Photo poetics : Chinese lyricism and modern media culture 2020007793, 2020007794, 9780231192200, 9780231549714

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Photo Poetics

G L O B A L C H I N E S E C U LT U R E

GLOBAL CHINESE CULTURE DAVID DER-WEI WANG, EDITOR

Michael Berry, Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers Sylvia Li-chun Lin, Representing Atrocity in Taiwan: The 2/28 Incident and White Terror in Fiction and Film Michael Berry, A History of Pain: Literary and Cinematic Mappings of Violence in Modern China Alexa Huang, Chinese Shakespeares: A Century of Cultural Exchange Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards, editors, Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader Andrea Bachner, Beyond Sinology: Chinese Writing and the Scripts of Culture Jie Li, Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life Michel Hockx, Internet Literature in China Lily Wong, Transpacific Attachments: Sex Work, Media Networks, and Affective Histories of Chineseness Sebastian Veg, Minjian: The Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals

PHOTO POETICS Chinese Lyricism and Modern Media Culture Shengqing Wu

Columbia University Press / New York

Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong in the publication of this book and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and the Council for Cultural Affairs in the publication of this series.

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York  Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2020 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wu, Shengqing, author. Title: Photo poetics : Chinese lyricism and modern media culture / Shengqing Wu. Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2020. |   Series: Global Chinese culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020007793 (print) | LCCN 2020007794 (ebook) |   ISBN 9780231192200 (cloth) | ISBN 9780231549714 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Chinese poetry—Qing dynasty, 1644–1912—History   and criticism. | Chinese poetry—20th century—History and criticism. | Literature and photography—China. | Photography in literature. Classification: LCC PL2327. W93 2020 (print) | LCC PL2327. (ebook) |   DDC 895.11/4809—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007793 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007794

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America Cover image: Picture of a Gentle Girl Playing Her Koto, with Su Manshu’s inscriptions, ca. 1909, 10 × 15 cm. Courtesy of Wang Jinsheng. Cover design: Lisa Hamm

To my mom and dad ß

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction  1 PART I: REFASHIONING THE SELF

1. Multiplying the Self: Staging Fantasies and Cultural Personas  33 2. Envoicing the Paper Mirror: Autobiographical Moments  74 PART II: EMOTIONS IN TRANSIT

3. The Social Life of Emotions: Photography and the Singularity of the Gift  113 4. Summoning Zhenzhen: Circulation of the Tropes of the Beauty, the Skull, and the Nude  145 PART III: WORLDLY AND OTHERWORLDLY VISIONS

5. In Search of Soul: Psychical Studies and Spirit Photography  183 6. The Shadows of Poetry: Mediating “Interior Landscapes”  213 7. Inscribing Remembrance: Lyrical and Technological Envisioning of the Past  237 Epilogue 265 Notes 273 Index 345

Acknowledgments

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hile browsing late Qing poetry anthologies many years ago, I encountered some poems written about photographs. Intrigued by these poems, I entertained the idea that this might be an interesting paper topic. During the years of researching and reading, this humble idea blossomed into a full-fledged book project. In this journey, I have accumulated incalculable intellectual and emotional debts to many teachers, colleagues, friends, and my family, who were vital to this dream coming true. My deep gratitude goes to David Der-wei Wang who has unwaveringly supported and inspired me in many different ways. Ellen Widmer was a continuous source of scholarly advice and inspiration; Theodore Huters has played a key role in my intellectual development over the last two decades. Working beyond my expertise as a literary scholar, I was fortunate to have in-depth conversations with art historians Régine Thiriez, Gu Zheng, Tong Bingxue, Frances Terpak, and Chen Shiqiang, who kindly shared their extensive knowledge of Chinese photography and art with me. As this book took shape, it benefited from constructive comments and insights provided by a number of scholars, including Kang-I Chang, Grace S. Fong, Wai-yee Li, Michel Hockx, John Crespi, Haiyan Lee, Charles Laughlin, Carlos Rojas, Nicole Huang, Ronald Egan, Zong-qi Cai, and Nanxiu Qian. Kenny Kwok Kwan Ng, David Chai, and Nahum Brown offered many astute comments after carefully reading parts of the manuscript. The criticisms and suggestions made by anonymous readers of my submissions to Columbia University Press and journals substantially helped me shape this work.

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Research for this book could not have been completed without scholarly insights and generous help from many colleagues and students. This research project started a decade ago at Wesleyan University and came to its conclusion at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. I would like to extend my gratitude to Jianmei Liu for offering her enthusiastic support and friendship over these years and for creating an amicable and culturally rich environment and also to Chen Jianhua for his continuous encouragement and inspiration. Many conversations with David Cheng Chang, K ­ am-ming Yip, Flora Li-tsui Fu, and Daisy Du on photography, art, and Chinese ghosts stimulated me to think further. Vera Schwarcz, Stephen Angel, William Johnston, Su Zheng, Lisa Dombrowski, and Patrick Dowdey at Wesleyan University shared my interest at the early stages of this project. Billy So, James Lee, Christian Daniels, Kellee Tsai and Wei Shyy gave their firm encouragement during my research leave, providing a nurturing intellectual community. I taught a graduate course on image and text and enjoyed the opportunities to engage in invigorating conversations with a group of talented students. I want to thank Chen Shu, Jiang Hanyang, and Yue Huanyu for sharpening my thinking on media, theatricality, and nudity and for passing along important materials. I also thank Liu Yanghe, Han Song, Qiao Min, Ha Yi-ming, Chen Xiaoran, Guo Zijian, and Ren Yunzhu for assisting in various ways. A sustaining network of friends played an essential role in my intellectual life. Mingwei Song, with his critical rigor and creativity, has constantly inspired and encouraged me. My gratitude also goes to Leonard Chan, Zhang Hongsheng, Wen Jin, Ao Wang, Xuelei Huang, Lanjun Xu, Enhua Zhang, Yun Zhang, Huaiyu Chen, Makiko Mori, Lin Du, Binbin Yang, Yingzhi Zhao, Chaohua Wang, Yunte Huang, Ling Hon Lam, Yu Zhang, Lei Ying, Sei Jeong Chin, Frederick H. Green, Tsung-Cheng Lin, Cheng Wen-hui, Liu Yuanju, Yang Lianfen, Ko Chia Cian, Xu Yan, Chen Ruizan, Yan Feng, Yang Yang, Yuan Jin, Zhang Ke, Zhang Yesong, Wang Qing, Huang Fayou, and Zhou Yan. A decade ago, Zhang Hui (1977–2013) helped me obtain some critical materials relating to the Southern Society from the library of China’s Academy of Social Science. How I wish he were here to receive my thanks. Leo Ou-Fan Lee  and Longxi Zhang, exemplary in their enormous knowledge and unswerving intellectual curiosity, cultivated a vibrant intellectual atmosphere in Hong Kong. Together with Zhang Hongsheng, Lawrence Yim,

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Zhang Jian, Zhang Wanming, Hu Qi, Cui Wendong, and many others, they formed a wonderful scholarly community, facilitating continuous intellectual dialogues among us. I have benefited from a number of digital databases in my research (Wanqing qikan quanwen shujuku and Minguo shiqi qikan quanwen shujuku, in particular), but I feel fortunate that this project was launched before the efforts toward mass digitalization of archival materials took place at China’s libraries. As a result, I was able to access many original copies of magazines and journals at the Shanghai Municipal Library and others. A significant number of the materials discussed in this book were obtained through countless hours spent at the Shanghai Municipal Library, and I would like to express my sincere thanks to Zhu Chunxiang and Chen Guojia for their assistance. At the Shanghai Municipal Library during one of my summer research trips I ran into Grace S. Fong, who pointed out to me a blurred photographic image of Xu Yunhua and her poem in one of the microfilms she happened to be browsing at that time. Several years later, when I located the Funü zazhi at the Harvard-Yenching Library, I was delighted and surprised to discover that the visual image (figure 2.10) was beautifully printed and well preserved in its original copy. When I was at Fudan University in 2013 as a visiting scholar, I also spent one winter at the modern journal reading room on the second floor of the Humanities Library there. Recollections of the dusty, cold reading room, and the excitement of browsing the Republican journals shelf by shelf, remain vivid to this day. Chen Sihe and Hu Xiaoming, as well as the library staff at Fudan University and East China Normal University, provided me with access to original materials at their respective institutions. Research for this project and the publication of this work was made possible by a number of grants, for which I owe an immense debt of gratitude. An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation summer stipend offered through Wesleyan University in 2010 and the American Research in the Humanities in China Fellowship by American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) in 2013 helped me lay some of the groundwork for this book project. One semester at the International Center for Studies of Chinese Civilization at Fudan University helped me to significantly expand the material bases. I would like to convey my great appreciation to Jin Guangyao, Chen Yinchi, Zhang Ke, and Qian Yu for their support, and to Tansen Sen, Daniela Campo, Xiao

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Wu, Bin Xu, and Gang Wang for our ceaseless delightful and stimulating gatherings. The General Research Grant (No. 16601615), provided by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, allowed me to travel to libraries and museums that significantly expanded my critical horizons while offering much-needed time free from teaching duties to concentrate on writing. My time spent at Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard Libraries, British Library, Getty Museum, New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, Fudan University Library, East China Normal University Library, National Library of China, and International Research Center for Japanese Studies enriched my thinking through their cross-cultural perspectives. Harvard-Yenching Institute afforded me the precious time and resources necessary to conduct research and complete this project. I would like to thank Elizabeth Perry, David Der-wei Wang, Ruohong Li, and the staff for making my fruitful time at Harvard-Yenching possible. Many rewarding conversations at the Newhouse Faculty Center at Wellesley College also helped me to think beyond my field and express my ideas across cultural boundaries. I am deeply indebted to the Harvard-Yenching Institute, the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange for generously providing funds toward the production of this book. Obtaining permission to reproduce the images proved to be a daunting task. I particularly appreciate the Shanghai Municipal Library, Tong Bingxue, Jin Youming, Lin Du and Luo Bonian Art Foundation, Eva Long and Long Chin-san Cultural Foundation, Rita Ho, Sarah Greene, Soong Shu-kong, Wang Jinsheng, Wang Yamin and the Forbidden City Publisher, Chao-shun Lee, Pan Guangzhe and Hu Shih Memorial Hall, Jin Yan and Qiu Jin Research Association in Shaoxing, and Ma Liang for allowing me to reprint images here. A number of institutions and friends, some of whom I only met in the virtual world, assisted me in a number of ways in obtaining the permissions: Chen Zishan, Chen Shen, Guo Yanli, Li Kaijun, Huang Qiaosheng, Yu Yiyi, Yan Xiaoxing, Ji Lingjuan, Liu Chiung-yun, Lu Xun Museum in Beijing, and Jiangyin Municipal Museum. I am grateful to Eleanor Goodman for helping me express the poetry across languages and to Lam Lap for kindly retuning some of my translations. I am especially thankful to Nita Sembrowich and Eleanor Goodman for their meticulous editorial help and keen suggestions. Needless to say, all the errors

