dec. 1935), p. 15. Liang Shigiu, Liang Shigiu zizhuan (Autobiography of Liang Shiqiu), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996, p. 6. Zhang, Wode fugin Zhang Yuanji, p. 49. Peter Fleming, One's company:A journey to China, London: Jonathan Cape, 1934, p.277. Pu Yi, From emperor to citizen, translated by W. J. F Jenner, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1964, pp. 125-7; see also Reginald F Johnston, Tivilight in the forbidden city, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 271. Hosie, Portrait ofa Chinese lady, p. 263. Ling Shuhua, Gu yun (Ancient melodies), Beijing: Zhongguo huagiao chubanshe, 1994,p. 83. Luo Han,‘Hankou zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Hankou) in Xu Mingting (ed.), Wuhan zhuzhici (Bamboo verses on Wuhan), Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1999, p. 222. *Zhesheng kaiban lingshou dianhua’ (Hangzhou establishes public telephones), Shenbao, 7 Dec. 1907, 2:3. “Zuzhi gonggong dianhua fensuo’ (Setting up public telephones), Shenbao, 12 Jan. 1909, 1: Zhou, Shanghai shi daguan, n. p. City Government, Nanking, pp. 83-6. Naval Intelligence Division, China proper, vol. 3, Economic geography, ports and communications, London: Geographical Handbook Series, 1945, p. 596. W.E. Geil, Yankee on the Yangize, New York: Armstrong, 1904, pp. 224 and 269. Naval Intelligence Division, Economic geography, pp. 596-7. Chen, Chen Guangfu riji, pp. 18 €. Fullerton and Wilson, New China, p. 84. CHAPTER

SEVEN

Ronald G. Knapp, The Chinese house, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1990, pdt. Sarah Rossbach, Feng shui: The Chinese art of placement, New York: Dutton, 1983, p.676. 306

Notes

[pp. 156-61]

Jean Dickinson, Observations on the social life ofa north China village, Beijing: Department of Sociology, Yenching University, 1924, pp. 10-11.

16 7 18 19 20

2 22 23 24

John L. Buck, Chinese farm economy:A study of 2866 farms in seventeen localities and seven provinces in China, New York: Garland, 1982 (orig. 1930), pp. 400-1. This paragraph draws on S.A. M. Adshead, Material culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800, New York: St Martin's Press, 1997, pp. 103-23. Ferdinand PW. von Richthofen, Baron Richthofen's letters, 1870-1872, Shanghai: North-China Herald Office, 1903, p. 184. Jonathan Hay, ‘Painting and the built environment in late-nineteenth-century Shanghai’ in Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G, Smith (eds), Chinese art, modern expressions, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001, p. 75. Adshead, Material culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800, pp. 103-23. J. Dyer Ball, The Chinese at home, London: Religious Tract Society, 1911, p. 279. Knapp, The Chinese house, pp. 21-2. Franklin H. Smith, China and Indo-China markets for American lumber, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915, p. 19. LT. Headland, Home life in China, London: Methuen, 1914, pp. 301-4. J. R. Chitty, Things seen in China, London: Seeley, 1912, p. 56. Emily Hahn, The Soong sisters, London: Robert Hale, 1942, pp. 23-4. Bainian Shanghai tan (Shanghai in the past hundred years), Shanghai: Shanghai huabaoshe, 1990, p. 139. James Hsioung Lee, A half century of memories, Hong Kong: South China PhotoProcess Printing Co., n.d., 1960s, pp. 51-9. China Monthly Trade Report, 1 July 1932, p. 22. Su Su (ed.), Fushi huiying: Lao yuefenpai zhong de Shanghai shenghuo (Shanghai life as seen in old monthly calendars), Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2001, p. 47. Liang Yen, The house of the golden dragons, London: Souvenir Press, 1961, pp. 143-4. Zhang Ailing,‘Gongyu shenghuo jiqu’ (Amusing notes about life in a flat), Tiandi, no. 3 (Dec. 1943), repr. in Ma Fengyang (ed.), Shanghai; Jiyi yu xiangxiang (Shanghai: Memory and imagination), Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshe, 1996, pp. 95-101; Su Qing, ‘Ziji de fangjian’ (One’s own room) in Yu Zhi and Cheng Xinguo (eds), Jiu Shanghai fengging lu (Annals on old Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshe, 1998, pp. 252-4. Lin Xi, Lao Tianjin (Old Tianjin), Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1998, p.99. Ling Shuhua, Gu yun (Ancient melodies), Beijing: Zhongguo huagiao chubanshe, 1994, p. 90. Innes Jackson, China only yesterday, London: Faber and Faber, 1938, pp. 254-6. Carl Crow, Four hundred million customers, New York: Halcyon House, 1937, p. 269; Arthur Smith, writing about village construction in the late nineteenth century, described bricks as ‘well-made bread, full of air-holes'; Arthur H. Smith, Village life in China:A study in sociology, New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1899, p. 22. 307

[pp. 162-5] 25 26 27 28

Notes

Adrian Forty, Objects of desire: Design and society from Wedgwood to IBM, New York: Pantheon Books, 1986, pp. 100-8. “Wuchow’, Decennial reports, 1922-31, Shanghai: Statistical Department

Inspectorate General of Customs, 1933, p. 279.

of the

Zhu Huayu, Huagiao shehui shenghuo yu jiaoyu (Social life and education of over-

seas Chinese), Canton: Huaqiao wenti yanjiushe, 1937, pp. 114-7.

‘Report on the trade of Amoy, for the year 1904’, Report on the trade at the ports of

China for the year 1904, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1905, p. 648; ‘Report on the trade of Amoy, for the year 1908", Report on the trade at the ports of

China for the year 1908, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1909,p. 480.

Chen Da, Nanyang huagiao yu Min Yue shehui (Overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia and society in Fujian and Guangdong), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1938; see also Liu Shimu and Xu Zhigui, Huagiao gaiguan (General survey of overseas Chinese), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1935, pp. 50-3. 30 Chen, Nanyang huagiao yu Min Yue shehui, p. 116. 29

31 32 3

Ibid., p. 120.

Ibid., pp. 120-121. Shanghai shizhengfu shehuiju, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu (The living standards of workers

in Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai

shizhengfu, 1934,

pp. 137-8. 34 Cai Fengming, Shanghai dushi minsu (City folkways in Shanghai), Shanghai: Xue-

35

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

3008

lin chubanshe, 2001, p. 72; on the shikumen, see Lu Hanchao, Beyond the neon lights: Everyday Shanghai in the early twentieth century, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. In the case of Canton, see Alfred H.Y. Lin, ‘Warlord, social welfare and philan-

thropy: The case of Guangzhou under Chen Jitang, 1929-1936’, Modern China, 30, no. 2 (April 2004), pp. 151-98. Min-ch’ien T. Z. Tyau, China awakened, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922, p. 233.

Lee Bing-shuey, Modern Canton, Shanghai: Mercury Press, 1936, pp. 89-90. Zhang Deyi, Ou Mei huanyouji (Travel diary to Europe and America), Changsha:

Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 779.

Zhang Deyi, Hanghai shugi (Travels abroad), Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 484. Ibid., pp. 570-1. Cao Juren, Wo yu wo de shijie (I and my world), Taipei: Longwen chubanshe, 1990, p-36. “Da bolizhao’ (Big glass roof), Shenbao, 9 Feb. 1912, p. 8. Lou Xuexi, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang (Conditions of industry and commerce in Beijing), Beijing: Beiping shi shehuiju, 1932, p. 443. Imperial Maritime Customs, Catalogue spécial de la collection chinoise a Vexposition universelle, Paris, 1878, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1878,p. 9.

Notes

45

[pp. 165-6]

Yang Jingting, ‘Dumen zayong’ (Miscellany verses on Beijing) in Lei Mengshui et al. (eds), Zhonghua zhuzhici (Bamboo verses of China), Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 1997, p. 181. He Er, ‘Yantai zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Beijing) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici,

47 48 49

vol. 1, p. 194. Tai Susheng, ‘Shenyang baiyong’ (A hundred verses on Shenyang) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 1, p.626.

“Report on the trade of Newchwang, for the year 1865’, Report on the trade at

the ports of China for the year 1865, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1866, p. 20.

‘Report on the trade of Chinkiang, for the year 1882’, Report on the trade at the

ports of China for the year 1882, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1883, p. 141. 50 ‘Wang Tao, Yingruan zazhi (Miscellany on Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai guji

51 52 53

chubanshe, 1989, p. 115.

Chen Kun, ‘Lingnan zashi shichao’ (Poems on various matters of Lingnan) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhia, vol. 4, p. 2846.

W.E. Geil, Eighteen capitals of China, London: Constable, 1911, p. 171. Paul Myron, Our Chinese chances through Europe’s war, Chicago, IL: Linebarger, 1915, p. 171. Liu Shanlin, Xiyang feng: Xiyang faming zai Zhongguo (Inventions from the West

in China), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999, p. 202; on Boshan glass, see “Boshan boli gongshi zhi chengxiao’ (The success of the Boshan Glassware Com-

55 56 37

59 oo

pany), Shenbao, 29 June 1911, p. 2:2.

Crow, Four hundred million customers, p. 269.

Li Jinghan, Beiping jiaowai zhi xiangcun jiating (Families in the villages of Beijing's

suburbs), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1929, p. 74.

Ida Pruitt,A China childhood, San Francisco, CA: Chinese Materials Center, 1978,

p. 10. Zhang Zhongxing, Zhang Zhongxing juan (On Zhang Zhongxing), Beijing: Hua-

wen chubanshe, 1998, pp. 460-2.

Yuan Mei, Xiaocangshanfang shiwen ji (Collection of writings and poems from

the Xiaocang mountain studio), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988, vol. 1, p.353. Pruitt, A China childhood, p. 10; on the use ofpivots on top and bottom to make a door swing in crapaudine style, see RudolfP. Hommel, China at work, New York:

61 62 63

John Day, 1937, pp. 35 and 293.

Hommel, China at work, p. 301.

Imperial Maritime Customs, Port catalogues of the Chinese customs’ collection at the

Austro-Hungarian Universal Exhibition, Vienna, 1873, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs Press, 1873, p. 252.

Cited in Li Hangyu, Lao Hangzhou (Old Hangzhou), Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 2000, p. 80.

309

[pp. 166-72] 64 65 66 67 68 69

Notes

Smith, China and Indo-China markets for American lumber, p. 25.

Julean Arnold, Far Eastern markets for American hardware, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919, pp. 61 and 87. Ibid., p. 62. Rossbach, Feng shui, p. 113. W.E. Geil, Yankee on the Yangtze, New York: Armstrong, 1904, p. 48.

Mrs Archibald Little, Round about my Peking Garden, London: Fisher Unwin, 1905, p. 246.

70 Georg Wegener, Imm innersten China. Eine Forschungsreise durch die Provinz Kiang-si, n 72 73 74

Berlin: August Scherl, 1926, pp. 101-3. Dong Zhujun, Wode yige shiji (My century), Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1997, p.110. A.S.Roe, Chance and change in China, London: Heinemann, 1920, p. 145.

W.W.Yen, East-West kaleidoscope, 1877-1944: An autobiography by W.WYen, New: York: St John’s University Press, 1974, p. 2.

Arnold Wright, Tiventieth century impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other treaty ports of China, London: Lloyd’s, 1908, pp. 534, 537, 542-3, 556, 562; the wealthy

mansions of some compradors are briefly mentioned in Hao Yen-p’ing, The com-

prador in nineteenth century China: Bridge between East and West, Cambridge, MA: 75 76 n 8

Harvard University Press, 1970, p. 101.

‘Wang Zehua and Wang He, Minguo shigi de lao Chengdu (Chengdu in the republican era), Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1999, p. 42.

W. G. Sewell, The land and life of China, London: Edinburgh House Press, 1945,

pp. 81-2. Cecilia Sun Yun Chiang, The mandarin way, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1974, p. 30. D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, pp. 51-2 and

62.

9 Gerald Yorke, China changes, London: Jonathan Cape, 1935, p. 47. 80 S. Pollard, In unknown China, London: Seeley, 1921,p. 88. 81 Lou Xuexi, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang (Conditions of industry and com82 83

merce in Beijing), Beijing: Beiping shi shehuiju, 1932, pp. 507-9. Arnold Wright, Twventieth century impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other treaty

ports of China, London: Lloyd's, 1908, p. 203.

‘Shangyechang zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on the commercial centre) in Yang Xie

et al., Chengdu zhuzhici (Chengdu bamboo verses), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 232.

Olga Lang, Chinese family and society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1946, p.75. Jean Dickinson, Observations on the social life ofa north China village, Beijing: De85 partment ofSociology, Yenching University, 1924, pp. 12-13. 86 D. S. Hosie, Portrait ofa Chinese lady, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929, p.69. 84

47

3

Harrison Forman, Changing China, New York: Crown, 1948,p. 187.

Notes

[pp. 172-5]

88 Hosie, Brave new China, pp. 51-2. 89 Dickinson, Observations on social life, pp. 12-13. 90 Department of Overseas Trade, Economic conditions in China to August 30th, 1930, London: Stationery Office, 1930, p. 49. 91 Innes Jackson, China only yesterday, London: Faber and Faber, 1938, p. 33. 92 Zhejiang sheng gejie fayong guohuo hui (ed.), Guohuo diaocha lu (Record of an investigation into national goods), orig. 1934, Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 1976, p. 75. 93. J.Alexis Shriver, Canned-goods trade in the Far East, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915, p. 18. 94 Luo Han,‘Hankou zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Hankou) in Xu Mingting (ed.), Withan zhuzhici (Bamboo verses on Wuhan), Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1999,p. 232. 95 Emile Bard, Les chinois chez eux, Paris: Armand Colin, 1899, p. 35. 96 Ibid, p. 43. 97 Ida Pruitt, Old Madam Yin:A memoir of Peking life, 1926-1938, Stanford University Press, 1979, p. 44. 98 Ibid., p. 123. 99 Chiang, The mandarin way, p.5. 100 Deng Yunxiang, Lu Xun yu Beijing fengtu (Lu Xun and social customs in Beijing), Beijing: Wenshi ziliao chubanshe, 1982, pp. 176-7; RudolfP. Hommel, China at work, New York: John Day, 1937, p. 280. tor Mu Shiying,*Yan’ (Cigarettes) in Mu Shiying, Mu Shiying xiaoshuo (Short stories by Mu Shiying), Beijing: Jiuzhou tushu chubanshe, 1995, vol. 1, pp. 200-1. 12 Shi Zhecun, ‘Juanzi’, Xiaoshuo yuebao (Short stories monthly), 19, no. 1 (Jan. 1928), p. 78. 103 Junzhi,"Wo de xiao jiating shenghuo’ (My small family life), Jiating xinggi, 1, no. 6 (Dec. 1935), p. 11. 104 Mianzhi, ‘Guanyu xinfang de buzhi’ (About decorating a new room), Jiating xingqi, 1, no. 14 (March 1936), p. 13. 103, Wan Qiuhong, ‘Liangshuang de chenshe’ (A cool interior), Jiating, 3, no. 3 (Aug. 1938), pp. 42-3. 106 Beiyang huabao, no. 903 (7 March 1933), p. 2; on modern furniture in art magaZines, see Carrie Waara, ‘Invention, industry, art: The commercialization of culture in republican art magazines’ in Sherman Cochran (ed.), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Programme, 1999, pp. 61-90. 107 Chen Chusu, ‘Zhong Mei zhi jia’ (Homes in America and China), Niixuesheng zazhi, no. 3 (1912), pp. 52-72, quoted in Constance Orliski, ‘Reimagining the domestic sphere: Bourgeois nationalism and gender in Shanghai, 1904-1918", doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California, 1998, pp. 103-7. 8 E.J. Dingle, Across China on foot: Life in the interior and the reform movement, Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1911, pp. 102-3.