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in the book are my own. This book uses the pinyin Romanization system, except in quoted lines. All translations are mine unless otherwise acknowledged. Some translations of the titles of the magazines or works are original in English. Due to concerns about length, the bibliography of this book will not be included in the publication but will be available online. I am also indebted to a number of institutions that provided me with a platform to present my work in progress. These include National Taiwan University, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Yale University, University of Singapore, Wellesley College, University of Edinburgh, the University of Kentucky, McGill University, Fudan University, Hong Kong University, Goethe University, New York University in Shanghai, Hong Kong Museum of History, and many others. My appreciation is extended to Kang-I Chang, Grace S. Fong, Ellen Widmer, Cheng Yu-yu, Lam Lap, Zhiyi Yang, Tansen Sen, Liang Luo, Xuelei Huang, Sophia Woodman, Yu Zhang and Géraldine A. Fiss for their kind invitations. The workshop, conferences, and panels that I organized or participated in offered valuable experience for refining many of my arguments. I wish to acknowledge that it was through Joan Judge’s paper presented at a panel I organized, “Traveling Image/Text: Photographical Culture in Modern China” at the Association for Asian Studies annual conference in 2015, that the album Xichui yinhen by Zhang Mojun was brought to my attention. I also thank the discussants, participants, and audience members for their thought-provoking comments and questions: Eugene Wang, Julia Andrews, Harriet T. Zurndorfer, Catherine Yeh, Yomi Braester, Kirk Denton, Roberta Wue, Weihong Bao, Yi Gu, H. Tiffany Lee, Alexander Des Forges, Mao Wen Fang, I Lo-fen, Lu Wen-tsuei, Robin Yates, Jeffrey Moser, Christopher Reed, Shana Brown, Yu-jen Liu, Yanfei Zhu, Chun-Yu Lu, Jie Guo, Liying Sun, Wilson Chik, Zhang Hui, Wu Xueshan, Qiu Caizhen, Zhang Changhong, Yao Dadui, Liang Tianshuang, Yao Jiaqi, Bai Tongdong, and Liang Shixin. The editorial and publication team at Columbia University, Christine Dunbar and Christian Winting in particular, have been so efficient and professional in ushering me through the review and production process. Their expertise and support were indispensable to completion of this book. I particularly would like to express my gratitude to Christine Dunbar, who spotted the value of this project and enthusiastically supported me in its full

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realization. I also thank Robert Graham at the Harvard Asia Center publication program for his encouragement and invaluable professional advice. Parts of two chapters of this book have been previously published. Chapter  2 is an expanded revision of the article in English titled “A Paper Mirror: Autobiographic Moments in Modern Chinese Poetry,” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 2, no. 2 (2016), and the article in Chinese “Chongceng de ziwo yingxiang,” Bulletin of Department of Chinese Literature, National Chengchi University 26 (2016). Chapter 3 is a significantly revised and expanded version of the article “Classical Poetry, Photography, and the Social Life of Emotions in 1910s China,” Paul Hsiang Lecture Series on Chinese Poetry 7 (2015). I extend my appreciation to Zong-qi Cai, Grace S. Fong, Cheng Yu-yu, and Christopher Byrne as well as the Duke University Press for their encouragement and assistance. No words can ever adequately express my profound gratitude to Eric, my parents Wu Guangsong and Sheng Pingping, my cousin Sheng Ye, and my late grandmother Yuan Xiuqing (1923–1997) for their love and support. In the late 1970s in Hangzhou, my late grandmother purchased a camera of the popular brand Seagull and developed her passion for photography. My grandma and mom temporarily turned a school’s medical office into a photography studio. They hung a piece of white cloth as background, took photos, and developed the film in that office. During this period, on many days I would excitedly wait for the night to fall and for the magic moments to come. Several photos of me as a girl beaming with a big smile have survived in the family album. Although my grandma’s enthusiasm was short-lived and I was soon buried in my schoolwork, the excitement and aura of photography have stayed with me over the years. With these “words of light,” arresting time and memory, I fondly dedicate this book to my parents and my late grandmother.

Photo Poetics

Introduction From Mute Poetry to Intermediality

A

fter viewing a painting of a fishing terrace, the Tang dynasty poet Xu Ning 徐凝 wrote:

A lonely river meets blue haze, above two green cliffs, white clouds scattered. The painter strived to draw the heartbreaking sounds of the ape; yet failed to capture its cries from the trees.1 一水寂寥青靄合， 兩崖崔崒白雲殘。 畫人心到啼猿破， 欲作三聲出樹難。

The first couplet presents a pictorial scene—the lonely river, green riverbanks, and white clouds—images that are prevalent in Chinese landscape painting. The description of the rich imagery of a painterly scene in the poem evokes the long-established idea of “a painting in poetry” (shizhong youhua 詩中有畫),2 indicating the collaboration and integration of two media. The poetic voice goes on to explain that a painter would quickly reach his limits were he to try to solicit the cries of the ape from the trees. The painting provides an open invitation for the participation of language to supplement the “voice” in it, and Xu’s poem serves as an example of just such an expressive voice.

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The prominent Chinese scholar Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書 (1910–1998) cited this poem, in his usual erudite manner, after reading Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s canonical arguments on the duality of the art of space and the art of time in Laokoön (1766). Using Xu’s poem to illustrate the differences between painting and poetry, Qian echoes Lessing’s radical conclusion that painting has the capacity “to convey only actions juxtaposed in space (nebeneinander) and not actions that succeed each other in time (nacheinander).”3 Lessing’s thesis—that poetry is a temporal art whereas painting arrests a single moment to capture a specific space—was a reaction to the pervasive eighteenth-century aesthetic discourse that regarded poetry and painting as “sister arts,” which is captured in the popular dictum ut pictura poesis (as a painting, so also a poem).4 In its turn, Lessing’s revisionist argument has become highly influential in Western aesthetics, helping to establish a widespread view of time and space as binary opposites, and visuality and aurality as deeply separate, sensually discrete sources of perception.5 Qian Zhongshu evokes Lessing in the context of a discussion of comparative poetics in an attempt to differentiate the functions of poetry and painting. However, he does not subscribe to Lessing’s view of this dichotomous confrontation and oppositional topos. Overall, the Chinese reception of painting and poetry stands in stark contrast to Lessing’s conclusion that the two media are fundamentally distinct. Instead, an eminent Chinese textual tradition affirms the mutuality between words and images and their elemental interrelatedness, while attending to those aspects of poetry and painting that cater to the different senses of aurality and visuality. The Song dynasty critic claimed to take “pictures as mute poetry, and poetry as a speaking picture” (hua wei wusheng shi, shi wei yousheng hua 畫為無聲詩，詩為有聲畫).6 Another Song dynasty poet, Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅 (1045–1105), composed two poems about a painting of the historical site of the Yang Pass. The painting by Li Gonglin 李公麟 (1049–1106), originally inspired by Wang Wei’s 王維 (699–759) earlier poem that was sung at a farewell ceremony, further inspired numerous additional poetic writings and inscriptions by later poets and collectors.7 Huang Tingjian’s couplet reads: In the heartbreaking sound of lyrics, there are no shapes or shadows; painted scenes without sound are also heartbreaking.8

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斷腸聲裡無形影， 畫出無聲亦斷腸。

The couplet addresses Wang’s heartbreaking poems (via poetic sound and singing) and Li’s soundless painting that captures “shapes and shadows” (xingying) as equally moving. It exposes the common ground the two media share, emphasizing their reciprocal enhancements and the transference of senses. The temporal aspects of sound, the spatial dimensions of the visual, and cross-sensory stimulations can thus be conjoined to evoke synaethesia (tonggan 通感),9 uncovering the perceptual, sensorial, and emotional power of both media. These poems of Xu Ning and Huang Tingjian belong to a poetic genre called tihua shi 題畫詩 that first matured during the Tang dyansty. Tihua shi, in its narrow sense, denotes a poem addressing the painting that is inscribed onto pictorial space; it also loosely refers to a type of verse that gives a sense of the origins and circumstances surrounding a painting, as well as one that critiques paintings and echoes their sentiments. Unlike traditional Western ekphrastic poetry, defined as the “verbal representation of the visual representation,”10 Chinese poetry that addresses painting does not take the verbal representation of the image content as its main purpose; rather, it engages in artistic appraisal, evoking lyrical sentiment and extending imagination beyond what is depicted in the painting. Operating upon word and image as two closely intersecting sign systems, the analogy between Chinese poetry and painting gives both art forms the advantage of being able to conjointly conjure rich mental images, sentiments, and meanings while at the same time speaking to shared aesthetic ideals. “Painterly poetry” (characterized by its dense and evocative scenes) and literati paintings (infused with rhythmic dimensions and lyricism) often serve as mutual figures of words as images and paintings as writings. Tihua shi, which was transformed in the creative hands of poets such as Du Fu 杜甫 (712–770), was not physically incorporated into the pictorial space of a painting itself until the Song dynasty.11 In creating this “integral poem-painting,” poems, calligraphy, and the style of execution became essential elements of ink painting, and poem and painting are created either by different individuals or by the same poet-painter.12 Calligraphy, working at the interface between painting and poem, foregrounds the graphical visual appearance of the characters through balanced brushstrokes, turning writing

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into a series of images.13 The effective synergy of painting, poetry, and calligraphy in the aesthetically integrated art form of the “three perfections” (sanjue 三絕) embodies a holistic view of equilibrium, dynamics, and “visual poetics,” although in actual practice the permutations of the image-text relation are countless and implementation of the “three perfections” is far from uniformly harmonious.14 Against this aesthetic backdrop, in the 1840s when Chinese poetry began encountering photography, the premises behind the traditional poetrypainting analogy started to erode. What exactly happened when expressive, ornamental words confronted photography, which was commonly believed to be a supremely realistic medium? When the brush met the shutter, in what ways were the different combinations of painting, calligraphy, and poetry extended into the new media environment, and how did this lead to new types of interdependence and interplay between words and images? The process of transplanting this new technical medium was accompanied by growing tensions, imbrications, and mutual enrichment between the previously privileged word and the technologically replicable image. To paint in broad strokes, throughout China’s early reception of photography, textual tradition and ideas served as an overarching conceptual framework, substantially informing new media practices in the initial decades of its reception. At the same time, these resources offered a rich vault for further innovations and experiments that dissolved media borders. In delving into this historical encounter, I employ the term “photo poetics.”15 This expression not only refers to interactions between poetry and the photographic medium in particular but also designates the aesthetics generated from the movement of “in-between” media practices. The dynamics of photo poetics—whether as a site of integration, conflict, or transformation— encompasses verbal and visual dialogues, tensions, and intertextual references, as well as the new aesthetics that resulted from these negotiations.16 “Poetics” here pertains to the continuation of classical-style poetry into the modern era and to “the continuation of poetry by other means.”17 Photo poetics is also examined in light of contemporary media analysis to highlight how it constitutes an in-between or figure of intermediality.18 The concept of intermediality as a critical category can be described as the border-crossing between media. Related to but distinct from intertextuality (the referencing and interaction of different texts within the same medium), intermediality transgresses traditional formal and material boundaries between

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the various art media, serving as a fundamental condition for communicative and aesthetic practices.19 Photo poetics is the manifestation of different forms and configurations of intermedial phenomena.20 Paying particular attention to the underlying semiotic system and “composite media,” literary scholar Werner Wolf approached this wide-ranging and flexible concept of intermediality by subdividing it into four typologies: transmediality, intermedial transposition, plurimediality, and intermedial reference.21 The first type of intermediality in Wolf’s taxonomy is transmediality, which describes ahistoric phenomena such as motifs, themes, and narratives that occur at formal and semantic levels across a range of media.22 One prominent instance of transmediality in this study is that of shiyi (詩意, lit., poetic message). As a metaconcept or style, shiyi is commonly interwoven into the content level across poetry, literati painting, and pictorial photography. More concretely, a lonely fishing boat, for instance, appears as a recurring, privileged motif and symbol across media, remaining a perennially beloved image and a transmedial figure. The second type is intermedial transposition, which refers to the transfer of content or formal features from one source medium to a target medium, such as film adaptations of literary texts.23 In this study, the reenactments of literary scenes (e.g., Lin Daiyu burying flowers) or figures (e.g., a fisherman) in costume photo shoots act as prime illustrations of intermedial transposition. Poetic-inspired photography (shiyi zhao 詩意照) is exemplary of the reworking of the shiyi tu 詩意圖, a popular pictorial genre in the Ming and Qing eras that, inspired by a poem, inscribes poetic lines onto the image space.24 The third type is plurimediality, which can be characterized as a combination of several medial forms of articulation. Wolf mentions opera as a form of plurimediality because it uses music, dance, theater, and poetry to articulate the artistic vision of the piece.25 Many Chinese photographs with calligraphic inscriptions and seal imprints offer fascinating examples of such combinations of media. Plurimediality became more prevalent with the proliferation of pictorial magazines and illustrated books. These sites for medial mixture and remediation enable the viewer to reflect on the multifaceted significations and communications that concurrently occur between the verbal and the visual. The fourth type of intermediality that Wolf designates is intermedial reference, in which the reference to the other media may take place explicitly (e.g., painters and musicians as characters in novels) or implicitly (e.g., the

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musicalization of fiction or ekphrasis). In this case, although it resorts to its own media-specific means, a singular medium is nevertheless in close proximity to another medium through evocations and imitations.26 For example, W. H. Auden’s famous 1938 poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” is an indirect form of intermediality and a verbal reconstruction of Pieter Bruegel’s paintings. This image-text relationship discloses dynamic interplays between the high drama described in Auden’s poem and the still moment that suppressed the drama arrested in the painting.27 Through the evocation of the presence of visual media, the genre tizhao shi 題照詩 (poems written about portraits or photographs) is inherently an intermedial phenomenon. In addition to Wolf, Irina O. Rajewsky elucidates the “as if” character of intermedial references. She argues that intermedial references create the illusion of another medium’s specific practices. For instance, in “filmic writing” the author uses the verbal medium to imitate or evoke the ability of the camera to zoom in on, edit, or dissolve images, all of which create an illusion of the presence of another medium in the reader’s mind.28 In pictorial photography in both China and the West, it is well known that media-specific means and instruments of photographing were frequently refashioned to imitate, resemble, or evoke their respective pictorial traditions, thus achieving the painterly effects or the illusion of the painting.29 In China’s early reception of photography, the photograph was referred to as tu 圖 (picture) or hua 畫 (painting), and photography gestured toward the native pictorial tradition. More important, imitation and evocation of the themes, motifs, and styles of portrait and landscape paintings helped to establish the definitive intermedial quality of Chinese photography and further facilitated its transformation and innovation as an art form. The intense interaction between poetry and photography is described in detail through these different permutations and configurations of intermediality in this book. The classification of intermediality has pragmatic advantages and heuristic potential, but in practice the four categories already naturally overlap and converge, and the medium’s borders are fluid and constantly trespassed. When imprinting a seal onto a photographic surface and adding inscriptions, the photographer or inscriber mixed media as a form of plurimediality; meanwhile, photographers resorted to the painter’s vision and emulated certain technical aspects of painting to render “as if” effects that bear a resemblance

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to paintings. W. J. T. Mitchell claims that “all media is mixed media, combining different codes, discursive conventions, channels, sensory and cognitive modes.”30 Moving between intermingled discursive, imagistic, and figural aspects of these heterogeneous sites, the term “photo poetics” represents not only the figure of an inventive expression of image-text intermediality but also a site for translations, disparities, and paradoxes. Attending to on-site communications, hybridity, and displacement from one medium to another, photo poetics enacts relational thinking between mute poetry and a speaking picture, between mimesis and rhetoric, and on multiple levels of (re)-mediations among practitioners, communities, and public cultural spaces.

A PHOTOGRAPH, ITS MESSAGES AND CONTEXT Around 1886, Li Hongzhang 李鴻章 (1823–1901), one of the most powerful politicians during the late Qing era, received a photo album from Yi Xuan 奕譞 (1840–1891) (aka Prince Chun) as an imperial gift. Li later described the album in a long poem, part of which reads as follows: Returning home, I touch the mirror-painting, such a tiny space contains a magic land. The painting from the Mi family may not have both qualities of exact likeness and ingenuity like this.31 歸來撫鏡畫， 咫尺羅瀛壺。 未必米家楨， 有此肖妙俱。

The poem refers to the photo album as “mirror-painting” (jinghua), the glass painting popular in the Qing, and compares it to the master paintings by esteemed Mi Fu 米芾 (1051–1107) and his son Mi Youren 米友仁 (1074–1153), who are famed for their expressiveness and abbreviation beyond visual details. Appreciating the value of the new technology, Li was impressed by its ability to capture both physical resemblance and spiritual ingenuity.

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Officially recognized as being invented in Europe in 1839, photography was quickly introduced in China by way of Western colonial expansion. The arrival of photography in China in the 1840s precipitated a flood of amateur and professional photographers and explorers, bringing new opportunities as well as clashes with time-honored poetic forms and traditional painting.32 Zou Boqi 鄒伯奇 (1819–1869), who is credited as the “inventor” of the Chinese camera, left photographs and a few poems on photographs in his surviving manuscripts.33 His manuscripts offer the earliest example of poems being written about portrait photographs, and in this case he himself was the photographer. Zou wrote four poems in the 1860s in the subgenres xiangzan 像贊 (encomium on a portrait) and ziti xiaozhao 自題小照 (writings about a self-portrait). Here is one of his poems.

SHOOTING THE SELF-PORTRAIT TO PASS DOWN MY TRUE IMAGE

The ordinary appearance ancient, the whole outfit new. A self-portrait has no specific purpose, being called, it seems to have spirit. Gazing upon it with a full view, it leaves some room to maneuver; reflecting upon it, [I] apprehend the truth. Woodsmen take up on the mountainsides, fishermen reside by the river bank. About to turn fifty years old, I enjoy the way of life, and can tell whereon the fine dust lies.34 自照遺真

平常容貌古， 通套布衣新。 自照原無意， 呼之如有神。 均瞻留地步，

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覺處悟天真。 樵佔鰲峰側， 漁居泌水濱。 行年將五十， 樂道識纖塵。

In the poem, Zou utilizes the strength of the poetic genre to provide a sense of duration and symbolic signs that project the self onto the persona of a cultivated literatus who engages in a carefree lifestyle. Going beyond physical appearance and its representational content, the poem attempts to identify the shen 神 (spirit) of the photographic subject. The underlying message is the recurrent dynamic relationship between xing 形 (form or appearance) and shen, and between formal likeness and the spiritual larger-than-life.35 Zou, a photographer, viewer, and poet relies here on language’s ability to elicit metaphorical signification, while appropriating the existing genre associated with the picture (xiang or zhao) for the photographic medium. In elucidating the characteristics of photographs and the relationship between image and text, Roland Barthes notably argues that photography is unique in that it is completely taken up with what he calls the “first-order” or denoted message (the message of the analogue itself). As a result, it does not seem to produce in a traditional way the “second-order” or connoted message (the message that signifies something other than what is given in the content of the medium). Photography (press photography in particular, in Barthes’s opinion) purports to reveal “objective reality” through analogues without further mediation and appears to be “a message without a code.” However, Barthes also proposes the idea of “the photographic paradox,” by which he means that the photograph contains a denoted message without a code and a connoted message derived from the “art, treatment or rhetoric of the image.”36 The connotative procedures (especially with artistic photographs) include trick effects, poses, photogenia (embellishment by lighting, exposure, and printing), aestheticism in its very material texture, and textual addition.37 In the context of Barthes’s insightful discussions, we can “read” and decipher one of the earliest surviving photographs in the Imperial Palace, namely that of Yi Xuan, who took a photograph with his two guards at the Imperial Palace dated around 1863 (figure 0.1). The photograph of Yi Xuan expresses a denoted

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FIGURE 0.1  Scroll of the photograph of Yi Xuan with his inscriptions, ca. 1863.