3

[pp. 175-8]

Notes

Chen Da, Nanyang huagiao yu Min Yue shehui (Overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia and society in Fujian and Guangdong), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1938, pp. 122-3 and 259. 110 Kenneth Lo, The feast of my life, London: Doubleday, 1993, p. 54. mt James Hsioung Lee, A half century of memories, Hong Kong: South China PhotoProcess Printing Co., n.d., 1960s, pp. 51-9. 112 Pu Yi, From emperor to citizen, translated by W. J. F Jenner, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1964,p. 113. M3 Nathaniel Peffer, China: The collapse of a civilization, London: Routledge, 1931, p.123. 114 Ellen N. LaMotte, Peking dust, New York: Century, 1919, p. 215. 115 Jing Ronghua and Shuai Ciping, Zhongguo Qingdai jiaju tulu (Illustrated record of Qing furniture), Beijing: Zhongguo linye chubanshe, 1999, p. 290. 116 Dickinson, Observations on social life, p. 13. 117 Edward T. Williams, China yesterday and to-day, London: George Harrap, 1923, p-149. 118 LT. Headland, Home life in China, London: Methuen, 1914, p. 232. 119 Ferdinand PW. von Richthofen, Baron Richthofen’s letters, 1870-1872, Shanghai: North-China Herald Office, 1903, p. 55. 120 Paul Myron, Our Chinese chances through Europe's war, Chicago, IL: Linebarger, 1915, p. 64. 121 Archibald R. Colquhoun, China in transformation, New York: Harper, 1899, p. 86. 122 ‘A history of the external trade of China, 1834-81’, Decennial reports, 1922-31, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1933, p. 119; ‘Report on the trade of Hankow, for the year 1877°, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1877, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1878, p. 12. 123 “Report on the trade of Ningpo, for the year 1877’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1877, p. 123. 124 Wu Lingjun, Meifi shiyou gongsi zai Zhongguo (1870-1933) (The Standard Oil Company in China, 1870-1933), Taipei: Daoxiang, 2001, p. 31. 125 “Report on the trade of Hankow, for the year 1880", Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1880, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1881, p. 49. 126 “Report on the trade of Chinkiang, for the year 1883", Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1883, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1884, p. 145; ‘Report on the trade of Chinkiang, for the year 1887’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1887, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1888,p. 155;‘Report on the trade of Kiungchow, for the year 1890", Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1890, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1891, p.515;‘Report on the trade of Foochow, for the year 1892", Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1892, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1893,p. 315. 0B

109

Notes

[pp. 178-81]

127 Albert Feuerwerker, The foreign establishment in China in the early twentieth century, ‘Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1976, p. 84. 128 Isabella L. Bird, The Yangtze valley and beyond, London: John Murray, 1899, p. 66. 129 ‘Report on the trade ofWuchow, for the year 1901’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1901, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1902, p. 660. 130 Williams, China yesterday and to-day, pp. 535 and 652. 131 John S. Service, Golden inches: The China memoir of Grace Service, Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press, 1989, p. 41 and 64. 132. Wang and Wang, Minguo shigi de lao Chengdu, p. 42. 133 Gretchen Mae

Fitkin, The great river: The story of a voyage on the Yangtze Kiang,

Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1922, p. 101.

134 Wegener, Im innersten China, p. 41.

135 Roe, Chance and change in China, p. 26.

136 Albert Feuerwerker, The foreign establishment in China in the early twentieth century,

p. 84.

137 Carl Crow, Foreign devils in the flowering Kingdom, New York: Harper, 1940.

138 Wegener, Im innersten China, pp. 346-7. 139 Brian H. Low, ‘The standard of living’ in John L. Buck, Land utilization in China,

Nanjing: University of Nanking, 1937, p. 459. 140 Wa, Meifu shiyou gongsi zai Zhongguo (1870-1933), p. 40. 141 Xie Bingying, Yige miibing de zizhuan (Autobiography of a woman soldier),

Shanghai: Liangyou tushu yinshua gongsi, 1937, p. 18.

142 Zhao Yuanren, Zaonian zizhuan (Autobiography of my early years), Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1984, p. 9. 143. Li Xianwen, Li Xianwen zizhuan (Autobiography of Li Xianwen), Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1970,p. 8. 144 Feng Jiaji,‘Jincheng zhuzhici baiyong’ (A hundred bamboo verses from Chengdu) in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhici, p. 81. 143 Chiang Monlin, Tides from the West:A Chinese autobiography, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1947, pp. 34-5. 146 Julean Arnold, Far Eastern markets for American hardware, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919, p. 92.

147 S.A.M.Adshead, Material culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800, New York: Martin’s Press, 1997, p. 147.

St

148. Deng Yunxiang, Yanjing xiangtu ji (Local customs of Beijing), Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 1986, pp. 172-3. 149 Colquhoun, China in transformation, p. 60.

150 Sidney D. Gamble, How Chinese families live in Peiping, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1933, p. 149.

151 Deng, Yanjing xiangtu ji, pp. 293-4. 152 Deng, Lu Xun yu Beijing fengtu, pp. 172-3; see also Lu Xun, Lu Xun riji (Diary of Lu Xun), Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1962, p. 25. 313

Notes [pp. 181-84] 153 Zhu Ziqing, Zhu Ziging zizhuan (Autobiography of Zhu Ziqing), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1997,p. 14. 154 Shanghai shizhengfu shehuiju, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu (The living standards of workers in Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai shizhengfu, 1934, p. 153.

“China as a machine market’, Far Eastern Review, 26, no.9 (Sept. 190), pp. 483 and 489,

156 Liangyou, no. 20 (30 Oct. 1927), p. 14. 157 Liangyou, no. 78 (July 1933), p. 35. 158 Ouyang Pu, ‘Dongyi’ (Winter feeling), Liangyou, no. 82 (Dec. 1933), p. 3. 159 John B. Powell, My twenty-five years in China, New York: Macmillan, 1945, pp. 21 and 23.

160 Ge Yuanxu, Shanghai fanchang ji (Notes on Shanghai), orig. 1877, Taipei: Wenhai

chubanshe, 1988, pp. 181-2. 161 Wau Youru, Haishang baiyan tu (A hundred beauties of Shanghai), Changsha: Hunan meishu chubanshe, 1998, p. 42.

162 Zhou Zuoren, Zhitang huixianglu (Autobiography), Taipei: Longwen chubanshe, 163

1989, vol. 1, p. 129.

Chen Dunchuan, ‘Titoupu’ (The barber), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), no. 58 (July

1990), p. 103. 164 Peter Fleming, One’s company:A journey to China, London: Jonathan Cape, 1934,

p-233.

165 Liu Jiantang and Tian Yotang 166 167

(eds), Lishunde bainian fengyun (One hundred years of the Astor Hotel), Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1993,p. 317.

Liang Shigiu, Liang Shigiu zizhuan (Autobiography of Liang Shigiu), Suzhou:

Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996, p. 6.

Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui (ed.), Sanshi nianlai zhi Zhongguo gongcheng (Thirty years of engineering in China), Shanghai: Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui, 1946, p. 577; see also Pan Junxiang, Zhongguo jindai guohuo yundong (The

168

national goods movement in modern China), Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1996, pp. 172-3. Pan, Zhongguo jindai guohuo yundong, p. 173; see also ‘Chuangzhi Zhongguo dian-

im

Lundquist, Electrical goods in China, Japan, and Vladivostok, Washington, DC: Gov-

fengshan de Yang Jichuan jun’ (Yang Jichuan, creator of the electric fan industry in China), Shenghuo zhoukan, 6, no. 25 (30 June 1931), n. p. 169 Zhejiang sheng, Guohuo diaocha lu, pp. 6-7. 170 Xingzhengyuan nongcun fuxing weiyuanhui, Jiangsu sheng nongcun diaocha (Investigation into the villages of Jiangsu), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1934, p.80. ernment Printing Office, 1918, pp. 82-3.

172 Arthur J. Brown, New forces in old China, New York: Revell, 1904, p. 113. 173 Chiang, Tides from the West, p. 34. 174 Cao Juren, Wo yu wo de shijie (I and my world), Taipei: Longwen chubanshe, 1990,

p.36.

3i4

Notes

[pp. 184-9]

A lacklustre discussion of the clock in republican Shanghai appears in Yeh Wen-

hsin, ‘Corporate space, communal time: Everyday life in Shanghai’s Bank of China’, American Historical Review, 100, no. 1 (Feb. 1995), pp. 99-102.

176 Powell, My twenty-five years in China, p. 200. 177 “Report on the trade of Pakhoi, for the year 1882", Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1882, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1883, p.370.

178 Petr K. Kozlev, Mongolei, Amdo und die tote Stadt Chara-Choto. Die Expedition der Russischen Geographischen Gesellschaft, 1907-1909, Berlin: Neufeld and Henius,

1925, p. 10.

179 Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187

meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p.

Zhou, Shanghai shi daguan, n. p.

Zhejiang sheng, Guohuo diaocha lu, pp. 40-3. Wegener, Im innersten China, p. 328. Dickinson, Observations on social life, pp. 12-13. Yang Buwei, Autobiography ofa Chinese woman, New York: John Day, 1947, p. 39. Ibid., pp. 29 and 86. Nora Waln, The house of exile, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1933, p. 62.

“Report on the trade of Chinkiang, for the year 1883’, Report on the trade at the

ports of China for the year 1883, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1884, p. 145. 188 Tuhua ribao (Pictorial daily), Shanghai: Shanghai guji shudian, 1999, vol. 6, p. 125.

189 Sarah Rossbach, Feng shui: The Chinese art of placement, New York: Dutton, 1983,

pp. 68-75. 190 M. B.Treudley, The men and women of Chung Ho Ch’ang, Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971, pp. 39 and 178. 191 Piper R. Gaubatz, Beyond the Great Wall: Urban form and transformation on the Chinese frontiers, Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 143-4. 192 Derek Walters, The feng shui handbook:A practical guide to Chinese geomancy, London: Aquarian Press, 1991, p. 152. 193 Rossbach, Feng shui, p. 107. 194 Tom O. Jones, Motor vehicles in Japan, China, and Hawaii, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918, pp. 44, 49, 56-8.

195, ‘Swatow’, Decennial reports, 1922-31, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the In-

spectorate General of Customs, 1933, p. 162.

CHAPTER EIGHT Pu Yi, From emperor to citizen, translated by W. J. F Jenner, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1964, pp. 112-14 and 210. Ibid., pp. 211-12.

(pp. 190-5] 3

Notes

See for instance Daniel Roche, La culture des apparences. Une histoire du vétement,

XVIEXVIIle siecle, Paris: Fayard, 1989, Emma Tarlo, Clothing matters: Dress and identity in India, London: Hurst, 1996.

Lu Xun, ‘Shanghai girls’ in Lu Xun: Selected works, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1980, vol. 3, p. 332.

Shenbao, ‘Supplement’, 5 Feb. 1933. Lin Yutang, Moment in Peking:A novel of contemporary Chinese life, New York: John Day, 1939, p.792. Philip C. C. Huang, The peasant family and rural development in the Yangzi delta, 1350-1988, Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 44. S.A. M.Adshead, Material culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800, New York:

St

Martin’s Press, 1997, pp. 847, quotation on p. 86.

John Styles, ‘Product innovation in early modern London’, Past and Present, no. 10 u 12

168 (Aug. 2000), pp. 132-40.

On the meanings and uses of opium, see Frank Dikétter, Lars Laamann

and

Zhou Xun, Narcotic culture:A history of drugs in China, London: Hurst; University of Chicago Press, 2004.

‘Report on the trade of Ningpo, for the year 1869’, Report on the trade at the ports of

China for the year 1869, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1870, p. 54.

Ferdinand P. W. von Richthofen, Baron Richthofen’s letters, 1870-1872, Shanghai: North-China Herald Office, 1903, p. 179.

Hosea B. Morse, The trade and administration of the Chinese empire, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1908, p. 286. 14 Ibid., p. 287. “Synopsis of external trade’, Decennial reports, 1922-31, Shanghai: Statistical De13,

16 7 18

partment of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1933, p. 151.

Morse, The trade and administration of the Chinese empire, p. 287.

Francis H. Nichols, Through hidden Shensi, New York: Charles Scribner, 1902,

pp. 249-50.

“Report on the trade of Yatung (Thibet), for the year 1894”, Report on the trade ar

the ports of China for the year 1894, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1895, p. 627. 19 ‘Report on the trade ofWuchow, for the year 1901’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1901, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1902,p. 660.

20

Richard A. Kraus, Cotton and cotton goods in China, 1918-1936, New York: Gar-

land, 1980, p. 2; Huang, Peasant family and rural development, p. 152. Kraus, Cotton and cotton goods in China, p. 98. Ibid., p. 116. Trade reports,"Report on the trade of China, 1936’, 1936. Kraus, Cotton and cotton goods in China, pp. 126~7; see also a remarkable article by Albert Feuerwerker, ‘Handicraft and manufactured cotton textiles in China,

1871-1910", The Journal of Economic History, 30, no. 2 (June 1970), pp. 338-78.

316

Notes

[pp. 195-9]

Cai Tingkai, Cai Tingkai zizhuan (Autobiography of Cai Tingkai), Taipei: Longwen chubanshe, 1989, p. 13. 26 Feng Yuxiang, Wode shenghuo (My life), no publication details, p. 21. 27 Huang Kecheng, Huang Kecheng zishu (Autobiography of Huang Kecheng), Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1994, p. 4. W.W.Yen, East-West kaleidoscope, 1877-1944:An autobiography by WWYen, New York: St John’s University Press, 1974, p. 4. 29 Imperial Maritime Customs, New Orleans Exposition, 1884-5, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1884, pp. 50-1 and 73. 0 On dress during the republican era the essential study is A. C. Scott, Chinese costume in transition, Singapore: Moore, 1958; see also Claire Roberts (ed.), Evolution and revolution: Chinese dress, 1700s—1990s, Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing, 1997, and Valerie Steele and John S. Major (eds), China chic: East meets West, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. On fashion in rarefied elite discourse, as opposed to clothes in everyday life, see the special issue of Positions, vol. 11, no. 2 (fall 2003). M Wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui (ed.), Xinhai geming huiyi lu (Reminiscences about the revolution of 1911), Beijing: Wenshi ziliao chubanshe, 1981,p. 366. Gu Weijun, Gu Weijun huiyilu (Reminiscences of Gu Weijun), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983, p. 86.