Courtesy of the Forbidden City Publisher.

message, a transparent transcription of three standing military men. Yi Xuan wears a saber at his waist and stands in the middle, and two bannermen adorned with weapons stand on either side of him. The connoted message of the photograph, which comes from the poses and accessories of the men, especially from the three weapons they carry, is that weaponry and military exercises are of the utmost importance. Prince Chun was appointed to lead the Peking Field Force, which was founded in 1862 in the aftermath of the Second Opium War. What is most intriguing about the photograph is the quality of aestheticism and the manner of its presentation: It is mounted onto a brocade as a hanging scroll with the prince’s poem and seals inscribed on the top of it.38

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The signature reads “Chun Junwang ziti” 醇郡王自題 (self-inscribed by Prince Chun of the Second Rank) in calligraphy, along with two seals, one of “Chun Junwang” and the other of “Jiusi Tang yin” 九思堂印 (seal of Jiusi Hall), which appear next to the signature. As a marvelous articulation of the poetics of plurimediality, this piece vividly represents how the new photographic image is, quite literally, embedded in the Chinese pictorial tradition in the middle of the nineteenth century. The effects of connotation vary greatly in different image and text constellations. The text can either “duplicate” the image, deepening its connotations, or produce “an entirely new signified which is retroactively projected into the image.”39 In this case, written by the literarily proficient Yi Xuan, the poem extends the signification of the image beyond what is visually represented, cultivating the persona of a literatus who enjoys poetry and a leisurely lifestyle. One couplet reads: Do not talk about the enormously busy military matters, [I] also find the leisure to chant a poem.40 莫言倥傯三軍事， 也得逍遥一律唫。

The function of the poem can be understood as “transform[ing] the unculture of a ‘mechanical’ art into the most social of institutions” (in Barthes’s words).41 The contrast between the poem’s ostensibly relaxed attitude and the image that prominently shows weaponry is striking. Did Yi Xuan deliberately use an unassuming, carefree voice to tame the visual message that explicitly demonstrates his political significance in the court? Through the inscriptions, new meanings were retroactively projected onto the image. By the middle of the nineteenth century, commercial photography studios began to appear in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. From 1863 to the end of the nineteenth century, it is estimated that there were at least fifty studios in Shanghai. By the turn of the twentieth century, well-to-do families living in major cities had been exposed to photo shoots. In Republican Shanghai, the number of major studios increased from thirty-eight in 1914 to fifty in 1930.42 The craze for photography continued with introduction of

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the personal portable camera into China in the 1920s and with the emergence of mass consumerism and the rise of a new middle class. The explosion of photography and its seamless assimilation into cultural lives in the early twentieth century gave rise to the new business of writing inscriptions and colophons. In one satirical story by popular writer Cheng Zhanlu 程瞻廬 (1879–1943), a gentleman makes a living in 1920s Shanghai by writing encomia (zan) on photographs, a skill that was in high demand. Even ordinary people wished to hire someone to write a verse on a photograph that would be prominently displayed in their homes. The protagonist enjoys playing tricks on his clients and always sneaks in unpleasant puns by employing rhetorical strategies such as homophones, allusions, or word play to cunningly poke fun at the photographic subjects. Transforming his eulogies into curses or jokes, the protagonist is eventually exposed and loses his business.43 Although fictional, this satire gives us a glimpse into the fad of writing inscriptions on images. The widely read 1925 essay on photography by Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936) also confirms this impression of the popularity of inscriptions. He derides the fact that in S town (presumably his hometown of Shaoxing), once a photograph is taken, “one can count on it eliciting a poem, set to such tunes as Diaoji mantingfang, or Mo yu’er, which can then be hung on one’s study walls.”44 Lao She 老舍 (1899–1966), in a humorous 1936 essay, describes quotidian activities and enthusiasm related to taking and displaying photographs for socialization and as part of a newly adopted lifestyle. Lao She suggests that readers who know how to write poems well are better equipped to inscribe little poems onto the edge of their photographs to spell out “the taste of life.” He asks a rhetorical question: How can we escape from the addiction of taking photos, as this entire century is “the century of photography” (zhaoxiang shiji 照像世紀)?45 These essays on photographic culture, often mocking in tone, imply that, along with excitement and fascination, there was also a feeling of uneasiness in foreseeing photography’s increasingly pervasive penetration into everyday social life. These impressionistic accounts of photo inscriptions are further substantiated by many surviving, yet scattered records. A two-volume album compiled by the Shanghai Library contains a section devoted to “inscriptions and colophons” (tiba 題跋), in which the photographic subject’s self-inscription, or an inscription written by either a contemporary or someone of a later

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generation, is prominently presented.46 It became a common practice, both in China and in the West, to sign photographs and give them to friends as gifts. We can find this same act of authentication in many old Hollywood films, in which the star actor gives an autographed copy of his or her photograph to fans. Inscriptions in verse or essay format—a practice only occasionally seen in the West—not only offer aestheticism and rich information surrounding the circumstances of the photograph but also bring history into the private realm, adding affective value and a personal voice to what is otherwise mute photography.47 For instance, one photograph of significant historical value shows the treaty negotiation and signing in which the Qing government ceded three northeastern provinces to Japan on December 22, 1905 (figure 0.2). In the winter of 1948, upon solicitation, Cao Rulin 曹汝霖 (1877–1966), one of five Chinese delegates who had been present at the signing, wrote an account

FIGURE 0.2  Group photograph of the delegates with Cao Ruilin’s inscriptions, 29 × 20 cm,

1905/1948. Courtesy of Shanghai Municipal Library.

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of the event and tried hard to identify the members of the delegation, listing the attendees’ names in calligraphy over the frame of the photograph. While marking the occasion of the photograph being taken, Cao also offered his sentiments and retrospective views on the historical event, for which he may have wished to receive absolution. The inscription ends with his words: “reminiscing about the past, I am sighing with regret.”48 A slice of history is framed and reframed, both literally and metaphorically. In reflecting on the ability of photography to “arrest the flow of time,” John Berger describes the discontinuity or “an abyss” between the moment of photo shooting and the present moment of viewing.49 Between the historical moment recorded by the camera in Beijing in 1905 and the moment when Cao Rulin was presented with the photograph by a friend in Shanghai in 1948, an abyss opened up, marking the temporal disjuncture and radically changed historical circumstances. The photographic record of the historical meeting with Japan that Cao participated in served only as a poignant reminder of the fateful political circumstances that debilitated China as a nation. To view the photograph from the perspective of a spectator and a participant was, for Cao, to relive the past with mixed emotions, entering into a series of relationships in which he himself was treacherously implicated. The sentimental text written on the photograph further informs us of Cao’s contradictory attempts to retain and erase memories, as well as his painful awareness of his having-been-there.50 The two illustrations I have discussed (figures 0.1 and 0.2) present a visual display of image-text encounters in different but equally dramatic ways. Chinese practitioners endeavored to assimilate technology into their traditional conceptions of aesthetics, saturating visuality with textuality. Their proud and persistent insistence on language and writing—what we might call “inscriptive desire”—does not necessarily suggest a reactionary gesture toward the introduction of new visuality; rather, it demonstrates that a preeminent poetic tradition still exerted a strong hold during the confrontation with and accommodation to the new medium.51 It is not my intention to privilege the role of language in this verbal-visual encounter but to shed light on the historical situation in which the hierarchy of media exercised its influence. This encounter, which generated creative power and led to new forms of representation, expression, and aesthetic experience, is the primary theme of this book.

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Despite the extensive cultural interaction between photography and text in modern China, this important form of the close intertwinement between visuality and textuality has remained relatively underexplored in both literary and art history, as well as in theoretical inquiries into the word-image relationship.52 This book, joining recently emerging scholarly efforts, fills in this critical lacuna by engaging with three different types of materials relating to photo textuality. First, the present work documents surviving examples of image-text combinations and photographic objects, especially when verses were physically inscribed onto the photograph. In terms of their material forms, these photographs can be mounted on an album, scroll, or other physical forms, and the words can either be handwritten on the surface of pictorial space or on its back, or be written on the translucent paper and then combined with the image in the printing process. In addition to having an aesthetic function resembling traditional pictures and the transmission of messages, the accompanying inscriptions bear traces of their social and cultural uses. In many of these cases, simultaneously as both image and object, the photograph, as a physical form of presence in the world, contains auratic properties.53 The handwritten words also serve to trace and embody individual subjectivity. The exchange of photographs, which became a form of etiquette Chinese envoys acquired through diplomacy,54 was conjoined with an abiding lyrical impulse and extended into the gift-giving practices and wide-ranging social networks of Chinese society. The photograph, as a material product of a set of social relations, works as a distinctive emotive source and “affective medium.”55 The trajectory of the circulation of the image-object is enmeshed in embodied experience of social and sensuous interactions. Second, I examine a great number of poems dedicated to images and investigate the synergy and sometimes the incompatibility or limits of archaic lyric forms referring to modern images. Although many of these photographs are irretrievable, a significant number of the poems referring to the photographs have survived in poetry anthologies, collections, and magazines, providing a useful vantage point for us to glean insights about how this new visual medium was understood in the Chinese viewing experience. Photo poetics is predicated upon classical forms of China’s continuous and celebrated literary practices. The way classical poetry came to accommodate modern media

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and the intermedial effects that occurred in formal poetics in particular are points of critical interest. Furthermore, other types of textual practices, such as providing titles in four, five or seven characters or recycling the poetic line, uncover the continuous extension of poetry through other means and the sedimentation of lyrical traditions in modern culture. These iterative processes, which appear in the context of everyday lives and mass media, involve copying, recycling, and reiterating—either enhancing or conflicting with the subtlety, complexity, and sensuousness that a given image offers—and provide new ways of cultural reproduction and communication.56 Third, in addition to photographic objects and poetry anthologies, I have obtained a substantial number of the visual-textual materials in this book from literary and entertainment magazines. The interlacing of image and text was prevalent in various premodern cultural forms (e.g., woodblock illustration boomed in the late Ming dynasty).57 Print technology and the emergence of popular media in the late nineteenth century continued the traditional practices of illustrated texts and radically transformed them in new media contexts. Chinese print innovations, aided by the Jesuits as well as Japanese and Western technicians, began to arise in publishing houses in Shanghai at the turn of the century. To name only a few of the developments relevant to this study, lithography which was introduced into China in 1826, was successfully adopted by the magazines The Chinese Scientific Magazine (Gezhi huibian 格致 彙編, 1878–1892) and Dianshizhai Pictorial (Dianshizhai huabao 點石齋畫報, 1884–1898) to print illustrations.58 The Youzheng Book Company spearheaded the printing of images by use of a collotype to produce photograph albums, including a handful of courtesan albums from which images are quoted in this book. High-quality photomechanical print processes (halftone, collotype, and lithography) were adopted to reproduce Chinese artworks in journals.59 These technological and material developments led, in turn, to new and often disorienting visual and reading experiences in the early twentieth century. It is estimated that fifty literary magazines emerged within the decade from 1909 (signaled by the launch of Fiction Times [Xiaoshuo shibao 小說時報]) to 1919, with many issues featuring courtesans’ and actors’ photographs.60 Mass-produced pictorial magazines of the Republican era, Pictorial Shanghai (Shanghai huabao 上海畫報, 1925–1933) and the long-running The Young Companion (Liangyou 良友, 1926–1945) in particular,61 offered extensive