Innes Jackson, China only yesterday, London: Faber and Faber, 1938, p. 49. Paul Myron, Our Chinese chances through Europe’s war, Chicago, IL: Linebarger, 1915, p.55.

42

Dorothy Fox, My nightmare journey, London: Bedlow, 1927, p. 13. Department of Overseas Trade, Economic conditions in China to August 30th, 1930, London: Stationery Office, 1930,p. 49. Pan Junxiang, Zhongguo jindai guohuo yundong (The national goods movement in modern China), Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1996, p. 78. Lin Yutang, My country and my people, New York: John Day, 1935, p. 170. Chen Da, Nanyang huagiao yu Min Yue shehui (Overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia and society in Fujian and Guangdong), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1938, p. 102. M. B.Treudley, The men and women of Chung Ho Ch'ang, Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971,p. 40. Lou Xuexi, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang (Conditions of industry and commerce in Beijing), Beijing: Beiping shi shehuiju, 1932,p. 205. Zhang Shunian, Wode fugin Zhang Yuanji (My father Zhang Yuanji), Shanghai:

43 44 45

Scott, Chinese costume, pp. 67-8. Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, p. 228. Imperial Maritime Customs, Catalogue spécial de la collection chinoise 4 l'exposition

46

Von Perckhammer, Peking, p. 72.

36 37 38 39. 40 4

Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 1997, p. 44.

universelle, Paris, 1878, p. 34.

3i7

[pp. 199-202] 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 35 56 37 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 m0

318

Notes

Alfred Chapuis, La montre chinoise, Geneva: Slatkine, 1983, pp. 200-1. Zhang Deyi, Hanghai shugi (Travels abroad), Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p-547. Chiang Yee, The silent traveller in London, Oxford: Signal Books, 2002, p. 133. Scott, Chinese costume, pp. 2 and 78. Cecilia Sun Yun Chiang, The mandarin way, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1974, p.63. Scott, Chinese costume, p. 2; see also Antonia Finnane, ‘What should Chinese women wear”, Modern China, 22, no. 2 (April 1996), pp. 99-131. “Corsets for Chinese’, North China Herald, 4 March 1922, p. 603. Xie Jiaju,‘Bayu zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Chongqing) in Lei Mengshui et al. (eds), Zhonghua zhuzhici (Bamboo verses of China), Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 1997, vol. 5, p. 3328. 1.T. Headland, Home life in China, London: Methuen, 1914, p. 305. A.S. Roe, Chance and change in China, London: Heinemann, 1920, p. 27. Anor Adet and Meimei Lin, Dawn over Chungking, New York: John Day, 1941, p.35. See, for instance, Weikun Cheng, ‘Politics of the queue: Agitation and resistance in the beginning and end of Qing China’ in Alf Hiltebeitel and Barbara D. Miller (eds), Hair: Its power and meaning in Asian cultures, New York: State University of New York Press, 1998, pp. 123-42, and Henrietta Harrison, The making of the republican citizen: Political ceremonies and symbols in China, 1911-1929, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 30-41. Tongsu huabao, no. 40, 1912, reproduced in Wang Di, Street culture in Chengdu: Public space, urban commoners, and local politics, 1870-1930, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 127. Headland, Home life in China, pp. 304-5. Scott, Chinese costume, p. 75. H.A.Van Dorn, Tiventy years of the Chinese republic: Tivo decades of progress, New York: Knopf, 1932, p. 259. Scott, Chinese costume, p. 81. Reed Darmon, Made in China, San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2004, pp. 20-1. Headland, Home life in China, p. 304. RudolfP. Hommel, China at work, New York: John Day, 1937, p. 204. C.E. Bosworth, Shoe and leather trade of China and Japan, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918, p. 10. Fu Chongju, Chengdu tonglan (Guide to Chengdu), orig. 1909, Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1987, vol. 2, p. 125. Bao Tianxiao, Yi shi zhu xing de bainian biangian (A hundred years ofchanges in everyday life), Hong Kong: Dahua chubanshe, 1974, p. 33. Zeng Xubai, Zeng Xubai zizhuan (Zeng Xubai’s autobiography), Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1988, vol. 1, pp. 46-7

Notes n nR 73 14

75 76 n 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 1

[pp. 202-4]

Beiyang huabao, no. 81 (23 April 1927), p. 4; George N. Kates, The years that were fat: The last of old China, Cambridge, MA: M.LT. Press, 1967, p. 29. Department of Overseas Trade, Economic conditions in China to August 30th, 1930, London: Stationery Office, 1930, p. 49. Hu Piyun, Jiujing shizhao (Historical photographs of old Beijing), Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1997, p. 260. Shih Kuo-heng, China enters the machine age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944, pp. 81 and 92; Fei Hsiao-tung and Chang Chih-i, Earthbound China: A study of rural economy in Yunnan, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948, pp. 91 and 247. Yuan Xiangfa,‘Xu Hushang zhuzhici’ (Sequel to the bamboo verses on Shanghai) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 2, p. 807. Liang Shigiu, Liang Shigiv zizhuan (Autobiography of Liang Shiqiu), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996, pp. 13 and 22. Xia Yan, Xia Yan zizhuan (Autobiography of Xia Yan), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996, p. 13. Feng, Wode shenghuo, p. 14. Li Zongren, Li Zongren huiyilu (Reminiscences of Li Zongren), Guilin: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1980, pp. 41-2 and 46. Liang Desuo, Ruocao (Like grass), Shanghai: Liangyou tushu yinshua gongsi, 1928, p27. Yu Dafa, Yu Dafu zizhuan (Autobiography of Yu Dafu), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996, p. 14. Chen, Nanyang huagiao yu Min Yue shehui, p. 103. Bosworth, Shoe and leather trade of China and Japan, p. 10; see also R. P. Lamont, Marketing American leather in China, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1930. See Dorothy Ko, Every step a lotus: Shoes for bound feet, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001, pp. 134-5. Wang Yingxia, Wang Yingxia zizhuan (Autobiography of Wang Yingxia), Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1990, p. 14. Sherman Cochran, ‘Transnational origins of advertising in early ewentieth-century China’ in Sherman Cochran (ed.), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Programme, 1999, p. 44, Liang Yen, The house of the golden dragons, London: Souvenir Press, 1961, p. 81. ‘Jingian yu aiging’ (Money and love), Libailiu, no. 165 (17 June 1922), p. 31. Liu Shiliang, “Xinshi meiren zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on new-style beauties) in Yang Xie et al., Chengdu zhuzhici (Chengdu bamboo verses), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 107. Jing’an, ‘Chengdu zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Chengdu) in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhici, p. 197. Lin, My country and my people, p. 168. 319

(pp. 204-6]

Notes

92 93

New Orleans Exposition, 1884-5, pp. 64-5.

94 95

D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, p. 190.

Shanghai shizhengfu shehuiju, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu (The living standards of workers in Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai shizhengfa, 1934, p. 152. Chen, Nanyang huagiao yu Min Yue shehui, p. 103. Mao Zedong, Report from Xunwu, Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 94.

97 Scott, Chinese costume, p. 74. 98 Guzhai, ‘Chengdu huahui zhuzhici’ in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhici, p. 161.

Scott, Chinese costume, p. 74.

100 Olga Lang, Chinese family and society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

1946, p.74. 101 Quanguo jingji weiyuanhui, Xiangjiao gongye baogaoshu (Report on the rubber industry), 1935, n. p.

102 Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China, 1931-33, London: Stationery Office, 1933, p. 139.

103 Shanghai shi wenxian weiyuanhui (ed.), Shanghai shi nianjian (Shanghai year-

book), Shanghai shi wenxian weiyuanhui, 1947, pp. N25-6.

104 Liu Shanlin, Xiyang feng: Xiyang faming zai Zhongguo (Inventions from the West in

China), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999, pp. 182-3. 105 Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, p. 205. 106 Alain Corbin, The foul and the fragrant: Odor and the French social imagination, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986; see also Georges Vigarello, Concepts of cleanliness: Changing attitudes in France since the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

107 In imperial China, too, the wealthy carried either rings or necklaces made of scented wood, while sachets with musk, camphor or sandalwood were worn around the neck during the torrid summer days as disinfectants; Imperial Mari-

time Customs, Catalogue spécial de la collection chinoise 2 Vexposition universelle, Paris, 1878, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1878, pp. 18—

19; for an illustration see Daily life in the Qing dynasty, Hong Kong: Regional

Council, 1987, p. 90. 108 This section relies on Frank Dikétter, Sex, culture and modernity in China: Medical

science and the construction of sexual identities in the early republican period, London: Hurst; Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995, chapter 5; on hygiene see

also Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic modernity: Meanings of health and disease in treaty-port China, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.

109 Léon Wieger, Moralisme officiel des écoles, en 1920, Hien-hien, 1921, original Chi-

nese text, p. 168.

110 “Renjun zhanzheng’ (The struggle between bacteria and man), Dagongbao, 15 Dec. 1936, 3:11.

wt Yu Fengbin, Weisheng conghua (Chats on hygiene), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu-

guan, 1927, vol. 3, pp. 1-2.

3200

Notes 112 113 14 115 116 117 118

119 120

121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

129 130

[pp. 206-8]

Adrian Forty, Objects of desire: Design and society from Wedgwood to IBM, New York: Pantheon Books, 1986, p. 180. “Dongyang wucai xiangfeizao’ (Japanese Five Colour Fragrant Soap), Shenbao, 2 Dec. 1883, n. p. *Xindao feizao' (New arrival of soap), Shenbao, 5 Aug. 1893, n. p. Tuhua ribao (Pictorial daily), Shanghai: Shanghai guji shudian, 1999, vol. 1, p-308. Lu Xun, Diary of a madman and other stories, University of Hawaii Press, 1990, pp. 264-6. Ida Pruitt,A China childhood, San Francisco, CA: Chinese Materials Center, 1978, p47. Timothy Burke, ‘Bodies and things: Toiletries and commodity culture in postwar Zimbabwe’ in Daniel Miller (ed.), Consumption: Critical concepts in the social sciences, vol. 2, The history and regional development of consumption, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 13-15. Feng Jiaji,'Jincheng zhuzhici baiyong’ (A hundred bamboo verses from Chengdu) in Yang Xie et al., Chengdu zhuzhici (Chengdu bamboo verses), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 83. ‘Wu Huaiyi, ‘Chengdu xiaochi yiwang’ (Memories of local delicacies in Chengdu), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), no. 55 (Feb. 1990), pp. 136-7; Li Dounan, ‘Qingyang, huahui zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on the flower fair at the Qingyang temple) in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhici, p. 202. A.S. Roe, Chance and change in China, London: Heinemann, 1920, p. 26. Harrison Forman, Changing China, New York: Crown, 1948,p. 187. Xin Ping, Cong Shanghai faxian lishi: Xiandaihua jinchengzhong de Shanghai ren jiqi shehui shenghuo (Discovering history from Shanghai: Social life in modernising Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1996, p. 471. Quoted in Wang Zehua and Wang He, Minguo shiqi de lao Chengdu (Chengdu in the republican era), Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1999, p. 43. Harold Speakman, Beyond Shanghai, New York: Abingdon Press, 1922, p. 79. Feng, ‘Jincheng zhuzhici baiyong’ (A hundred bamboo verses from Chengdu), p-84. Zhejiang sheng gejie fuyong guchuo hui (ed.), Guohuo diaocha Iu (Record of an investigation into national goods), orig, 1934, Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 1976, pp. 4-12. Tu Shipin, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Zhongguo tushushe, 1948, vol. 2, p. 73; see also Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui (ed.), Sanshi nianlai zhi Zhongguo gongcheng (Thirty years of engineering in China), Shanghai: Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui, 1946, p. 769. Carl Crow, Four hundred million customers, New York: Halcyon House, 1937, p. 36. Cecilia Sun Yun Chiang, The mandarin way, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1974, pp. 105-6, 321

[pp. 208-10]

Notes

Hu Puan, Zhonghua quanguo fengsu zhi (Record on customs in China), orig. 1935. Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 1986, vol. 2, p. 5. 132 Liang Yen, The house of the golden dragons, London: Souvenir Press, 1961, pp. 65-6 131

and 71.

133 Adeline 134 135,

Yen Mah, Falling leaves: The true story of an unwanted Chinese daughter, London: Michael Joseph, 1997, pp. 8-9. Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p. Reed Darmon, Made in China, San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2004, pp. 68-9. Darmon, Made in China, p. 71.

136 137 Liangyou huabao (Young companion), no. 10 (1936), n. p. 138 Zhejiang sheng, Guohuo diaocha lu, pp. 4-17. 139 Crow, Four hundred million customers, p. 36. 140 Yang Runan, Beiping xijiao liushisi cun shehui gaikuang diaocha

(Investigation into the social conditions in sixty-four villages in the western suburbs of Beijing), Beijing: Guoli Beiping daxue nongxueyuan, 1935, p.5; Li Jinghan, Beiping jiaowai zhi xiangcun jiating (Families in the villages of Beijing's suburbs), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1929, p. 58. 141 M. B.Treudley, The men and women of Chung Ho Ch’ang, Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971, p. 95. 142 RudolfP. Hommel, China at work, New York: John Day, 1937, p. 117; Benn, Daily life in traditional China, p. 115. 143 Fu Chongju, Chengdu tonglan (Guide to Chengdu), orig. 1909, Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1987, vol. 2, p. 74. 144 Zhejiang sheng, Guohuo diaocha lu, pp. 53-8. 145, Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui (ed.), Sanshi nianlai zhi Zhongguo gongcheng, pp. 769-70; Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p.; Zhejiang sheng, Guohuo diaocha lu, p. 2. 146 Liang Jingwu et al. (eds), Lao guanggao (Old advertisements), Beijing: Longmen shuju, 1999, p. 87. 147 Gerald Yorke, China changes, London: Jonathan Cape, 1935, p. 51. 148 Pan Junxiang, Zhongguo jindai guohuo yundong (The national goods movement in modern China), Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1996, p. 103. 149 Daihua, ‘Jiashi yide’ (Ideas for home), Jiating, 16, no. 4 (March 1949), p. 57. 150 Liang, House of the golden dragons, p. 57. 151 Li Xianwen, Li Xianwen zizhuan (Autobiography of Li Xianwen),Taipei: Shangwu 152 153 322

yinshuguan, 1970, p. 16.

Shanghai shizhengfa shehuiju, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu (The living standards of workers in Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai shizhengfu, 1934, pp. 157— 60 and 179.

D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, p. 199.

Notes

(pp. 210-13]

154 D. S. Hosie, Portrait ofa Chinese lady, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929,

pp.74-5.

155 Li, Beiping jiaowai zhi xiangcun jiating, p. 58; Li, Dingxian shehui gaikuang diaocha,

p. 280.