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features involving a new wave of halftone photographs that presented both scenery and portraits of stars, politicians, artists, and media-savvy urban intellectuals alongside printed texts. The steady development of image-printing technology and more efficiently rendered visual contents in abundance and complexity resulted in the ornamental image-text design style and typographical experiments that allowed for mass communication and entertainment.62 A photographic reprint of a traditional master painting would be commingled with photographs of celebrity lifestyles, advertisements of commercial goods, printed texts of political news, and poems in calligraphy. As the large-size pictorial pages combined with novel displays of photomechanical reproduction, the photographs were cropped, retouched, or manipulated to become printed collages interspersed amid typeset poems and other texts. The multiplied image-poem relationships, which are played off against one another in a single-page layout, generate either an augmented semantic whole or an incongruous juxtaposition that reconfigures the mode of perception, signification, and reading practices for public and mass consumption.63 Set within the accelerating impact of these new visual and print technological developments in tandem with modernization, this book engages with three distinctive types of primary materials and conducts semantic and formal reading of linguistic and photographic messages at numerous levels of mediating and intermediating practices that occurred in this burgeoning mass media culture. “Media culture,” a general label that reacts against technological determinism, registers “a complex dynamic in which media technologies both inform and are informed by our values and actions.” 64 I use this term to designate the interrelations between a variety of old and new media, with emphases on values, conceptions, aesthetics, and ideologies behind the photographic and print media practices from the late Qing to the Republican era. As contemporary scholars have persuasively demonstrated, refashioning “the images of the ancients” is an iconic gesture for artists to establish their general relationship between present and past in Chinese culture.65 This book presents a hybrid blending of the archaic and the modern that emphasizes the role cultural traditions, and Chinese lyricism in particular, played in the formation of modern media culture. Newness emerges out of an attempt to retrieve the past; or, as Ezra Pound would express it, “make it new.”

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LYRICAL EYE AND MIND When encountering “technologized visuality,” 66 Chinese practitioners demonstrate a strong propensity not only for resorting to language as compensation for perceptual limits but also for persistently giving primacy to the working of the heart-mind (xin 心). To recognize what was at stake at the turn of the twentieth century requires some knowledge of the traditional understanding of visuality and vision. The Chinese term guan 觀 (lit., comprehensive observation) presents an all-inclusive way of viewing and observing the world, establishing the subject as a witness to and a channel for the transformation of primary forces and the “thickness” of things.67 In its later development, deeply enmeshed within Buddhist and Daoist meditation traditions, guan, relating to mental visualization or contemplation,68 highlights inward, concrete visualization as the intermediary between internal disposition and external patterning. Xiang 象 (image or figure), referring to objects, events, or their predications and as conceived through an all-comprehensive viewing (guan), is understood as “the presentation (not re-representation) of what is real” and as “the meaning of what is real.” 69 Xiang is formed on the basis of the interwoven experiences of myriad things of the world and affective responses (ganying 感應) to them. Chinese ways of seeing and the holistic model of fusing the subject’s feelings with things lead to a preeminence of the expressive mode and to approaching the world in cultural and philosophical terms. All of this informed the Chinese pictorial tradition in a comprehensive manner. This way of viewing does not suggest that the painter simply neglects his capacity for visual observation to reach the likeness (si 似) of outer shapes, as is largely assumed; instead, it emphasizes a synthesized process of concretely perceiving, sensing, and feeling the external world, albeit with an emphasis on the workings of the mind. In particular, the aesthetics of traditional landscape painting presupposes a moving gaze and a parallel perspective through which the painter goes beyond the spatial-temporal fixation of a single person’s vision and semblance of the objects and landscapes. Literati painters can presumably perceive a scene in its multiple layers in a shifting dynamic between the gaze and the scene.70 This wandering gaze, instigated by a combination of perception and

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imagination, interpretation and introspection, is prominently shown in the spatial arrangement exhibited in many landscape paintings and is characteristic of a harmonious worldview and creative spontaneity.71 This embodied, lyrical gaze can be brought into sharper focus by resorting to phenomenological formulations that appeared in the early and midtwentieth century. Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, claims that we need to return to “the things themselves” and expose the structures of subjective experience as they directly appear.72 Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed a phenomenology of embodiment that grasps how the body and the world appear simultaneously as one interwoven perceptual field.73 Reality appears prior to theorizing and controversies between idealism and realism, and even prior to conceptual divisions between subject and object, as the ambiguous intermixture of the act of perception and the perceived world. Merleau-Ponty describes how the world cannot be categorically separated from the subject who perceives it, suggesting that embodiment is the fundamental site of this convergence, and how the painter has an exemplary access to the phenomenological vision of embodied perception. In his influential essay “Eye and Mind,” Merleau-Ponty explains how the gaze can be embodied from the inside in a sort of “third eye” and how its lived nonlinear perspective transcends the bifurcation between subject and object.74 When we describe the perceptual field as it immediately and fundamentally appears, Merleau-Ponty argues that perception occurs as chiasmic. It thereby forms a “double belongingness” of subject and object, in inward and outward directions, while also partaking in a holistic, synthesizing, bodily movement involving different senses (that is, those in addition to sight) and imagination as a field of synaethesia.75 He depicts how the paintings of French postimpressionist Paul Cézanne are illustrative of such a vision of embodiment and synaethesia.76 They are not simply creative works of art triggering the sense of the beautiful or the sublime in us; they are pure phenomenological expressions of primordial experience, expressions that engage scientific and logical attitudes but cannot be fully accounted for by them. Merleau-Ponty’s embodied gaze is articulated as a critical response and challenge to “Cartesian perspectivism” and the well-established dualistic tradition in Western philosophical discourse with its deep-rooted bifurcation of the body and the mind.77 In order to approach the phenomenological world,

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Merleau-Ponty and Chinese practitioners are comparable in that neither takes their point of departure from the presuppositions of subject-object dualism, the Cartesian standpoint of geometrically abstract space, or the assertion that the self is independent from nature. This suggests instead that one must let phenomena appear in their preconceptual givenness as the unified fusion of self and world.78 Like Merleau-Ponty, many Chinese artists engage in the lived perspective of the embodied gaze, approaching the world through the dialogical process of the chiasm of experience and the world, of what is differentiated as the external and the internal. In this context, the aggressive modern insertion of an external, presumably objective, gaze via the introduction of photography significantly complicated the situation. While acknowledging the remarkable changes and paradigmatic shifts that were gradually taking place, instead of overstressing the rupture, I examine the extension and continuities of what we may characterize as the “lyrical eye and mind” in modern culture. The conception of the lyrical eye and mind (indebted to Merleau-Ponty’s essay that focuses on the visual medium) goes beyond its initial scope to denote a more comprehensive manner of observing (guan) and interacting with the external world from a subjective position. Early-twentieth-century Chinese visual culture bore witness to one of the most intriguing paradoxes—the one that forms between the embodied, lyrical gaze and technological seeing—coupled with Western assumptions about objectivity and dualistic Cartesian perspectivism. In addressing the proliferation of the power of photography and film in the modern era, I revisit some fundamental perspectives on photography and draw attention to the conceptual latitude of photography as a technical medium. In his seminal essay “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” written in 1945, Merleau-Ponty’s contemporary André Bazin argues against the psychology of the image. He maintains instead the “essentially objective character” of photography. Bazin claims that the relationship photography has with reality is so privileged that he calls its mechanical process the production of an analogon (which is equivalent to the nature of perception itself) or “the transference of reality from the thing to its reproduction.” His vision of the distinct nature of photography entails a set of aesthetic implications, among which the category of resemblance between what is viewed and what is real reigns supreme.79 Echoed in the media analyses of photography in the

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decades that followed, ideas of automation in the image-making process and of photography as “analogical perfection” (in Barthes’s words) mark a fundamental difference with and break from traditional painting.80 Because of its mechanical nature and assumed exemption from human intervention, the photographic process makes the photograph transparent.81 Many theorists and practitioners have come to embrace the notion that photography’s defining characteristics include a vociferous mechanistic nature, transparency, and a capacity to record the empirical real. However, photography’s proclaimed objectivity and its ontology have been contested from its invention and have never been understood as deterministic. In the context of the scientific developments of the nineteenth century, objectivity remained not only “a desire” or “an ideal never perfectly attained” but also a normative value that helped to establish the practitioner’s self-control and the ability to avoid various forms of subjective intervention.82 From nearly its earliest practices, photography as a new technical medium of realism has seen consistent intervention and has been marked by the photographer’s conflicting positions between adherence to objectivity and the desire to subjectively aestheticize.83 In this sense, photography has been seen as a “performative version of reality mediated by the medium.” 84 The performative aspect of photography comes from practitioners’ reference systems, intentionality, skills, and subjective views informed by ideological and cultural norms as well as the photograph’s diverse social uses. In terms of its mechanism and the transference of the image, the camera’s eye shares some striking structural similarities with the human eye.85 The human act of looking is, however, never innocent or predetermined. In addressing the interdependence of thinking and vision, Nelson Goodman states: “Not only how but what [the eye] sees is regulated by need and prejudice. [The eye] selects, rejects, organizes, discriminates, associates, classifies, analyzes, constructs.” 86 Perception and cognition are contingent upon a conceptual framework, knowledge, and the mind’s eye. Contemporary neuroscience has also informed us that internal or mental images are generated not in a neutral but in a culturally specific manner.87 On the one hand, the epistemology of a “photographic eye,” based on the opposition of subjectivity and objectivity and principles of the geometry of perspectivism, enables refreshing ways of seeing; on the other hand, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscientific studies