156 See, for instance, Xiushen jiaokeben (Textbook on proper deportment), Chang-

chun: Xingya chubanshe, 1933. 157 Lou Xuexi, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang (Conditions of industry and commerce in Beijing), Beijing: Beiping shi shehuiju, 1932, p. 630. 158 Richard P. Dobson, China cycle, London: Macmillan, 1946, pp. 82-3. 159 Roe, Chance and change in China, p. 81. 160 He Qinze, ‘Xi'an shangshi xinyong’ (New poem on businesses in Xi'an)

in Lei Mengshui et al. (eds), Zhonghua zhuzhici (Bamboo verses ofChina), Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 1997, vol. 5, p. 3673; see also He Qinze,‘Qingmen zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Xi'an) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 5, p. 3677.

161 ‘Tuhua ribao, vol. 2, p. 295. 162 Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, p. 630. 163 C.F Gordon Cumming, Wanderings in China, London: William Blackwood, 1886,

pp. 296-7.

164 J.A.Turner, Kwang Tung, or five years in south China, Hong Kong: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1988 (1st edn 1894), p. 136.

165 Liang Shigiu, Liang Shigiu zizhuan (Autobiography of Liang Shiqiu), Suzhou: 166

Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996, p. 12. ‘Xiangyu, ‘Chengdu de diyijia xinshi lifadian’ (The first modern barber in

167

Chen Dunchuan,‘Titoupu’ (The barber), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), no. 58 (July

Chengdu), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), no. 48 (Nov. 1988), pp. 54-5. 1990),p. 103.

168 Zhou Zhiying, Xin Chengdu (New Chengdu), Chengdu: Beixin shuju, 1943,

pp. 238-9.

169 Zheng Yunxia, ‘Lifa chungiu’ (Stories about hairdressing), Longmenzhen (Story-

telling), 66 (Nov. 1991), pp. 81-2.

170 Tuhua ribao, vol. 3, p. 463. 171 Zheng , ‘Lifa chunqiu’, pp. 80-1. 172 Mao Zedong, Report from Xunwu, Stanford University Press, 1990,p. 103. 173 Shen Nianxian, ‘Lifaye huajiu’ (Recollections about the hair-dressing trade) in

Shi Fukang (ed.), Shanghai shehui daguan (An overview of Shanghai society), Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2000, p. 88.

174 Beiyang huabao, no. 896 (18 Feb. 1933), p. 2. 175; Min-ch’ien T. Z. Tyau, China awakened, New York: The Macmillan Company, 176

1922, p. 86.

Imperial Maritime Customs, Catalogue spécial de la collection chinoise a exposition universelle, Paris, 1878, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1878, p. 36.

17 J. Dyer Ball, The Chinese at home, London: Religious Tract Society, 1911, p. 238.

323

[pp. 213-16] 178 179 180 181 182

Notes

Shenbao, 13 Nov. 1907, p. 13; see also Shenbao, 16 Jan. 1908, 2:6.

Tuhua ribao, vol. 2, p. 68.

Tuhua ribao, vol. 3, p. 535. Shenbao, 18 March 1911; also cf. Tuhua ribao, vol. 1, p. 587. Zhu Ziyi, “Xu Yangcheng zhuzhici’ (Sequel to the bamboo verses on Canton) in

Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 4, p. 3015.

183 He Qinze, ‘Qingmen zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Xi'an) in Lei, Zhonghua 184 185, 186 187 188,

zhuzhici, vol. 5, p. 3676.

Shanghai shizhengfu, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu, pp. 157-60. Mao, Report from Xunwu, p. 109. Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, pp. 276-7. Yang Jingting, ‘Dumen zayong’ (Miscellany verses on Beijing) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, p. 181; see also Joseph P. McDermott, ‘Chinese lenses and Chinese art’, Kaikodo Journal, no. 19 (spring 2001), pp. 9-29.

Imperial Maritime Customs, Exposition universelle de Lidge en 1905. Catalogue spécial des objets exposés dans la section chinoise, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the

Inspectorate General, 1905, p. 12; Elsie McCormick, Audacious angles on China,

New York: Appleton, 1924, p. 36.

189 Liu Shanlin, Xiyang feng: Xiyang faming zai Zhongguo (Inventions from the West in 190 191 192 193, 194 195 196

China), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999, p. 5. Tuhua ribao, vol. 2, p. 68.

Ibid., p. 451. *Modeng xuzhi’ Basics of modernity), Beiyang huabao, no. 663 (13 Aug. 1931), p. 2.

Feng, ‘Jincheng zhuzhici baiyong’, p. 84.

Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, pp. 261-2.

Treudley, The men and women of Chung Ho Ch’ang, p.97.

Liu Shiliang, ‘Chengdu Qingyanggong huashi zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on the flower fair at the Qingyang temple in Chengdu) in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhici, p. 88;

see also Zhong Bin, ‘Hankou xinnian zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on New Year in Hankou) in Xu Mingting (ed.), Wishan zhuzhici (Bamboo verses on Wuhan),

‘Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1999, pp. 277-8. 197 Shen Yun, ‘Shenghu zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Shengze) in Lei, Zhonghua 198

zhuzhici, vol. 3, p. 2071. Luo Han, ‘Hankou zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Hankou) in Xu, Wishan zhuzhi-

ci, p. 246.

199 Hommel, China at work, p. 196. 200 Heinz von Perckhammer, Peking, Berlin: Albertus Verlag, 1928, pp. 36, 94 and 117. 201 Eileen Chang, ‘Chinese life and fashions’, Tiventieth Century,4, no. 1 (1943), p.59. 202 Reginald F Johnston, Tivilight in the forbidden city, Hong Kong: Oxford University

Press, 1985, p. 273.

203 Katherine Morris Lester, Bess Viola Oerke and Helen Westermann, An illustrated history of those frills and furbelows

shion which have come to be known as: Acessories

of dress, Peoria, IL: Charles A. Bennett, 1940, pp. 389-99.

Notes

[pp. 216-19]

204 Zhang Biwu, ‘Rendao’ (Humanity), Libailiu, no. 117 (9 July 1921), p. 41 205 Tyau, China awakened, pp. 85-6. 206 Imperial Maritime Customs, Catalogue spécial de la collection chinoise @ Vexposition

universelle, Paris, 1878, p. 21.

207 Ministry of Trade, China industrial handbooks: Chekiang, Taipei: Cheng Wen, 1973,

p.718.

208 ‘Report on the trade of Pakhoi, for the year 1882’, Report on the trade at the ports of

China for the year 1882, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1883,p. 370.

209 ‘Report on the trade of Pakhoi, for the year 1894’, Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1894, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1895, p-575; see also ‘Report on the trade of Swatow, for the year 1896", Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1896, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1897, p. 413.

Wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui (ed.), Xinhai geming huiyi lu (Reminiscences

about the revolution of 1911), Beijing: Wenshi

Roe, Chance and change in China, p. 27.

ziliao chubanshe, 1981,p. 366.

Mao, Report from Xunwu, p. 96. Zhejiang sheng, Guohuo diaocha lu, pp. 61-3.

Frank Dikétter, The discourse of race in modern China, Stanford University Press; London: Hurst, 1992.

Li Zongren, Li Zongren huiyilu (Reminiscences of Li Zongren), Guilin: Guangxi

renmin chubanshe, 1980, p. 16; for a slightly different version of this belief, see ‘Re-

port on the trade of Ichang, for the year 1904’, Report on the trade at the ports of China

for the year 1904, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1905,p. 182.

216 Imperial Maritime Customs, Port catalogues of the Chinese customs’ collection at the

Austro-Hungarian Universal Exhibition, Vienna, 1873, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs Press, 1873, p. 386.

Liangyou, no. 107 (July 1935), pp. 4-5. Ministry of Trade, China industrial handbooks: Chekiang, p. 718. Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, pp. 261-2. Ibid., pp. 437 and 441.

‘Report on the trade of Wenchow, for the year 1892’, Report on the trade at the

ports of China for the year 1892, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1893, p. 295; see also Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan huiyilu (Recollections of Qi Rushan), Taipei: Zhongyang wenwu gongyingshe, 1956, p. 8.

222 Chen, Chunshen jiuwen, p. 151.

CHAPTER NINE Sidney W. Mintz, ‘The changing roles of food in the study of consumption’ in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the world of goods, London: Routledge, 1993, p. 263.

[pp. 219-22] 2

10 1 12

13 14 15 16 7 18 19 20 21 22 23

326

Notes

Stephen Mennell, All manners of food: Eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present, London: Blackwell, 1985, pp. 321 and 329. K.C. Chang, Food in Chinese culture: Anthropological and historical perspectives, New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 197. Pu Yi, From emperor to citizen, translated by W. J. F Jenner, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1964, p. 112. Emily Hahn, The Soong sisters, London: Robert Hale, 1942, p. 24. John S. Service, Golden inches: The China memoir of Grace Service, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989, p. 249. Zhang Ailing, ‘Shuangsheng’ (Dialogue), Zhang Ailing diancang quanji (The complete works of Zhang Ailing), Harbin: Harbin chubanshe, 2003, vol. 4, p. 93. D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, pp. 61 and 75. ‘Nanking drinks milk’, North China Herald, 12 Dec. 1934, p. 401. Woxi shizheng, no. 3 (Dec. 1929), pp. 125-30. Shanghai shizhengfu shehuiju, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu (The living standards ofworkers in Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai shizhengfu, 1934, p. 133. Olga Lang, Chinese family and society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1946, pp. 94-9; see also Susan Glosser, ‘Milk for health, milk for profit: Shanghai’s Chinese dairy industry under Japanese occupation’ in Sherman Cochran (ed.), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Programme, 1999, pp. 207-33. Kenneth Lo, The feast of my life, London: Doubleday, 1993, pp. 3, 17, 28, 41 and 111. Liang Yen, The house of the golden dragons, London: Souvenir Press, 1961, p. 51. Lang, Chinese family and society, p. 95. Su Su (ed.), Fushi huiying: Lao yuefenpai zhong de Shanghai shenghuo (Shanghai life as seen in old monthly calendars), Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2001, p. 34. Jing Zhaoyang, ‘Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengduren jiannan guo xiatian’ (Torturing summers in Old Chengdu in the memories of locals) in Feng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu, p. 184. Zhou Zhaoxi, ‘Binggilin he qita’ (Ice cream and other things), personal communication, 2 April 2004. Ibid. Zhou Xiangxian (ed.), Hangzhou shizhengfu shizhou jinian tekan (Special publication on ten years of municipal administration in Hangzhou), Hangzhou: Shizhengfu mishuchu, 1937, p. 72. Deng Yunxiang, Yanjing xiangtu ji (Local customs of Beijing), Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 1986, pp. 444-5. Ma Zhixiang and Zhang Henshui, Lao Beijing lixing zhinan: ‘Beijing lixing zhinan’ chongpaiben (Travel guide for old Beijing: Revised edition of the ‘Beijing Travel Guide’), Beijing: Beijing yanshan chubanshe, 1997, p. 269. “Report on the trade of Amoy, for the year 1896’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1896, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1897,

Notes p. 384; ‘Report

24

(pp. 222-4]

on the trade of Swatow, for the year 1896’, Report on the trade at

the ports of China for the year 1896, p. 413.

‘Report on the trade of Fuchow, for the year 1898’, Report on the trade at the ports of

China for the year 1898, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1899, p. 377.

Julean Arnold, China:A commercial and industrial handbook, Washington, DC: Gov-

26 27 28 29 30

ernment Printing Office, 1926, p. 71. Mao Zedong, Report from Xunwu, Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 82. Lou Xuexi, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang (Conditions of industry and commerce in Beijing), Beijing: Beiping shi shehuiju, 1932, pp. 296-9. Arnold, China, p. 101. Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, pp. 296-9. “Report on the trade of Newchwang, for the year 1902", Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1902, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1903, p. 3; ‘Report on the trade of Shasi, for the year 1902’, Report on the trade

at the ports of China for the year 1902, p. 184;‘Report on the trade of Ichang, for the year 1902’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1902, p. 162,

‘Report on the trade of Wuhu, for the year 1902’, Report on the trade at the ports

of China for the year 1902, p. 288; ‘Report on the trade of Swatow, for the year 1902’, Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1902, p. 582;‘Report on

the trade of Canton, for the year 1902", Report on the trade at the ports of China for aT

the year 1902, p. 610.

‘Report on the trade of Newchwang, for the year 1902’, Report on the trade at the

ports of China for the year 1902, p. 3.

*Xuebai fangkuai baoshen yangti weishengtang’ (Body boosting healthy white sugar cubes), Shenbao, 5 Aug. 1895, n. p. 33 Alfred H. Y. Lin, ‘Building and funding a warlord regime: The experience of Chen Jitang in Guangdong, 1929-1936", Modem China, 28, no. 2 (April 2002), p- 202; see also Alfred H.Y. Lin, ‘Warlord and merchants: Guangdong’s sugar industry and sugar merchants under Chen Jitang’s “Three-Year Administrative

32

34 35 36

Plan”, 1933-35’, manuscript.

‘Zuo guamian jiqi’ (Machines for making dried noodles), Shenbao, 5 Aug. 1911,

2:5.

‘Jirong shoumian’ (Ready Dried Chicken noodles), Shenbao, 12 Oct. 1906, p. 15.

Feng Jiaji,"Jincheng zhuzhici baiyong’ (A hundred bamboo verses from Chengdu) in Yang Xie et al., Chengdu zhuzhici (Chengdu bamboo verses), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 87. Liangyou, no. 86 (March 1934), pp. 4-5.

7 38 Chang, Food in Chinese culture. 39 Jack Goody, Cooking, cuisine, and class:A study in comparative sociology, Cambridge 40

University Press, 1982, pp. 154-90. ‘Wu Jen-shu, ‘Shi er zhi wei: Ming Qing shipu suo fanying de weijue ganguan’ (Menus and what they can tell us about taste during the Ming and Qing), unpublished manuscript. 327

[pp. 224-7] 41 42 43 44 45 46

Notes

Xu Zenghang, ‘Guantou shiwu’ (Tinned food), Xuesheng zazhi, 5, no. 7 (uly 1917), pp. 262-70. Edward T. Williams, China yesterday and to-day, London: George Harrap, 1923, p.535. Lo, The feast of my life, pp. 3, 17,28, 41 and 111. W.G. Sewell, The land and life of China, London: Edinburgh House Press, 1945, p. 69. Frederick Herbert Easton, Barak: The diary ofa donkey, London: Hulbert, 1928, p. 13. Liu Keji, Yinggiupai lianru’ (Eagle Ball brand condensed milk) in Feng, Shimin Jjiyizhong de lao Chengdu, pp. 317-19. Arnold, China, pp. 66-8.