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inform us that perception is a complex and interactive process involving all of the bodily sensations and constant, vibrant exchanges between the body and external objects in the chiasmic “flesh of the world.”88 Indeed, how the mind works in the technical medium intrigues us. Western conceptions of objectivity were initially introduced into China through the efforts of missionaries. The adoption of European lithography in late Qing culture through the Dianshizhai Pictorial had already promoted an amplified sense of objectivity based on the new medium, and photography further astounded consumers by offering what appeared to be faithful transcriptions of reality. Photography triggered a fascination with realistic details and the desire for truth claims that played a decisive role in the new modes of conceiving and visualizing the world that gradually began to emerge in the late Qing era. Yi Gu points out that the “true image” (zhenxiang 真相), a concept absent from Chinese art criticism, suddenly entered into the art vocabulary during the 1910s, together with other concepts of “realism,” “naturalism,” and “lifelikeness.” 89 The “realist desire” (in Laikwan Pang’s words) was fraught with tensions as fervent uses of the imagination and the deployment of the subject’s desires framed this coming to terms with “the real.” 90 Exploring the unstable image-text relationship in Republican Shanghai, William Schaefer demonstrates how Chinese photographers reconfigured time and space through montages, fragmentation, the use of shadow, and other modernist practices rather than conceptualizing photography straightforwardly as a medium of immediacy and transparency.91 Continuing to delve into the “subjective” side of photographic practices, Photo Poetics recounts untold stories of how Chinese practices, significantly informed by traditional aesthetic ideas and conceptions, were drawn into intense battles concerning visual realism and made significant efforts to transform what appears as “the real.” With its power of mimetic realism, photography challenged the privilege and dominance of China’s textual tradition and its way of seeing and imagining the world, thus posing threats to perceptions/writing/being, as well as to the Chinese understanding of things (wu).92 As the lyrical eye collided with the camera’s detached, mechanical eye,93 early Chinese photographic practices began to involve substantial reconstruction of the photographical subject and the world that went beyond pure vision and optical truth. Before the paradigm of realism landed firmly and gradually gained ascendancy in

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China’s cultural landscapes of the 1920s, the underlying understanding considered photographic images as manifestations, magic transformations, icons, or traces.94 Over a long period of translating and transplanting new technologies, photography was understood in terms of the literal meaning “capturing shadows” (sheying 攝影 or cuoying 撮影). This was not so much representation mirroring reality based on a dualistic worldview as it was conceiving the photographic image as a “manifestation” (xian 現), “shadow” (ying 影), “shadow in the mirror” (jingying 鏡影), or “illusion” (huan 幻).95 The concept of “image” or portraiture (xiang 相 or 象/像) was further complicated by secularized religious terms connoting temporary, illusionary appearances in the world and a simultaneous mixture of truth and untruth. In this period, zhen 真 (being real, true, or essence), a slippery, polysemous notion, oscillated between genuineness in the phenomenological world, the perfected image or “the ideal form” evoked in the mind, and the photograph’s optical fidelity to reality. Using human agency and lyrical sensibility to overcome the constraints of the technical medium and its putatively transparent replication of reality, photography often renders the truth not in the sense of a perfect likeness to the real but in idealistic, fantastical terms. The impulse to interpret or to lyricize and inscriptive desire were attempts to overcome mechanical objectivity; that is, to radically reconstruct the vision of the real, resulting in “imaginary textures of the real.” 96 In this book, I address the key issue of how traditional lyrical sensibility and aesthetic ideas were involved in adopting and refashioning the technical medium of photography, a practice captured by the combined image of the “brush and shutter”; in other words, Chinese lyrical vision in confrontation with the technology of seeing. Darkroom manipulation of negatives, composition, heavy retouching, tricks with mirrors and light, the use of costumes, and the reenactment of classical scenes—all of these willful human interventions—made photography capable of constructing multiple self-images, fantasies, and idealized landscapes, and of capturing ghosts, immortals, and spirits. Contrived images and lyrical commentary, which defied the “logic of transparent immediacy,” 97 awaken us to the correlated world and the role of the affective, intervening author-artist in the technological era. By linking the Chinese lyrical eye to new media, we perceive how human experience and emotion remain at the center even after the persistent operation

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and advancement of modern technology has had its effect. The emergence of photography imposed a fundamentally different way of ordering and seeing the world, and it opened the door for potential dangers described in the late works of Martin Heidegger. He offers an assessment of technological modernity in which world and reality are technologically and instrumentally “enframed.” 98 We can see in different cultural contexts and local practices how human intervention in automatic image-making might, to a certain extent, resist the sweeping technological invasion by appropriating and indigenizing technology in everyday life and in artistic practices. As a result of active human intervention, lyricism, and embodied experience, it is possible for the unconcealment of truth to occur in human dwelling. In this sense, we can come to appreciate the performative practices and “phenomenological seeing” with which these Chinese practitioners engaged and the innovations and rigor they demonstrated.99 The following stories relate to the ingenuity and struggles of these practitioners as they faced the technologization of life, and they convey a sense of their insubordination against the totalizing forces transforming the world as it is increasingly “conceived and grasped as picture.”100

SITUATING CHINESE LYRICISM IN A TECHNOLOGICAL ERA In 1925, Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), a major player in the vernacular language movement, met his friend Zhang Shizhao 章士釗 (1881–1973) at a social occasion, at which the two took photographs after having dinner. Upon receiving the photographs, Zhang sent copies of four of them to Hu. On the back of one photograph of the two friends, Zhang inscribed an ironic, doggerel-like poem written in vernacular style, suggesting that this photograph could be a literary memorial in the future. The poem includes the lines: “I wrote this ridiculous vernacular poem, dedicated to you; / in the end, it might count as old Zhang surrendering to you” (我寫白話歪詞送把你，/ 總算是老章 投了降). Meanwhile, he requested Hu’s response in classical-style verse to give him face. Hu did as requested, writing his poem on the left side of the photo, outside the image frame. Hu’s four-line poem includes one quoted line: “I might start a fad, never to become its leader” (但開風氣不為師).101

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It was gracious of Hu Shi to respond to Zhang Shizhao in the classical form, but not a challenge in and of itself given the fact this generation of intellectuals had been brought up with a classical education. The irony is that Hu adequately and graciously expressed his desire to set a new cultural trend by quoting a line from a prominent predecessor, Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841). In this regard, the exchange between Zhang and Hu, enabled by the circulation of the photographs of the pair, operates within a particular social sphere and set of cultural conventions. Zhang performatively posed a gesture of surrender and reconciliation, and Hu also courteously fulfilled Zhang’s demand and his social obligations. The quoted line from Gong Zizhen later was used by many other scholars to characterize Hu’s achievements. Both Zhang and Hu endowed the image-object with particular historical and cultural significance, and its itinerary between the sender-receiver maps out social relationships and ideological positions in a given time. I use this anecdote to highlight the hard-fought issue of poetic form in this word-image encounter. Confronted with a portrait, a Chinese literatus would likely have felt a deep urge to resort to a brush to jot down a few lines of verse or request a friend to do so. Is this merely a matter of cultural habit or familiarity? On the surface, producing inscriptions on paintings or writing about pictures, as well-established literary practices, were readily carried forward into the text-photograph relationship. One frequently neglected fact is that it is the poetic form that ensures and facilitates a response on such an occasion. The poets would have conveyed their feelings through the use of existing poetic vocabularies and styles to address and domesticate these new visual sensations or to respond to social communications. As historically and culturally embedded practices, photo poetics situate the lyric self and its embodied experiences at the center of the technological transformation and at the onset of mass media. Feeling (qing 情), an encompassing term referring to a range of emotions, remains at the core of Chinese lyricism (shuqing 抒情, lit., expressing feelings).102 In the archetypical formulation of emotion and verbalization, the sensory faculties and emotion provoke a response to things, and emotions endow the things with mood and atmosphere and further alter their presentation. A more self-conscious account of literary production, formulated in the Six Dynasties period through major writers such as Liu Xie 劉勰 (465?–532?), emphasizes that the process of inner

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visualization as enabled by the text, accompanied by a supposedly spontaneous flow of emotion, reaches an aesthetization of emotion and its verbal patterning, and thereby its language is the symbiotic crystallization of emotions and various xiang.103 Photographs possess certain affective qualities and an immediacy that directly communicate emotional information and engage the viewer’s feelings. In E.  H. Gombrich’s words, the visual image is “supreme in its capacity for arousal.” 104 Seeing and encountering may have instigated the affective response, but within this illustrious literary tradition, the response must be further mediated through prior texts and existing expressions at different stages of the formulations of ideas and composition, ensuring an aestheticizing of emotion and unity of language and feeling. That is, a Chinese poet at the turn of the century who encountered a photograph of the self, a friend, or a beautiful scene would evoke certain familiar postures (e.g., viewing and writing about a mirrored image or a painting) and emotions (e.g., a lament over the passage of time) to articulate the feelings stimulated by this new image-object in the first place. At this critical juncture, lyrical forms played a conducive role in the formation of poetic articulations of encountering a new medium. Indeed, this gesture of inscription itself captivated literary educated Chinese. This book continues the effort to illuminate Chinese lyricism— encompassing the classical form (in most instances), lyrical ways of envisioning the self and the world, or “formal inputs and affective outcomes that are attributable to ‘lyrical effects’ ” (in David Wang’s formulation)—and its intimate relationship with photography in the formation of modern culture.105 To chart the territories covered by Photo Poetics, I investigate literary materials and poetics that fall within two categories. First and foremost, my use of lyricism is focused on the verse inscriptions and classical-style lyrical forms (either in the ancient-style poetry, guti shi 古體詩, or the recent-style poetry, jinti shi 近體詩). Many of these poems (especially in the forms of quatrain and regulated verses) are composed in accordance with fixed tonal patterns, parallelism, set end-rhyme schemes, and other formal features. One aim of my critical effort is to continue to demonstrate that the Chinese lyrical tradition is not an ossified or dead entity, an image that the May Fourth iconoclasts attempted to paint. What I intend to show, instead, is the continuity and transformation of the lyrical tradition as revealed by its substantial

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cooperation with modern media culture.106 I ask questions concerning the functions and significance of the formally sophisticated poetic genres in this visual-verbal encounter, and whether there were any innovations in describing the viewer’s perceptual and emotional experience. Second, a broader concept of lyricism as one kind of transmediality— referring to the extension and transposition of lyrical effects across literary genres and media as well as lyrical modes of seeing and thinking—helps us illuminate how the lyrical tradition offered rich vocabularies, resources, values, and sentiments ripe for intermedial and inscriptive practices.107 Lyricism, as is well recognized, is not limited to poetry per se; rather, it is cross-generic and pervasive in a variety of linguistic and artistic forms and marked as a quintessentially Chinese artistic sentiment.108 Moving beyond the usual understanding of photography’s communicative abilities or its formal implications, I delve into the roles that lyricism, emotions, and lyrical subjectivity play in modern media culture, tracing the strong links between the subjective and the technical, the self and the community, as well as the contested and intertwined relationship between the Chinese lyrical tradition and literary modernities. Part I examines fundamental questions related to the conceptualization of these new photographic visual images, i.e., the merging of visual verisimilitude and magical illusion, and the relationship between self and self-identity and between poetic voice and image. With a focus on contrived images of the multiplied self in portrait photography, the first chapter analyzes the visual configurations, rhetorical conventions, and intermedial transpositions that characterize this creative photographic culture. Drawing on Buddhist and Daoist concepts (e.g., huashen and fenshen) and stylistic codes to seize the medium’s power of staging fantasies, the practitioners collaborated with the spirit of modern entertainment to create new ways of imagining the self, weaving together a colorful tapestry of cultural narrative, a kind of theatricality, and extended social events. Through the examination of selected poems on self-images in the second chapter, I delve into intertwined issues of the self, the affect, and autobiographical writing. This chapter explores the Confucian ethical implications of viewing the self, issues of temporality, the self as other, and the rise of gendered consciousness, as well as voicing modern subjectivity as amplified in these visual self-encounters. By examining

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the text-image dynamics and the visual representation of the self-image as inflected through pictorial, theatrical, and religious traditions, these two chapters provide insights into the cultural and affective articulations of the self through which modern experiences of the self, aided by technology, were refashioned and fleshed out. Delineating the lyric self that is deeply interwoven into the social fabric, part II delves into the realms of affective responses, gender politics, and the social and cultural dimensions of emotional life. In light of anthropological studies of the gift and the concept of singularity, in the third chapter, I explicate how things undergo processes of decommodification in the form of portable cards, missives, or handmade cases, endowed with unique qualities of individual subjectivity, memory, and other historical specificities. By tracing the circulation and consumption of “female” images by the groups of male intellectuals (e.g., centering on Su Manshu and Liu Yazi) and other examples, I attempt to shed light on catalytic aspects of the photographic image in affective exchanges. Intermedial and intertextual practices, together with the circularity of photographs as objects, collectively chart the topographies of emotions (romantic feeling, aesthetic fellowship, and self-fashioning) of the era. Unwrapping either joint forces or unresolved conflicts among gender politics, consumer culture, and artistic endeavors, the fourth chapter delineates the literary life of the photographic image and the circulation of the tropes of the beautiful woman Zhenzhen (the lady in the painting), the “skull” (kulou), and the nude in photographs in illustrated magazines and newspapers. Accompanying the metamorphosis of the female image from a seductive, fanciful beauty into a threatening, erotic nude, the rhetoric of poetry, captions, and other texts establishes manifold, often disjunctive, relationships with new visualities that tame eroticism or spiritually sublimate it. Part III elucidates the issue of illusion and constructiveness in photography through envisioning majestic landscapes, the otherworld, and the cultural past. The fifth chapter focuses on the practice of photographing ghosts, immortals, and spirits by focusing on the activities and publications of the Shanghai Society for Psychical Studies in the early Republican era. Within the context of Chinese folk religious practices and the worldwide spread of spiritualism, I examine the appropriation of photography as a consoling tool for grief, as a spiritual light, and as tracings of immortal beings. These operated according

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to a sympathetic cosmology and precipitated the alarming encounters between traditional beliefs and modern society. Photography was utilized as a new spirit medium, through which modern intellectuals’ sincere quest for “undying souls” took place. Addressing the convergence of lyrical seeing with technological seeing, in the sixth chapter, I first offer a brief account of the concepts of “sketching ideas” (xieyi) and “pictorial ideas and lyrical mood” (shiqing huayi) in pictorial photography in the Republican era. The chapter then explores the ramifications of traditional aesthetics and lyrical modes of seeing in photography by engaging in a discussion of the selected examples that range from pictorial magazines to the works of distinguished artists (e.g., Lang Jingshan). To discover or manipulate a picturesque scene to approximate a poetic scene, the ontology of modern photography was integrated within a distinctive Chinese aesthetic tradition. In the seventh chapter, I delve into a range of selected works, from Kang Youwei’s artistic criticisms of photographs, to Luo Bonian’s photographs with inscriptions, to Zhang Mojun’s calligraphy and poems. By initiating the look cast into the past via the double gaze of the camera and the lyrical, photographers and writers place their sentiments of cultural nostalgia and longing for the past (huaigu) within the broader scope of history, memory, and time. The artful combination, either in the manner of a painting or in the format of a lavishly illustrated book, once again demonstrates the zeal for narrative and symbolic elaborations. The book ends with a short epilogue describing two examples of contemporary artists’ intricate relationship with the lyrical tradition. The proliferation of hybrid blendings illustrates either a renewed fascination with Chinese lyricism and its enduring lure or a complex, ambivalent attitude that encompasses defiance of that very tradition.

CHAPTER 1

Multiplying the Self Staging Fantasies and Cultural Personas

I

n 1925, China’s preeminent writer, Lu Xun, described the photographic culture of his time in his essay on photography. Couching his comments in sarcasm, Lu Xun provides us with a glimpse of the portrait style that was prevalent during the first two decades of the twentieth century. As for the unconventional style of the literati, how could there be an era without it? The refined man has long been dissatisfied being a dumb bird like all the rest, so he plays the part of a man from the Jin, stark naked, or pretends to be X with a slanted collar and silk ribbons, though this less often. It is more common for him to have two photos taken of himself in different dress and with different bearing, and then to have them put together into one. The two selves are guest and host, or master and servant, and this, then, is called a “twin-selves picture” (erwo tu 二我圖). But suppose one “self” is sitting proudly, and the other is kneeling pitifully facing the seated one, then it is called an “entreating the self picture” (qiuji tu 求己圖).1

The “entreating the self” portrait, as described by Lu Xun, is visually comprised of a self who is seated in a symbolic position of dignity and authority and a second self kneeling humbly on two knees (figures 1.1 and 1.2). Lu Xun reads the entreating-the-self portrait as characteristic of a slavish mentality, a view consistent with his uncompromisingly critical position toward the Chinese “national character” (guomin xing) he observed at the time. He criticizes the  stereotypical Chinese portrait photo style, expressing impatience with

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the repetition and lack of individuality. Lu Xun found these iconographies, such as the gesture of the subject kneeling down, irritating and pitiful. His essay contributed to the pervasive negative opinions about the photographic portrait in Republican society, dismissing such practices as trivial or entertaining. However, in recent decades, such portraiture styles and compositions have garnered significant scholarly enthusiasm.2 Joining the wave of this new fascination, in this chapter I continue to probe into questions of what we can discern from the criticisms expressed by Lu Xun and how, indeed, we can account for the broader Chinese interest in image doubles and manipulations. Photographic meaning is, as Allan Sekula reminds us, “an interplay of iconic, graphic, and narrative conventions.” The accompanying texts, and the context of the practice and publication of the images, all contribute to the signification of the image.3 Addressing portrait photography with a focus on courtesan cultures and thriving literati communities in the first two decades of the twentieth century, I sketch three typographies of portrait photographs: twin-selves photos, entreating-the-self photos, and costume photos. By attending to the accompanying poems and other texts, I delve into how portrait photography was conceived of and practiced in a flourishing urban culture, and how traditional aesthetics, cultural personas, and key terms were involved in adopting and indigenizing this visual medium to articulate a new form of self-imagination. The complex interactions of modern technology and traditional aestheticism reveal that textual and pictorial tradition was deeply implicated in the cross-cultural clashes of technologies and power in the formation of China’s urban culture and visual modernity. These intermedial and historical connections ultimately challenge the camera’s claim to transparent representations of reality, enriching our understanding of the relationship between visual truth and illusion, as well as the roles conventions and preconceptions played in China’s modern photographic culture.

TRANSFORMING THE SELF With its promise of unprecedented verisimilitude, photography was paradoxically subject to fantasy projection and artistic intervention almost from its advent in the middle of the nineteenth century. Through alternation,



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retouching, cutting and pasting, and a range of techniques that were gradually developed, pictures were manipulated by photographers to attain an idealistic end or to re/create a fantastic scene. In the West, examples of “trick photography” can be found that involve doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and quintupled figures, proving a persistent human fascination with doubles, comic variation, and imaginative one-upmanship.4 When the techniques for retouching, double exposure, and combination printing became available for commercial use at the turn of the twentieth century, they were met with an enthusiastic welcome in China’s photographic portraiture.5 Chinese audiences were mesmerized by this new possibility of creating multiple likenesses in a single picture through the use of double exposure or combination printing, resulting in a contrived photographic subject that was dramatically different from the image presented via a “naïve” shooting. Photography was used to create and fashion cultural self-imaginings at the same time as the prospering entertainment and theater industries met with the quickly growing print culture in the metropolises (Shanghai in particular) around the 1910s. At this historic moment, the photographers (almost all anonymous) and their subjects—courtesans, actors, and media-aware literati-cum-intellectuals— added pictorial, theatrical, and cultural elements to the experience of photographing, leaving us with an ample record of eye-catching images that display their enthusiasm and creativity. Surviving records of entreating-the-self photos that I have been able to locate primarily focus on courtesans in courtesan photo albums (figure 1.1) or in literary magazines around the 1910s (figure 1.2).6 Both pictures involve a courtesan with bound feet on both knees facing another self with matching attire and hairstyle. Kneeling, or less frequently the gesture of one person bowing to another, becomes the literal, visual interpretation of the meaning of “entreating the self” (qiuji 求己). As this Chinese saying suggests, “It is better to seek help from oneself rather than from others” (qiuren buru qiuji 求人不如求己).7 In the gong’an story, which appears in the dialogue between Monk Foyin and the poet Su Shi, Foyin refers to Guanyin [the Goddess of Mercy], who chants her own name as one form of “seeking help from oneself” (qiuji). Buddhist teaching places great emphasis on the individual’s self-reliance in facing one’s own predicament to achieve nirvana.8 Scholars in the late Qing dynasty put this popular idea of qiuji in comparative terms,

FIGURE 1.1  “The twin

shadows of Hu Feiyun,” Haishang jinghongying (1913).