47 48 J. Alexis Shriver, Canned-goods trade in the Far East, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915,p. 10. 49 China Monthly Trade Report, 1 Jan. 1931, p. 86. 50 Shriver, Canned-goods trade in the Far East, pp. 17-19. 51 Ibid. 52 “Report on the trade of Samshui, for the year 1901’, Report on the trade at the ports of 53

China for the year 1901, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1902, p. 635. “You Taifeng gongsi ji’ (Visit to the Tai Foong Company), Shenbao, 24 Aug. 1911,

54

On the preservation of fish before the introduction of modern methods, see

2:2.

S.A. M. Adshead, Material culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800, New York:

Martin's Press, 1997, pp. 51-2.

St

“Taifeng guantou shiwu gongsi zhi fada’ (The prosperity of the Tai Foong Company), Shenbao, 10 May 1911, 2:3. 56 China Monthly Trade Report, 1 Jan. 1931, p. 86. 37 Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, p. 365. 58 George G. Barnes, Enter China:A study in race contacts, London: Society for the 55

59

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

328

Propagation of the Gospel, 1928, pp. 16-17.

Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua

meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p.; Carl Crow, Four hundred million customers, New York: Halcyon House, 1937, pp. 219-20. Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, p. 513. Ibid., p. 441. Ibid., pp. 437-8. Tushua ribao (Pictorial daily), Shanghai: Shanghai guji shudian, 1999, vol. 5, p. 260. Julean Arnold, Far Easter markets for American hardware, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919, p. 65.

Ibid., p. 30.

Ibid,, p. 63. Matthew Turner, Made in Hong Kong: A history of export design in Hong Kong, 1900-1960, Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1988, p. 13. Zuo Xuchu, Lao shangbiao (Old trade marks), Shanghai: Shanghai huabao chubanshe, 1999,p. 23.

Notes 69 70

n 2 73 74 75 76 7 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 0 a1 92

[pp. 227-30]

“Hangzhou tongxun’ (Correspondence from Hangzhou), Judu yuekan, no. 98, 1932, pp. 6-7. Wang Di, Street culture in Chengdu: Public space, urban commoners, and local politics, 1870-1930, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 157; however, the use of spittoons was already promoted in Chengdu in 1920 in social spaces where locals and foreigners encountered each other; see Service, Golden inches, p. 235. William Martin, Understand the Chinese, London: Methuen, 1934, p. 199. Wu Youru, Haishang baiyan tu (A hundred beauties of Shanghai), Changsha: Hunan meishu chubanshe, 1998, p. 71. Eugen Wolf, Meine Wanderungen, Im Inner Chinas, Stuttgart, Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1901, pp. 50-1. Sewell, Land and life of China, p. 82. Xu Ke, Qingbai leichao (Unofficial history of the Qing), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1918, vol. 47, pp. 81-2. Jermyn Chi-hung Lynn, Social life of the Chinese in Peking, Beijing: China Booksellers, 1928, pp. 18-19. Ge Yuanxu, Huyou zaji (Miscellany tour of Shanghai), orig. 1876, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989, p. 30. Huang Shiquan, Songnan mengying lu (Collection of dream views of Shanghai), orig. 1883, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989, pp. 126 and 132. See, for instance, the comments by Xu, Qingbai leichao, 1918, p. 219. Shriver, Canned-goods trade in the Far East, pp. 10-11. Xu, Qingbai leichao, vol. 47, p. 83. Li Shaobing, Minguo shiqi de xishi fengsu wenhua (Western-style culture in the republican period), Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe, 1994, pp. 6-7. Liu Shanlin, Xiyang feng: Xiyang faming zai Zhongguo (Inventions from the West in China), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999, p. 142. Zhu Zhihong, Baxianzhi (History of Ba county), orig, 1939, Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1992, vol. 13, p. 4. Shriver, Canned-goods trade in the Far East, pp. 10-11. Dong Zhujun, Wode yige shiji (My century), Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1997, pp. 273-5. Yang Yu'an, “Hong fangzi": Xicaiye de yike mingzhu’ (The ‘Red House’:A pearl among Western restaurants) in Shi Fukang (ed.), Shanghai shehui daguan (An overview of Shanghai society), Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2000, pp. 68-9. Liu Shiliang, ‘Chengdu zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Chengdu) in Yang, Chengdu zhuzhici, p. 90. See Rebecca L. Spang, The invention of the restaurant: Paris and modern gastronomic culture, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Adshead, Material culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800, pp. 34-6. Ge, Huyou zaji, pp. 30-1. Xue Liyong, Shisu quhua (Interesting stories about eating customs), Shanghai: Shanghai kexue jishu wenxian chubanshe, 2003, pp. 323-31. 329

[pp. 230-3] 93 94 95

7 8 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 ut 112 113

Notes

Liu Yonglu, ‘Caidan de meili’ (The attraction of the menu), Chengshi wangluo zhoumo ban (City Network Friday), 29 March 2002, Innes Jackson, China only yesterday, London: Faber and Faber, 1938, p. 54. Sidney W. Mintz, ‘Changing roles of food in the study of consumption’ in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the world of goods, London: Routledge, 1993, p. 262. Arnold, China, pp. 66-7. Tu Shipin, Shanghai shi daguan (The overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Zhongguo tushushe, 1948, vol. 3, pp. 10-11. Li, Minguo shiqi de xishi fengsu wenhua, p. 13. Chow Chung-cheng, The lotus-pool of memory, London: Joseph, 1961, pp. 49, 62 and 127. Lin Xi, Lao Tianjin (Old Tianjin), Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1998, p. 100. Chen, Chunshen jiuwen, pp. 194-5. Liangyou, no. 111 (Nov. 1935), p. 35. Shanghai shehui kexueyuan jingji yanjiusuo (ed.), Shanghai Yongan gongsi de chansheng, fazhan he gaizao (The birth, development and reform of the Wing On Company), Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1981, p. 24. Shanghai shizhengfu, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu, p. 159; Yu Xinyan, ‘Hushi zalu’ (Reflections on the Year of Tiger), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), no. 115 (July, 1999), pp. 25-6. Quanguo jingji weiyuanhui, Xiangjiao gongye baogaoshu (Report on the rubber industry), 1935, n. p. Jiating, 16, no. 1 (Dec. 1948). Turner, Made in Hong Kong, p. 50. See Funii jie (Women’s world), 3, no. 6 (Aug. 1940); see also ‘Reshuiping zhizao chengxu’ (How thermos bottles are made), Liangyou, no. 126 (March 1937),p. 46. Zuo, Lao shangbiao, p. 25. Ibid., p. 21. Funii jie (Women’s world), 3, no. 6 (Aug. 1940). Jackson, China only yesterday, pp. 33-4. George G. Barnes, Enter China:A study in race contacts, London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1928, p. 17.

14 Elsie McCormick, Audacious angles on China, New York: Appleton, 1924, p. 75. 115 Harry A. Franck, Wandering in northem China, New York: Century, 1923, pp. 213-14. 116 Mao Dun, Mao Dun sanwen ji (Collection of essays by Mao Dun), Hong Kong: Huitong, 1976, p. 38. 7 Zhejiang sheng gejie fuyong guohuo hui (ed.), Guohuo diaocha lu (Record of

an investigation into national goods), orig, 1934, Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju,

118 119

330

1976, pp. 64-5.

Liangyou, special edition in memory of Sun Yatsen, Nov. 1926, p. 34. Liangyou, no. 28 (July 1928), p. 31

Notes

[pp. 234-8]

120 Xishen, ‘Hanshubiao zhi gongyong’ (The many functions of the thermometer), Funii zazhi, 4, no. 12 (Dec. 1917),p. 1.

121. Chen Dingshan, Chunshen jiuwen (Notes on old Shanghai), Taipei: Shijie wenwu gongyingshe, 1967, pp. 102-3; see also Chubao,“Qianchen’ (Dust from the past), Libailiu, no. 588, 5 April 1935, p. 762.

122 Chen Da, Nanyang huagiao yu Min Yue shehui (Overseas Chinese from Southeast

Asia and society in Fujian and Guangdong), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan,

1938, pp. 114-15.

123 K.H. Li, ‘Public health in Soochow’, Zhonghua yixue zazhi,9, no. 2 (June 1923),

p.124.

124 Ge, Huyou zaji, p. 40. 125

Tuhua ribao, vol. 7, p. 131.

126 Liu, Xiyang feng, p. 149. 127 Chen Zhen, Yao Luo and Feng Xianzhi (eds), Zhongguo jindai gongye shi ziliao

(Documents on the history of modern industry in China), Beijing: Sanlian shu-

dian, 1958, vol. 2, p. 158.

128 Arnold, Far Eastern markets for American hardware, p. 108.

129 Elisabeth Enders, Swinging lanterns, New York: Appleton, 1923,p. 171.

130 Deng, Yanjing xiangtu ji, p. 120. 131 Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, pp. 348 and 353.

132. Zhejiang sheng, Guohuo diaocha tu, pp. 24-5.

133 ‘Wudi pai boli juzi’ (Wudi’s glass mandarins), Libailiu, no. 504 (12 May 1933),p. 98.

134 Liangyou, no. 92 (Aug. 1934), pp. 18-19.

135 Liangyou, no. 91 (Aug. 1934),p. 17. For more pictorial evidence, see Liangyou, no.

48 (une 1930), pp. 20-1

136 Li Jinghan, Dingxian jingji diaocha yibufen baogaoshu (Report on an economic investigation of Ding county), Beijing: Hebei sheng xianzheng jianshe yanjiuyuan,

1934, p. 21.

137 John Burnett, Liquid pleasures:A social history of drinks in modem Britain, London:

Routledge, 1999, p. 105.

138 Chen, Zhongguo jindai gongye shiliao, vol. 2, p. 158. 139 Ibid., p. 160.

140 Hu Puan, Zhonghua quanguo fengsu zhi (Record on customs in China), orig. 1935, Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 1986, vol. 2, pp. 372-3.

141 WE. Geil, Yankee on the Yangtze, New York: Armstrong, 1904, pp. 48 and 270. 142 Katharine A. Carl, With the empress dowager of China, New York: Century, 1907,

pp. 23 and 168.

143 Georg Wegener, Im innersten China. Eine Forschungsreise durch die Provinz Kiang-si, Berlin: August Scherl, 1926, pp. 49-50. 144 Liu, Xiyang feng, p. 145.

145 Chen Zonghe, ‘Qingyanggong huahui zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on the flower

fair at the Qingyang temple) in Yang Xie et al., Chengdu zhuzhici (Chengdu bamboo verses), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 145.

331

[pp. 238-43] 146 147 148 149) 150 151 152 153

Notes

Xu Hairong (ed.), Zhongguo yinshi shi (A history of food and drink in China), Beijing: Huaxia chubanshe, 1999, vol. 6, p. 217. Hallett E.Abend, My life in China, 1926-1941, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943, p.64. “Report on the trade of Wuchow, for the year 1902", Report on the trade at the ports of China for the year 1902, Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs’ Press, 1903, p. 746. Xu, Zhongguo yinshi shi, vol. 6, p. 340. Frank Welsh, A borrowed place: The history of Hong Kong, New York: Kodansha International, 1993, p. 168. Zhang Deyi, Hanghai shugi (Travels abroad), Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 456. Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, power, history: Latin America’s material culture, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 155-7. Stephen R. Smith, ‘Drinking etiquette in a changing beverage market’ in Joseph J.Tobin (ed.), Re-made in Japan: Everyday life and consumer taste in a changing socicty, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992, pp. 154-5. CHAPTER

TEN

Alistair Shearer, Thailand: The lotus kingdom, London: John Murray, 1989, p. 39. Zhou Shouchang, ‘Guangdong zashu’ (Notes on Guangdong) in Siyitang rizha (Diary of Siyitang), orig. 1846, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987, p. 198.

Jules Itier, Journal d'un voyage en Chine en 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, Paris: Dauvin et Fontaine, 1848-1853, vol. 1, p. 325, vol. 2, pp. 41, 113-14. Guo Liancheng, Xiyou biliie (Notes from a voyage to the West), Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2003, p. 124. Wang Tao, Yingruan zazhi (Miscellany on Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989, p. 122.

0 i

Sun Cigong, ‘Yangjing zashi shi’ (Miscellaneous poems on the foreign concessions) in Wang, Yingruan zazhi, p. 122. ‘Yuan Xiangfu,‘Hushang zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Shanghai) in Lei Mengshui et al. (eds), Zhonghua zhuzhici (Bamboo verses of China), Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 1997, vol. 2, p. 798; see also Wu Yangxian, 'Yangjing zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on the foreign concessions) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 2, p. 833: Ge Yuanxu, Shanghai fanchang ji (Notes on Shanghai), orig, 1877, Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1988, pp. 105-6. Linzhen, Xihai jiyou cao (Draft travel notes on the Western seas), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 38. Yang Buwei, Autobiography of a Chinese woman, New York: John Day, 1947, pp. 15-16. A.J. Little, Through the Yang-tse Gorges: Trade and travel in western China, London: Low, Marston and Co., 1898, p. 211. Wang Zehua and Wang He, Minguo shigi de lao Chengdu (Chengdu in the republican era), Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1999, p. 48.

Notes 12 13 4 15 16 7 18 19 20 2 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 u 32 33 4 35 36

[pp. 243-5]

Luo Han, ‘Hankou zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Hankou) in Xu Mingting (ed.), Wuhan zhuzhici (Bamboo verses on Wuhan), Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1999, pp. 230-1. Zhong Fulan (ed.), Tishuo Zhongguo bainian shehui shenghuo biangian (Illustrated history of a century of social change in China), Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 2001, p. 174. Zhong, Tushuo Zhongguo bainian shehui shenghuo biangian, p. 173. Xu Ke, Qingbai leichao (Unofficial history of the Qing), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1918, vol. 24, p. 39. Liu Xinping, Xiuxian Zhongguo (China lies fallow), Beijing: Zhongguo gongren chubanshe, 2001, p. 24. Yang, Autobiography ofa Chinese woman, pp. 15-16. Sheng Cheng, A son of China, London: Allen and Unwin, 1930, p. 172. Olga Lang, Chinese family and society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1946,p. 273. Elisabeth Enders, Swinging lanterns, New York: Appleton, 1923, p. 272. Jean Dickinson, Observations on the social life ofa north China village, Beijing: Department of Sociology, Yenching University, 1924, p. 12. D. S. Hosie, Portrait of a Chinese lady, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929, p.147. Shih Kuo-heng, China enters the machine age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944, p. 99. Edward. T. Williams, China yesterday and to-day, London: George Harrap, 1923, p.535. Bing Xin, Bing Xin zizhuan (Autobiography of Bing Xin), Suzhou: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1995, p. 24. Liangyou, no. 33 (Dec. 1928), p. 38. See, for instance, Liangyou, no. 51 (Nov. 1930), pp. 27 and 32. See advertisements in Liangyou, no. 69 (Sept. 1932) and no. 91 (Aug. 1934); see also the Rolleiflex advert in Liangyou, no. 80 (Sept. 1933), p. 18. Shanghai shizhengfu, Shanghai shi gongren shenghuo chengdu, p. 176. Liangyou, no. 48 (June 1930), p. 36. Christopher Pinney, Camera indica: The social life of Indian photographs, London: Reaktion, 1997,

See Jia Ping’ao, Lao Xi’an (Old Xi'an), Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1999, p.48.

Lang Jingshan, Jingshan jijin zuofa (Techniques in composite picture making), Taipei: Zhonghua congshu weiyuanhui, 1958. Jermyn Chi-hung Lynn, Social life of the Chinese in Peking, Beijing: China Booksellers, 1928, pp. 83-8. Lynn, Social life, pp. 61-71. Gerald Yorke, China changes, London: Jonathan Cape, 1935, p. 147. 333

[pp. 245-8] a7 38 39

al 42 43

“4 45 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 37 38 59

334

Notes

Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua

meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p. Zhu Yiwen, Suzhou zhinan (Guide to Suzhou), Suzhou: Wenxin yinshua gongsi, 1931, p. 21; Xu Gangyi (ed.), Lao Suzhou (Old Suzhou), Suzhou: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 2001, vol. 1, p. 52. Jianshe weiyuanhui diaocha Zhejiang jingji suo (ed.), Hangzhou shi jingji diaocha (Investigation into the economy of Hangzhou), Hangzhou: Jianshe weiyuanhui diaocha Zhejiang jingji suo, 1932, pp. 403-4. Lou Xuexi, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang (Conditions of industry and commerce in Beijing), Beijing: Beiping shi shehuiju, 1932, pp. 592-5. Fu Chongju, Chengdu tonglan (Guide to Chengdu), orig. 1909, Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1987, vol. 2, pp. 96, 112. Jianshe weiyuanhui, Hangzhou shi jingji diaocha, pp. 404-5. Roe, Chance and change in China, pp. 114-15. Peter Fleming, News from Tartary: A joumey from Peking to Kashmir, London: Jonathan Cape, 1936, p. 80. Frank Dikétter, private collection.

Bing, Bing Xin zizhuan, p. 24.

Darmon, Made in China, p. 76.

Wang and Wang, Minguo shigi de lao Chengdu, p. 140. Carl, With the empress dowager of China, pp. 287-8, 296-8 and 306. For exceptions see Tom Phillips, We are the people: Postcards from the collection of Tom Phillips, London: National Portrait Gallery, 2004.

Jianshe weiyuanhui diaocha Zhejiang jingji suo (ed.), Hangzhou shi jingji diaocha (Investigation into the economy of Hangzhou), Hangzhou: Jianshe weiyuanhui diaocha Zhejiang jingji suo, 1932, pp. 404-5; Huai An and Liu Ji, ‘Huajie de qianshi jinsheng’ (Past and present of Flower Street), Yangzi wanbao, 17 April

2003; a photo of one of these studios appears in Wang Hong, Lao Yangzhou (Old Yangzhou), Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 2001, p. 152. Li Hangyu, Lao Hangzhou (Old Hangzhou), Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 2000, pp. 112-13. Innes Jackson, China only yesterday, London: Faber and Faber, 1938, p. 70. Harry A. Franck, Roving through southern China, New York: Century, 1925, p. 235. ‘Abel Bonnard, In China 1920-1921, London : Routledge, 1926, p. 46; Hu Piyun, Jiujing shizhao (Historical photographs of old Beijing), Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1997, pp. 70-3. He Qinze, ‘Qingmen zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on Xi'an) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 5, pp. 3673-6. Chow Chung-cheng, The lotus-pool of memory, London: Joseph, 1961, pp. 104-5. Liang Yen, The house of the golden dragons, London: Souvenir Press, 1961, p. 49. Pu Yi, From emperor to citizen, translated by W. J. F Jenner, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1964, pp. 117-18.

Notes 60 61 62 63 64 65

67 68

0 70 1 nR 73 14 8 76 nN 78

79 80 81 82

[pp. 248-52]

Liu Shanlin, Xiyang feng: Xiyang faming zai Zhongguo (Inventions from the West in China), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999, p. 65. Zhong, Tushuo Zhongguo bainian shehui shenghuo biangian, p. 174. Tuhua ribao (Pictorial daily), Shanghai: Shanghai juji chubanshe, 1999, vol. 3, p.451. See for instance Huang Aidongxi, Lao Guangzhou (Old Canton), Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1999, p. 81. “Qing jin yinhua’ (Please prohibit lewd pictures), Shenbao, 2 Oct. 1902, n. p. Frank Dikétter, private collection, small album with red paper cover and accordion folding album sized 5 x 11 cm. with twelve small photos sized 4 x 5.5 cm. ‘Two examples among many are the carte de visite signed and dated by Alice Chin (Qin Yuhua), Beiyang huabao, no. 327 (4 June 1929) and Victoria Tsen-wen Kung, Beiyang huabao, no. 216 (29 Aug. 1928),p. 1. Zhang Weigang, Gushang tongqu: Tianjin Hepinglu dongmalu da hutong (Old Tianjin by the canal), Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe, 2000, p. 214. Liang Shigiu, Huaiyuan mengyi (Reminiscences from the scholartree garden), Beijing: Zhongguo huaqiao chubanshe, 1994, p. 28;Ye Lingfeng, Weiwan de chanthui lv (The unfinished road of repentance), Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1988, pp. 159 and 184, Li Ji, Wo de shengping (My life), Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan, 1932,pp. 173-4. Li Xianwen, Li Xianwen zizhuan (Autobiography of Li Xianwen), Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1970, p. 14. Zhong, Tushuo Zhongguo bainian shehui shenghuo biangian, p. 177. Wang Tao, Manyou suilu (Notes ofa voyage), Changsha: Yuelu shushe chubanshe, 1985, pp. 88-9. Zhang Deyi, Hanghai shugi (Travels abroad), Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 545. Judith Balmer (ed.), Thomson's China: Travels and adventures ofa nineteenth-century photographer, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1993. Guo, Xiyou bili, p. 10. Shanmin laoren, ‘Xu Yangcheng zhuzhici’ (Sequel to the bamboo verses on Canton) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 4, p. 3007. *Guozhou yuanri zhuzhici’ (Bamboo verses on the New Year celebration in Nanchong) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 5, p. 3518. Martin C.Yang, A Chinese village: Taitou, Shantung province, New York: Columbia University Press, 1945, p.210; an observation confirmed for Shandong at the end of the nineteenth century by Ida Pruitt, A China childhood, San Francisco, CA: Chinese Materials Center, 1978, pp. 178-9. Fu, Chengdu tonglan, vol. 1, p. 287. Tu Shipin, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Zhongguo tushushe, 1948, vol. 3, p. 90. Hua Mengyang and Zhang Hongjie, Lao Beijingren de shenghuo (The daily life of people in old Beijing), Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 2001, pp. 191-3. Franck, Wandering in northem China, p. 279. 335

[pp. 252-54] 83

Notes

While the material culture of the cinema in republican China and the participation of spectators in it has not been researched in any depth, there are some ex-

cellent books on the history of movies, including Jay Leyda, Dianying:An account

of films and the film audience in China, Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1972:Yingjin Zhang (ed.), Cinema and urban culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943, Stanford Univer-

sity Press, 1999; Hu Jubin, Projecting a nation: Chinese national cinema before 1949, Hong Kong University Press, 2003. 84 Liu, Xiyang feng, p. 70. 85 Zhang Xiawo, ‘Shoudu zayong’ (Miscellany poems on Beijing) in Lei, Zhonghua zhuzhici, vol. 1, p. 430.

Liu, Xiyang feng, p. 72. Zhou Feng (ed.), Minguo shigi Hangzhou (Hangzhou during the republican era), Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1997, p. 549. 88 Hua and Zhang, Lao Beijingren de shenghuo, pp. 196-9. 89 Fu, Chengdu tonglan, vol. 1, p. 284, Zhou Zhaoxi, ‘Binggilin he qita’ (Ice cream and other things), personal communication, 2 April 2004. 90 China Monthly Trade Report, 1 July 1931, p. 10; see also R. P. Lamont and W. L. Cooper, Motion pictures in China, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 86 87

na 92

1930.

The Chinese Yearbook, Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1937, pp. 1048 and 1073.

Ye Chucang and Liu Yizheng (eds), Shoudu zhi (Annals of the capital), Shanghai:

Zhengzhong shuju, 1935, pp. 1100-1. Kunming shizhengfu mishuchu (ed.), Kunming shi shizheng tongji (Statistics of municipal administration in Kunming), Kunming: Kunming shizhengfa mishuchu, 1935, jiaoyu 10. 94 Kunming shizhengfu (ed.), Kunming shi zhi (Annals of Kunming), Kunming: Kunming shizhengfu, 1924, p. 288. 93

95 97 98 99

100 11 102 103

336

W.G. Sewell, The land and life of China, London: Edinburgh House Press, 1945, p. 130.

Liu, Xiyang feng, p. 72. Jin Shibo and Qin Yaqing (transl.), Wo zai Zhongguo de liushi nian (My sixty years in China), Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 1991, p. 18. Qiuyu, ‘Chengdu jiefanggian de dianyingyuan’ (Cinemas in Chengdu before 1949), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), no. 66 (Nov. 1991), pp. 27-9. Zhang Zhengui, ‘Daboban’ (Showing glass slides) in Feng Zhicheng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu (Old Chengdu in the memories of locals), Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1999, pp. 170-1. ‘Wang and Wang, Minguo shiqi de Lao Chengdu, p. 136. Yang Jiasheng, "Dafang guanming de yike liuxing’ (The big shinning star) in Feng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu, p. 164. Kenneth Lo, The feast of my life, London: Doubleday, 1993, p. 72. H.A.Van Dorn, Tiventy years of the Chinese republic: Two decades of progress, New York: Knopf, 1932, pp. 257-8.

Notes

[pp. 254-7]

104 Qiuyu, ‘Chengdu jiefang qian de dianyingyuan’, pp. 27-9. 105. Yang, ‘Dafang guanming de yike liuxing’, p. 164.

106 Jing Zhaoyang, Jiu dianyingyuan yiwen’ (Old stories about old cinemas) in Feng, Shimin jiyizhong de lao Chengdu, p. 168.

107 Qiuyu, ‘Chengdu jiefanggian de dianyingyuan’, pp. 27-9.

108 109. 110 111

Ibid., pp. 27-9. Yang, ‘Dafang guanming de yike liuxing’, p. 165. Ibid., p. 166. Jing, ‘Jiu dianyingyuan yiwen’, p. 169.

112 Cecilia Sun Yun Chiang, The mandarin way, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1974, p. 125.

113 Min-ch’ien T. Z. Tyau, China awakened, New York: The Macmillan Company,

1922, p.91.

114 Lynn, Social life, pp. 47~8.

115 D.S. Hosie, Brave new China, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, p. 68.

116 Chow, The lotus-pool of memory, pp. 35-6.

117 Zhang Deyi, Suishi Ying E ji (Notes on following the mission to England and

Russia), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, pp. 562-3.

118 Yang, Autobiography of a Chinese woman, p. 65. 119 North China Herald,6 Oct. 1917, n. p.

120 Liangyou, no. 9 (15 Oct. 1926),p. 24. 121 Liangyou, no. 30 (June 1927), p. 21. 122 Liangyou, no. 62 (Oct. 1931), n. p.

123. Beiyang huabao, no. 285 (26 Feb. 1929), p. 2. 124 Fu, Chengdu tonglan, vol. 1, p. 286. 125 Guzhai,*‘Chengdu huahui zhuzhici’

(Bamboo verses on the Chengdu flower fair)

in Yang Xie et al., Chengdu zhuzhici (Chengdu bamboo verses), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1982,p. 162.

126 L, Carrington Goodrich and Nigel Cameron (eds), The face of China as seen by photographers and travelers, 1860-1912, London: Fraser, 1978, p. 105. 127 Hosie, Brave new China, p. 105.

128 Peter Fleming, One's company:A journey to China, London: Jonathan Cape, 1934,

pp. 232-3.

129 Ba Jin, Liitu suibi (Travel writings), Hangzhou: Zhejiang jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003,

pp. 110-15. 130 Tan Mingli and Liu Bangyan,‘Shaocheng gongyuan’ (Shaocheng park), Longmenzhen (Storytelling), no. 89 (Sept. 1995), pp. 88-90. Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China,

1931-33,

London: Stationery Office, 1933, p. 87; Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, p. 596;

see also Pekka Gronow,'The record industry comes to the Orient’, Ethnomusicology, 25, no. 2 (May 1981), pp. 251-84, and Li Qing et al. (eds), Guangbo dianshi qiye shi neibu shiliao (Restricted documents on the history of the radio and television in-

dustries), Shanghai: Zhongguo changpian gongsi, 1994, both of which furnish the material for various postmodernist musings in Andrew F Jones,‘The gramophone

a3

131

(pp. 257-64]

132 133 134 135. 136

Notes

in China’ in Lydia H. Liu (ed.), Tokens of exchange: The problem of translation in global circulations, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999, pp. 214-36. Lou, Beiping shi gongshangye gaikuang, p. 596. ‘Wuxiandian chuanda yinyue ji xinwen’ (The transmission of music and news through the wireless radio), Dongfang zazhi, 17, no. 15 (Aug. 1921), p. 77. Hosie, Brave new China, p. 64. Zhou Zhaoxi,"Binggilin he qita’ (Ice cream and other things), personal communication, 2 April 2004. Carlton Benson,'From teahouse to radio: Storytelling and the commercialization of culture in 1930s Shanghai’, doctoral dissertation, University of California at

Berkeley, 1996, pp. 106-9.

137 Benson, ‘From teahouse to radio’, pp. 108-9.

138 Beiyang huabao, no. 113 (17 Aug. 1927). 139 Adrian Forty, Objects of desire: Design and society from Wedgwood to IBM, New York: Pantheon Books, 1986, pp. 200-3. 140 Xin Ping, Cong Shanghai faxian lishi: Xiandaihua jinchengzhong de Shanghai ren jigi shehui shenghuo (Discovering history from Shanghai: Social life in modernising Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1996, p. 458; Feng Hao and

Wu Min, ‘Jiu Shanghai wuxian guangbo diantai manhua’ (A look at wireless radio stations in old Shanghai) in Shi Fukang (ed.), Shanghai shehui daguan (An overview of Shanghai society), Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2000, p. 307. 141 Lee Bing-shuey, Modern Canton, Shanghai: Mercury Press, 1936, p. 143.

142 Pictures of both appeared in the Gelbe Post: Ostasiatische Ilustrierte Halbmonatsschrifi, 1939, vol. 7, pp. 153-4; I am grateful to Aline M. Lingle for this reference

143 On storytelling on the radio in Shanghai, see Benson, ‘From teahouse to radio’. 144 Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and economic conditions in China, 1933-35,

London: Stationery Office, 1935, p. 29. 143. Zhou Shixun, Shanghai shi daguan (An overview of Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhua meishu tushu gongsi, 1933, n. p. 146 Jackson, China only yesterday, p. 34; Department of Overseas Trade, Trade and eonomic conditions in China,

1931-33, London: Stationery Office, 1933, p. 77; see

also Ye Shengtao, ‘Wenming liqi’ (Civilised tools), Shenbao, 23 Dec. 1932, repr. in Yu Zhi and Cheng Xinguo (eds), Jiu Shanghai fengging lu (Annals on old Shanghai), Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshe, 1998, vol. 1, pp. 87-9. CONCLUSION

1 2 3

338

Matthew Turner, Made in Hong Kong:A history of export design in Hong Kong. 1900-1960, Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1988, p. 7. Ibid, p. 13. See Philip C.C, Huang, The peasant family and rural development in the Yangzi delta, 1350-1988, Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 15.

Notes

(pp. 265-7]

Olga Lang, Chinese family and society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1946,

p.78.

6

10 MW

Ba Jin, Liitu suibi (Travel writings), Hangzhou: Zhejiang jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003, p.70. Mao Dun, Mao Dun zawen ji (Collection of essays by Mao Dun), Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1996, pp. 207-9. Joseph J. Tobin (ed.), Re-made in Japan: Everyday life and consumer taste in a changing society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992, p. 26. Gretchen M. Herrmann, ‘Gift or commodity: What changes hands in the U.S. garage sale?” in Daniel Miller (ed.), Consumption: Critical concepts in the social sciences, vol. 2, The history and regional development of consumption, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 72-101, quotation on page 84. Christine Rush, Thrill of the chase’, The Independent, 15 Dec. 2004, p. 4. Adrian Forty, Objects of desire: Design and society from Wedgwood to IBM, New York: Pantheon Books, 1986,p. 11. Keith G. Stevens, personal communication, 10 March 2004.

339

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374

INDEX Abend, Hallett, 4, 100, 238 87,89, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, 104-5, 112, ‘acculturation’, 6-8 114-15, 136-7, 141-4, 146, 147, 149, 151, Adas, Michael, 118 157-8, 160, 165-6, 168, 170, 172-3, 175, Adshead, S. A. M., 156, 192 181, 183, 196, 199, 202, 205, 208-12, advertisement, 4-5, 11, 19,21, 40, 45,61, 214-15, 217, 220-2, 226, 228, 231, 235-7, 68-71, 169, 172, 174-5, 178, 204, 207, 245, 247, 249, 252, 254-5, 264 232-3, 237, 265; see also trademark belt, 60, 199 Africa, 2, 8-9, 31, 32, 47-8, 217, 227, 261 Benjamin, Walter, 12 air-conditioning, 159, 233, 255 Berman, Marshall, 12 airplane, 70-1, 104, 106, 233 Bickers, Robert, 115 bicycle, 57, 61,71, 81, 84-9, 133, 172 alcohol, 92, 235; see also beer, champagne, Bing Xin, 244, 246 wine Andersson, J.G., 1 binoculars, 68, 140 Appiah,A. K..8 bolt, 53, 166; se also lock architecture, 112-14, 130, 155, 158, 161, 246; bottle, see glass see also floor, house, roof Boxer Rebellion, 26, 56-7, 79, 158, 167, 169, Arnold, Julean, 46, 181,231 202. 227, 243 Australia, 65, brand, see trademark brass, 19, 32-3, 172-3, 176, 181, 185, 229 Austria, 44, 55,227 automobile, 4, 16, 46, 61, 81,87, 89-90, 92-3, brass band, 67, 103, 115 114-15, 186, 260 brassiere, 198 bread, 56, 231-2 Ba Jin, 99, 118, 144, 266 Breen,T.H., 19 brick, 41, 66-7, 79, 116, 156, 158, 161, 163, Bakhtin, Michael, 6 Ball,J. Dyer, 14, 63, 157 169, 172, 231; see also cement bamboo, 52-4, 89, 114, 140, 177, 182, 212, bridge, 75, 80-1, 98 Britain, 2, 10, 11, 26, 28-9, 36-7, 38, 65, 216, 252, 254, 265 70, 84, 86, 98, 104, 110, 113, 119, 141, bank, 15, 60, 75, 90, 111-12, 121, 130, 163, 209 151, 167, 173, 185, 192, 194, 199, 206, Bao Tianxiao, 102 207, 217, 219, 237, 243; see also English bath and bathroom, 145, 159-60, 170, 174, (language) 186, 233-4 broadcasting, see radio Baudrillard, Jean, 14 bronze, 15, 186 Bauer, Arnold, 17 brush, 33, 64,71, 117, 124-7, 189, 262; see also pen, pencil, toothbrush bed and bedroom, 4, 54, 70, 76, 79, 120, 142, 158-9, 164, 168-74, 181, 244 Buddhism, 15, 25-6, 209; see also religion beer, 56, 235, 238-9; see also alcohol bulb, 141-2 Beijing, 19 21, 54, 58-60, 66-7, 74, 79, 83-5, butter, 32, 220, 232; see also cheese, milk

Index button, 33, 39, 64, 142, 199, 213-14 bus, 4, 70, 73-4, 84, 94-7, 106

cable, see telegraph

Cai Tingkai, 195

Cai Yuanpei, 113

calendar, 21, 51, 68, 69, 86, 204; see also

advertisement calligraphy, 38, 70, 124-5, 128-9, 175, 244-5 camel, 79, 81,97, 111, 194 camlet, 26, 29, 39, 89 Campbell, Colin, 10 candle, 66, 116, 127, 134, 136, 138, 140, 175, 17,244 canned food, 224-6, 229

canton, 2, 4-5, 17, 20, 21, 26-7, 29, 30-3, 43, 47, 58-9, 61, 74-6, 79, 81-2, 84, 85,94, 98, 104, 105, 112, 114-15, 118, 135-6, 138, 140, 141, 146-9, 151, 161, 164-5, 169, 172, 197, 202, 205, 215, 225, 227-9, 242-3, 251, 255-6, 259, 262, 265 Cao Juren, 43, 184 capital, 35, 43, 96-8, 156-7, 167, 182, 192 car, see automobile carpet, 25, 38, 127, 168-9, 230, 266 cart, 54,73, 78-81, 84-5, 89, 91, 94,97, 151, 234 catalogue, 33, 41 cement, 37, 41, 66,79, 81, 107, 111-14, 121, 130, 133, 144, 155, 158, 160, 163-4, 203 cemetery, 111; see also coffin chair, 3, 14, 25, 27, 33, 37, 41, 53, 76, 81, 83, 89-92, 120, 127, 131, 141, 164, 167-70,

174, 177, 187, 212-3, 229, 246, 254-5, 266; see also furniture champagne, 167, 222, 231, 237-8 chandelier, 138, 144, 177, 230 ‘Changsha, 40, 56, 82, 98, 121, 178

Chapuis, Alfred, 31 cheese, 220; see also butter, milk chemicals, 36, 129, 212, 242 Chen Chi, 39 Chen Da, 163, 199 Chen Dingshan, 232 Chen Jitang, 223 Chen Zhongyu, 26

Chen Zuolin, 27, 29-30 Chengdu, 20, 52, 55, 57, 59, 66, 70, 80, 84-6,

376

91, 93-4, 106, 124, 139, 140-1, 151, 157,

169, 171, 178, 199, 202, 204-9, 212, 215, 222-4, 227, 230, 238, 243, 246, 249-50, 253-4, 257 china, see porcelain chocolate, 220 chongqing, 81, 92, 106, 111, 121, 143, 183,

200, 212, 220 229, 243 ‘chop’, see trademark chopsticks, 53, 227-8 Cixi, Empress Dowager, 26, 90, 164, 168, 187, 239, 243, 246, 253 cigarette, 1, 36, 45, 56-7, 68-71, 115, 119, 172, 194,212, 214, 225, 228 cigarette cards, 21,51, 70-1, 102, 263 cleanliness, 206-7; see also hygiene clock, 4, 27-9, 30-1, 38, 41, 44, 46, 57,61, 120-1, 126, 131, 133, 144, 165, 171-2, 181, 183-5, 227, 234, 265; see also watch cloth, 4, 15, 20-1, 39, 43, 45, 51, 55, 57, 62-4, 127, 168, 177, 191, 193, 195, 199, 202-3, 205, 212, 217-18, 228, 231 clothes, 1, 25-6, 55, 100, 150, 152, 157, 162, 175, 189-200, 202, 205, 207, 218, 246, 261, 264 coal, 51,74, 97, 99-100, 136, 181

coat, 2, 5, 70, 122-3, 196-7, 199-200, 202, 204,218 coffee, 32, 33, 128, 159, 231-2, 235 coffin, see cemetery collecting, 70 colour, 27, 39, 52, 61, 70-1, 83, 89, 94, 101, 112, 122, 127, 130, 138, 140, 149, 165, 169, 170, 172, 174, 194, 196, 200,

212-13, 215-19, 221, 226-7, 229, 232, 235, 245, 252, 254-5, 262-3 comfort, 169, 172-3 commoditisation, 13-15 conerete, see cement condensed milk, see milk ‘consumption’, 11

copper, 15, 28, 32, 39, 45, 85, 169, 172, 185-6, 212-13, 215, 227, 232, 265 copy products, see imitation Corbin, Alain, 205 Cormack,J.G..3 cost, see price market cotton, 30, 32, 35-6, 38, 45-7, 52, 56, 62-3,

Index

76,97, 111, 117, 119-20, 157, 171,177, 181-2, 191-6, 199-200, 203-5 credit, 59, 203 Crow, Carl, 45-6, 60, 62, 161, 165, 208 curtain, 10, 26, 89-90, 163, 165, 169, 174, 229 cutlery, 227-8; see also fork, knife, spoon de Certeau, Michel, 8 Dekobra, Maurice, 61 Deng Yunxiang, 88, 97, 181,236 department store, 57-61, 71, 111, 137-9, 141, 151, 232, 236, 241, 245, 252 Dermigny, Louis, 28 desk, 57, 126-7, 131, 144, 170

Dickinson, Lowes, 122 Dingle, Edward, 18, 121, 175 Dong Zhujun, 57, 229 Doon Dayu, 112 door, 128, 155, 166 dress, see clothing drink, see alcohol, lemonade, water Duanfang, 40, 167, 237 Duan Guangging, 27 dye, 30 see also colour East India Company, 28-9, 192 education, 69, 71, 103, 118, 125, 128, 141, 151, 214, 259; see also school electric fan, 1, 112, 115, 158, 182-4, 212,

261; see also punkah electric heater, 182 electric light,5, 60, 76, 111-12, 119, 133-41, 144, 150-1, 163-4, 203 electric plant, 66, 136 electric siren, 120 electricity, 133-44, 148-52

elevator, see lift ‘emulation’, 9-12 enamelware, 4, 55, 207, 208, 218-19, 226-7, 262, 263 Enders, Elisabeth, 3 England, see Britain English (language), 2, 11, 64, 68, 76, 104, 173, 232, 253-4, 259 exhibition, 40, 65-8, 71, 102, 104, 118, 127, 138, 151, 167, 193, 241, 245, 253. exports, 28-9, 32, 39, 162, 194

eyeglasses, see spectacles

factory, 3, 4, 11, 21, 32, 41, 43, 47,52, 105, 111-12, 115-17, 119-20, 126, 140, 142, 144, 148, 162, 165, 171-3, 181, 194-5,

225, 233, 235, 254, 262, 264 fair, see exhibition Fairbank, John K., 26 fashion, see clothes felt, 39, 173, 202 _fengshui, 155, 163, 167, 186, 242

Feng Yuxiang, 195, 203

Feng Zikai, 122 fish, 225 Fitkin, Gretchen, 3,74 flashlight, see torch Fleming, Peter, 5, 96,99, 100, 149 flint, 30 food, 219-33 foreign objects, rejection of, 4 fork, 14,57, 168, 227-8 Forman, Harrison, 143, 208

Forty, Adrian, 113, 161, 206, 267

Foucault, Michel, 8 France, 2, 44, 110, 164, 185, 192, 205, 219, 234, 243 Franck, Harry, 98, 100, 247 fuel, see kerosene furniture, 5, 27-8, 33-4, 37, 63, 113, 116, 122, 127, 158, 162, 167-77, 258; see also bed, chair, table

gas, 18, 90, 133, 136 Ge Yuanxu, 84, 120, 230, 235 gender, 11,129 Geil, William, 55-6, 151, 165, 237 Germany, 2, 45-6, 98, 110, 124, 142, 179, 211,214, 253, Gerth, Karl, 42, 67

‘gift’, 12-14

glass, 21, 26-9, 33, 37, 39, 40-1, 57, 61, 64, 70, 84, 89, 96, 99, 116, 120-2, 133, 137, 142, 155, 158, 163-6, 185-7, 209, 211-3, 227-33, 236, 238, 242, 244, 246, 251, 253, 265; see also enamelware, mirror, spectacles globalisation,7, 22, 130, 167, 218-19, 263 gold, 28, 32, 191, 209-11, 213-15, 248; see also jewellery Gong Debo, 78 377

Index

Goody, Jack, 224 gramophone,4, 46, 57, 71, 115, 182, 255-7, 259 Graves-Brown, Paul, 12 Gray, Jack, 36 Greenberg, Michael, 29 Guo Liancheng, 75, 242, 251

Guo Moruo, 140, 208 Guo Songtao, 148, 255

imitation, 9-10, 30-1, 33, 35, 37-47, 61, 112, 119, 184, 213-14, 217, 226-7, 230, 232, 254, 256, 262-3, import substitution, 36, 38-9, 47-8, 65, 68, 119, 262 India, 25-6, 32, 36, 65, 182, 193, 209, 244

industry, see factory Iraly, 2, 25, 44

iron, 1, 4, 7, 28-30, 52-3, 64, 81, 84, 88, 96,

102, 111, 115-19, 146, 158, 166, 172,

hair and hair products, 42, 171-2, 208, 174, 181, 212,215, 224, 261 212-13 Hamilton, Gary, 31 Jackson, Innes, 18, 96, 161,233 hankou, 76, 78, 82, 93, 96, 98, 100, 104, 106, Japan, 2, 26, 32, 35-8, 42-7, 55, 83, 85, 89, 110, 114, 122, 135-6, 138, 141, 146, 151, 98, 119, 124-5, 158, 168, 172, 194, 199, 164, 172, 177-8, 208, 216, 255, 259 213-14, 222, 226-7, 233, 238, 244, Hang Zhiying, 86 253-4, 264, 266 Hangzhou, 58, 62, 98, 100, 102, 105, 110, jewellery, 101, 181,213 Jiang Jieshi, 104, 106, 129, 199, 249 114, 127, 149-50, 166, 185, 209, 217, 222, 236, 244-5, 247, 251-2 Jiang Menglin, 180, 184 hat, 4, 53, 201-2, 210, 218, 263 Jiangnan Arsenal, 38 Hay, Jonathan, 157 Johnston, Reginald, 18, 176, 189, 220 health, see hygiene heating, 100, 119, 130, 133, 157, 159, 174, kang, 171-2; see also bed 181-2, 204, 233 kerosene and kerosene lamp, 3, 12, 51-2, 54, Ho,Virgil, 2 56-7, 71, 136, 142, 177-81, 185, 187, Holland, see Netherlands 212, 262 home, see house key, 166-7 Hommel, Rudolf, 52 kitchen, 41, 174, 181,219 Hong Kong, 33, 36, 47, 60-1, 63, 75-6, 78, Knapp, Ronald, 155 84, 90, 98, 104, 140, 149, 151, 157, 166, knife, 53, 55, 57, 168, 227, 228 210, 214, 227, 233, 237, 253, 262-4 Koo, Wellington, 196 Hosie, Lady, 60, 80, 84, 114-15, 172, 220 Kopytoff, Igor, 13 hospital, 66, 110-11, 120, 211, 220, 232 Kraus, Richard A., 194 Kraus, Richard C., 128 house, 155-87; see also architecture kunming, 20, 55, 81-2, 96, 106, 114, 121, Hu Binxia, 228 Hu Shi, 150 136, 186, 253 Huang, Philip, 191 Huang Shiquan, 134 labour, division of, 34, 117 Hudec, L. E., 159 Lanzhou, 20, 97, 106, 110-11, 265 Hughes, E.R., 1 Lang, Olga, 111, 142, 171, 220, 244, 265 lantern, 32, 62, 84, 135, 140, 142-3, 177, 251, ‘hybridity’, 3, 5-7 hygiene, 175, 205-7, 208, 210, 213, 229, 233, 253, 255 259 Latouche, Serge, 6 lead, 28-9 ice, 116, 220-2 leather, 16, 33, 39, 60, 82, 122, 127, 189, 197, ice cream, 60, 220-2, 230, 236 200, 202-4, 215, 218 Ihde, Don, 14, 88 Ledderose, Lothar, 34, 125 378

Index Lee, James, 90, 159, 175

Lei Diangong, 102

leisure, 9, 67, 82, 237, 241, 256, 258, 264

lemonade, 41, 222, 235-9 Li Jingshan, 75 Li Xianwen, 180, 210, 249 LiYuanhong, 249 Li Zongren, 203, 217 Liang Desuo, 203

Liang Shigiu, 149, 183, 203, 212, 249

Liang Yen, 114, 130, 160, 204, 209-10, 220,

248 Liang Zhangju, 9, 31 lift, 60, 159 lighter, 214 linen, 28, 191-2 Lin Yutang, 198, 200, 204 Ling Shubua, 150, 161 lipstick, 209 Liu Jiwen, 79, 110 Liu Na’ou, 133

Lo Kenneth, 6, 175, 220, 224 lock, 166-7 Logan, John, 87 Lou Xuexi, 18, 170 Lu Hanchao, 3

Lu Xun, 12, 124, 181, 182, 191, 207

luxury market, 30, 32, 43-4, 46, 56, 58, 99, 124, 166, 170, 178, 193, 209, 227, 229,

237; see also price market

Macartney, Lord, 26, 28, 31 Macau, 27, 30, 75, 76, 169 machines, 21, 37, 55, 68, 73, 86, 97, 102, 116-19

magic, 16, 58, 102, 242-3, 251, 265 magnifying glass, 27

mail order, 51,59 Mao Dun, 144, 233, 266 Marcuse, Herbert, 14 market, 273 n. 49 Martin, William, 5,74, 115 Marx, Karl, 14

match, 1, 30, 36, 38-9, 42, 44, 55-6, 62, 66, 70-1, 102, 111, 116, 141, 168, 181, 208 mattress, 89, 172-3; see also bed Mauss, Marcel, 13 McKendrick, Neil, 11

Mei Lanfang, 202 Mennell, Stephen, 219 menu, 230 metal, 28, 33, 47, 52, 55, 68, 71, 91, 213, 226, 231,262 Middle East, 25, 32, 224, 263 migrants, 47, 162-3, 175, 187, 204, 225, 235

Milburn, William, 29 milk, 57, 220, 224, 232 Mintz, Sidney, 219, 231 mirror, 10, 17, 27-9, 55, 57, 67, 76, 89, 164, 169, 171-2, 174, 180, 185-7, 208, 212-13, 242-4, 246, 248, 251, 263 money, 15, 20 Morse, Hosea, 28, 194 Movement for National Goods, 39-42, 63, 67,71 museum, 40, 51, 66-7, 71, 110, 263

music, 25, 28, 55, 115, 257; see also brass band, gramophone, sound ‘Mu Shiying, 173 nails, 39, 52-3, 55, 246

Nanchang, 46, 66, 168, 183, 257 Nanjing, 5, 20, 38, 41,74, 80, 82, 99, 100, 102, 104, 106, 110, 112, 114-16, 118,

122, 127, 136-7, 147, 150-1, 164-5, 167, 170, 183, 185, 209, 220, 230, 244, 253 Nanjing Treaty, 33, 35 Nantong, 111, 119, 164 nationalism, economic, 21, 39-40, 42, 43,

48, 67, 110, 262; see also Movement for National Goods needle, 39, 52, 175 Netherlands, 19, 26, 37, 47, 142, 262 newspaper, 37, 59, 65, 68, 71, 161, 172-3 Ng, Janet, 12 Ningbo, 33, 76, 117, 172 noise, see sounds odour, 99, 144, 182, 189, 205-6; see also

perfume offices, 125-30 oil, see kerosene opium, 10, 29, 38, 77, 133-4, 150, 193, 227, 237, 252, 264 packaging, 46, 56, 66, 144; see also brand 379

Index

paper, 20, 67,76 Peffer, Nathaniel, 5, 117, 176 pencil, 56-7, 71, 124-5, 247 pen, 57, 68, 71, 124-5, 127, 189 perfune, 41-2, 44, 57, 101, 189, 205-9; see also odour petroleum, see kerosene Philips, 258 Philippines, 15, 230 phonograph, see gramophone photography, 86, 129, 174, 241-9 pocket, 123, 200 porcelain, 25-6, 28, 32-4, 36, 39, 44, 47, 116, 142, 164, 170, 176, 210, 213, 226, 231, 263 portability, 100, 117, 123, 191, 226, 251 Portugal, 28; see also Macau poster, $1, 61, 65, 68-71, 204, 210, 263 potato, 7, 232 pouch, 60, 199 poverty, 14, 45, 52, 61,63, 127, 156, 161, 191, 207, 210, 224, 247; see also recycling price market, 45, 119; see also luxury market, Poverty printing, 68-9 prison, 67,71, 110-11, 118, 128-9, 170-1, 263 promenade, 82, 107 Pruitt, Ida, 165 Puyi, Henry (Last Emperor), 90, 149-50, 189, 208, 216, 220, 237 Punkah, 183, 212; see also electric fan Purcell, Victor, 79, 81 Qipao, 200

Qingdao, 55, 146, 264 Qianlong, 26, 32 Qian Yikai, 27 Qu Dajun, 27 radio, 67,70, 110, 113, 115, 171-3, 189, 257-9 railway, 96-103 raincoat, see coat raisins, 226 Rawski, Thomas, 36 recycling, 5, 14, 52, 54, 61-4, 86, 181, 202, 262: see also poverty 380

religion, 15 retailing, 15,51-61 rice, 5, 44,99, 116, 118, 219, 222-3, 266 rickshaw, 81-4 road, 78-82, 110-11 roof, 112-13, 127, 130 rouge, see lipstick

rubber, 47, 57, 84, 86, 124, 142, 144, 199,

204-5, 232

ruler, 122, 234

Sahlins, Marshall, 7 salt, 209, 222-4, 230 saltpetre, 29 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 101 school, 21, 38-9, 41, 51, 64, 67-8, 87, 111, 114, 121-5, 128, 162, 183, 185, 203, 206, 210, 233, 244, 246, 249, 255; see also education Sewell, William, 81, 253 sewing machine, 117-19, 123, 226, 266

shantou, 75, 135, 187 Shanghai, 3-4, 7, 10, 19, 21, 36, 38, 40-1, 43, 45, 47, 52, 55-6, 58-63, 66-9, 74-6, 78-9, 82, 84-8, 90, 92-3, 97, 99, 100-6, 111-20, 124, 126, 130, 134-8, 142, 144-51, 157, 159-69, 171-2, 176, 178, 182-7, 191, 196-8, 200, 202-5, 207, 209-16, 218, 220-5, 227-36, 238, 242-59, 264 Shearer, Alistair, 241 shelter, see housing Shen Congwen, 123 Shenyang, 59, 105, 119, 135, 230

shoes, 33, 47, 57, 62-3, 64, 67-8, 82, 172. 175, 189, 191, 196-8, 202-5, 207, 215, 216 shirt, 46, 60, 200, 246 Siam, 2, 15, 32-4, 139, 158, 241 silk, 25, 28, 32, 38, 89, 111, 116, 119, 142, 170, 189, 196-9, 202, 259 silver, 15, 29, 32-3, 35, 37, 43, 45, 61, 89, 213, 220, 242, 248 slavery, 13 smell, see odour soap, 1, 5,39, 41,51-2, 55, 57, 70-1, 111, 114, 194, 205-9, 217, 264-5; see also hygiene socks, 39, 47, 52, 57, 61, 118, 191, 197, 203, 205 Song, Ailing, 85

Index

Song Meiling, 220

tobacco, 7, 10, 32, 56, 116, 199; see also

spittoon, 47, 57, 99, 128, 175, 183, 227, 233,

towel, 21, 47, 52, 55, 57, 77, 172, 192, 205, 208-10, 212, 229, 264 trademark, 37, 44-5, 47, 70, 86, 89, 124, 126,

sound, 115, 252-3, 256, 257: see also gramophone, music, radio South America, 2, 8, 9, 17, 31, 35, 48, 236, 238 spectacles, 2, 27, 55, 57, 60, 189, 215-16, 264 spices, 2, 25, 32 246 standardisation, 167, 234 steamer, 33, 41, 55-6, 67, 73-8, 102, 106, 111, 116, 148, 171, steel, 52, 55, 60, 101-2, 112, 114-15, 125, 135, 146, 164, 258 stockings, 47, 198, 218 stove, 100, 160, 181-2, 212, 231

Styles, John, 37, 65 Suzhou, 40, 58 82, 87, 102, 110, 135, 140, 145, 150, 165, 192, 235, 245 sugar, 25-6, 32, 116, 220-4, 234, 263 Sun Baoxuan, 252 Switzerland, 19, 29, 44, 199, 214, 248, table, 37, 53, 67, 120, 126-7, 167-71, 174, 176, 177, 226-8, 231, 246 taxi, 93-4 Taylor, Frederick, 127 tea, 25, 28-29, 32, 36, 44, 99, 128, 145, 168, 207, 210, 222, 233-6, 259 teak, 158, 170; see also wood telegraph, 16, 68, 71, 111, 148-51, 181, 265 telephone, 59, 111-12, 127, 133, 148-51, 203, 230, 265 telescope, 27, 133, 185 temples, 17, 110, 267 Thailand, see Siam theatre, 200, 214, 233, 251-5 thermometer, 185, 234 thermos flask, 208, 217, 219, 232-4, 237 thrift, see poverty, recycling Tianjin, 36, 41, 44-5, 55, 58, 75, 79, 98-100, 102, 104, 112, 115, 119, 138, 146, 148, 151, 161, 170, 172, 181, 183, 187, 195, 223, 229, 232, 255, 265 Tian Rukang, 120 time, see clock, watch tin, 33, 52, 54, 61, 145, 185, 224, 226-8; see also canned food; kerosene

cigarette toothbrush, 32, 39, 57, 209-10 toothpaste and tooth powder, 5, 41-2,57, 208, 210 torch, 142-3, 177 210, 225, 245 Turkey, 21, 25, 192, 208 typewriter, 125-6, 128

umbrella, 18, 32-3, 39, 54-7, 63, 68, 71, 157,

175, 199, 216-18

underwear, 52, 57, 118 uniform, 76, 119, 122, 203; see also school United States, 13, 18-19, 26, 34, 37-8, 46, 55, 64, 67, 98, 110, 114, 118-19, 124, 127, 141, 145, 151, 158, 162, 194, 200, 222, 225-6, 228, 231-2, 258, 262, 264, 266

VanderVen, Elizabeth, 122 Veblen, Thorstein, 9, 11 velvet, 20, 39, 194, 202, 229 Vickery, Amanda, 11 visual culture, 19, 244-5; see also photography von Laue, Theodore, 7 von Richthofen, Baron, 157, 177, 193, 195 walking stick, 189, 202, 216, 245-6 wallpaper, 174 Wang Fuming, 103 Wang Huizu, 35 ‘Wang Shizhen, 27 ‘Wang Tao, 145, 242 ‘Wang Yingxia, 204 washbasin, see enamelware watch, 28-31, 38-9, 44, 47, 61, 70, 171, 185, 189, 191, 199, 213-14, 217; see also clock waste, 63-4; see also recycling water, 28,52, 111-12, 114, 121, 130, 144-8, 155, 159-61, 163, 171, 174-5, 208, 223-4, 231-8 weapons, 20 Weatherill, Lorna, 10 Wedgwood, Josiah, 113 Wegener, Georg, 46, 178, 185, 237 381

Index

Wei Yuan, 75

“westernisation’, 7

wheat, 219 wheelbarrow, see cart whistle, see electric siren wig, 27 window, sce glass wine, 44, 228, 237-8

wireless, see radio women, see gender

wood, 34, 53, 85, 96, 112-14, 119, 158, 166, 175,177, 247 Wood, Frances, 18 wool, 2, 5, 26, 28, 39, 116, 168, 189, 197, 199, 205 ‘Wuhan, 18, 74, 161, 243, 265

‘Wuxi, 81, 119, 120, 192, 220, 264

‘Wu Youru, 68

‘xenophobia’, 26 Xiamen, 30, 75, 111, 162 Xia Yan, 102, 203 Xie Baozhang, 141,246 Xie Bingying, 180 Xu Shiying, 3 Xu Zhimo, 166 Xue Fucheng, 103, 148

Xunwu, 54, 118, 204, 213-14, 217, 222

Yan Huiging, 169, 196

Yang Ching-kun, 73 Yang Jingting, 165, 214 Yang, Martin, 122 Yangzhou, 82, 140

Yarn, 1, 30, 39, 45, 47, 56, 194, 218; see also

cotton, cloth, clothes ‘Yongzheng, 27 Yorke, Gerald, 4, 96 Yu Daf, 202 Yuan Mei, 166 Yuanmingyuan, 28 ‘Yuan Shikai, 90

Zhang Ailing, 161-2, 216,220 Zhang Dagian, 230 Zhang Deyi, 84, 145, 148, 164, 199, 238, 251,255 Zhang Henshui, 102 382

Zhang Zhang Zhang Zhang

Ruogu, 220 Shunian, 91, 199 Xiaowo, 87 Yuanxun, 87

Zhang Zhidong, 135

Zhaolian, 31 Zhao Yuanren, 123, 180 Zheng Guanying, 38-9 Zhong Fangshi, 83

Zhonghechang, 55-6, 186, 215, 264

Zhu Ziging, 181 Zhuang Tiande, 248 Zouping, 55, 73, 264

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