FIGURE 1.2  “The costume

photograph of young Guifen, courtesan from Nanjing,” Xiaoshuo xinbao 2, no. 9 (1916).



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even as an equivalent to the Western concept of an individual’s independence: “What is qiuji? Seeking from one’s own body, not relying upon others. What is independence? To be independent and unwilling to follow others. If someone can fully rely upon oneself, then he is highly moral. If someone can be independent, then he will work hard to rise above the average.”9 In 1923, in the entertainment magazine The Merry Magazine (Kuaihuo 快活, 1922–1923) from Shanghai, an essay written under the pen name Shuiyue cites the following poem, which was written by a friend on an entreating-the-self portrait photo of himself: This picture ingeniously resembles the natural world, like the appearance of Mt. Lu, it depicts a true me. History is full of ups and downs, a true man rejects others’ pity.10 妙肖天然一幅圖， 廬山面目繪真吾。 古今多少升沉史， 不受人憐是丈夫。

The male speaker interprets the contrived image of two selves as paradoxically depicting the self truthfully, and he also proudly claims that “a true man rejects others’ pity.” The positive semantic meaning of “entreating the self” may have accounted for the popularity of such an iconography, reflecting advocacy for self-power. With regard to current visual examples of entreating-the-self portraits reprinted in pictorial magazines and courtesan albums, it is uncertain whether the ladies used this gesture as a form of self-expression or in simple compliance with the convention, instructed by studio photographers or the male patrons who were covering the cost. The 1904 postcard (figure 1.3), produced by Sze Yuen Ming & Co. (Yao Hua Studio) in Shanghai, is comprised once again of a courtesan-like lady kneeling before another self against a painted background of a Western-style garden. Both of them wear the same style of garment with different flower designs and face the camera pensively. The seated woman who seems deliberately to reveal her bound feet, extends one arm and poses

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FIGURE 1.3  1904 postcard, Sze Yuen Ming & Co., Shanghai.

Courtesy of Tong Bingxue.

for receiving benefits from the one kneeling down. The picture is juxtaposed with another landmark, the Iltis Monument at the Bund in Shanghai, a political symbol from 1898 commemorating deceased German naval personnel. These two oddly contrasted pictures of the masculine colonial monument and feminine oriental charm are both typical of China’s “representative scenes.” Catering to ethnographic interest and the exotic foreign gaze, these pictures seem to suggest a parallel between the memorial to the German soldiers and the beauty of oriental women in  the  eyes of the curious viewer. This hand-­ colored card, which includes German and English titles for the Iltis Monument and copyright information, was mailed by an Italian on March 24, 1904. If Lu Xun had seen it, I believe he would have commented on it with repugnance, recognizing it to be a perfect illustration of China’s slavish mentality. In terms of the iconography of entreating the self, a few examples of figure paintings exist, such as those of Jin Nong 金農 (1687–1763) and Hu Xigui 胡錫珪 (1858–1890) that bear a visual resemblance to the same type of photographs.11 In Hu Xigui’s painting, the composition consists of Yunfeng seen from behind, his long queue facing the viewer as he kneels down and bows toward the standing self, who is seen in full frontal aspect (figure 1.4).



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FIGURE 1.4  Hu Xigui, Portrait of Yunfeng

entreating the self, Hanging scroll, 133 × 52.7 cm, 1879, Haishang mingjia huihua.

The standing Yunfeng has a book in his hand and is shown as lean and simply dressed, an indication of his moral character and circumspect nature. The clean composition of the two figures is accompanied by ten inscriptions solicited by Yunfeng from his friends in the upper space, along with one each by the painter and the subject. A few of the inscriptions explicate the meaning of qiuji as an expression of the subject’s independence and pride. In the second half of his inscribed poem, Kong Fushou 孔傅綬 writes: One is full of pride and the other humble, two different appearances depicted by the brush. Jokingly compare this to the hundred embodiments of [Su] Dongpo, it’s hard to tell which one is true and which one is fake.12

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一何倨傲一何恭， 筆底描成兩樣容。 笑比東坡身化百， 誰真誰假辨無從。

In addition to offering an explication of the message of self-reliance, the poem links the painting’s composition of two self-images to the story of Su Shi’s encounter with the multiple self’s shadows reflected in a flowing river. Other variations of entreating the self include pictures of “bowing toward the mirror” (yijing tu 揖鏡圖), in which the subject bows toward the mirror. One example published in the Daily Pictorial (Tuhua ribao 圖畫日報, 1909–1910), titled It is better to seek help from oneself rather than from others (qiuren buru qiuji), depicts a man with rugged clothes bowing toward the large-sized Western mirror in which a true or essential self (not simply a visually reflected self) appears in the mirror.13 As has been observed, however, after the 1920s the photographic composition of entreating the self fell quickly out of fashion. The pose of kneeling down on both knees and literal visualization of the concept of qiuji were most likely seen as repulsive in the eyes of modern progressive intellectuals.14 My brief sketch  of qiuji pictures reveals the discrepancies and contradictions inherent among the intended messages, the visualization of the message through the iconic pose and the social uses and readings of the image in different contexts. In contrast, the twin-selves portrait (erwo tu) fad carried well into the late Republican era, with increasingly sophisticated manipulations.15 Doubled images of courtesans, writers, and literati were often published in pictorial magazines in Shanghai and Tianjin. Figure 1.5 is a double portrait of Shanghai courtesan called Luofei 洛妃 (Lady Luo) standing both inside and outside of a prop of an open-shuttered window and dressed in the same attire.16 She wears pants and a close-fitting shirt with tight cuffs that expose her wrists, typical of the early Republican style. Wu Chanqing 吳懺情 (1896–?), a nineteen-year-old female writer, appeared in a twinselves photo wearing a high-collared jacket and skirt (figure 1.6).17 This standardized composition of one standing and another sitting also may represent two life trajectories and paths to enlightenment and is influenced

FIGURE 1.5  “Transformation-body

of the famous flower Luofei from Shanghai,” Xiaoshuo xinbao 5, no. 2 (1919).

FIGURE 1.6  “The photo of

Ms. Wu Chanqing at the age of nineteen,” Xiangyan zazhi 8 (1915).

FIGURE 1.7 

“Three transformationbodies of Ms. Chanqing,” Youxi zazhi 17 (1915).

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by Buddhist culture: one of active engagement in real life to achieve goals and one of contemplation of the meaning of existence.18 Wu also had photographs taken of herself wearing a fashionable Western style necklace and hairpin. She appears in three codified postures—playing a musical instrument, standing and holding flowers, and sitting drinking tea—exhibiting different aspects of her idealized life (figure 1.7). A few examples of these twin-selves photos involve masculine and feminine gendered images of the same subject pretending to be a couple. In one, Wu Letian 吳樂天 dresses in a Western suit and gazes amorously at his wife (who is actually himself) dressed in a wig, a high-collared blouse, and a skirt, illustrating the fashion in modern conjugal life (figure 1.8).19 Twin-selves photos were the most common, but numerous examples of tripled, quadrupled, and quintupled figures in a single negative were also produced. A portrait of the well-dressed courtesan Fan Caixia 范彩霞 against a dark background shows her sitting around a tea table in three different positions with different hand gestures. The well-composed photograph in a circular shape shows Fan in the same jacket and skirt from three angles (figure 1.9). The entertainment magazine The Pastime (Youxi zazhi 遊戲雜誌, 1913– 1915), which published numerous manipulated photos, presented the actor Yu Caisheng 俞綵生 wearing the same dark robe and striking four different poses: standing with a book in a front view shot, standing with a book in a side view shot, and in two seated positions (figure 1.10). The quintupled portrait photograph in figure 1.11 shows an upper body shot of a young, stylish lady who looks contemplative. Her two hands are folded together under the chin and her nails are manicured.20 In the center of the frame, we see her back and medium-length hair with perfectly polished curls; four other head images are positioned at different angles against the dark backgroud. The effect of this quintupled portrait, produced around 1935 in Tianjin, is achieved through the use of mirrors and optical illusion.21 Among these examples are two major types of patrons: courtesans (such as Fan Caixia, a Hangzhou-born courtesan who later became a merchant’s wife, and Luofei, whose identity has been obscured) and urbanites immersed in emerging forms of modern entertainment and literary consumption. Wu Letian, a scholar and teacher in Shanghai, was extensively involved in “fun seeking photographs” (youxi xiaoying 遊戲小影). The young female writer

FIGURE 1.8  “Wu Letian’s costume photo,”

FIGURE 1.9  Fan Caixia’s transformation-

Huaji zazhi 3 (1914).

bodies, Haishang huayinglu (1917).

FIGURE 1.10  “Yu Caisheng’s images of replication-body,” Youxi zazhi 13 (1915).

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FIGURE 1.11  Photograph of a lady’s transformation-bodies, gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 cm,

Zhonghua Studio in Tianjin, ca. 1935. Courtesy of Tong Bingxue.

Wu Chanqing was also enthusiastically involved in fantasy photo shooting, and literary magazines loved to showcase female writers to doubly appeal to progressive values and erotic gazes. At least five of Wu Chanqing’s photos appeared in magazines (including Women’s World [nüzi shijie 女子世界], along with other female writers) around 1915 in which she struck different poses and wore chic clothing, offering a self-conscious interpretation of modern female style. Her story “Xiaoyu is gone,” written in classical Chinese, tells the tale of an arranged marriage and the maid Xiaoyu’s determination to take life into her own hands.22 At the time, this type of double or multiple photographic portrait was commonly referred to as fenshen 分身 (lit., dividing bodies) or huashen 化身 (lit., transformation bodies) in Daoist and Buddhist terms. Different tactics were used to achieve intriguing make-believe effects, and instructions on how to create these effects were periodically offered to educate viewers. Staging the illusion was not meant to deceive; both the sitters and the viewers, aware of visual illusions, treated it as a form of entertainment or self-imagination. From the 1910s onward, articles explained how readers could manipulate images to create multiple selves. Instructions recommended using double or multiple exposures in a single negative and



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FIGURE 1.12  “Illustrations of photographs of transformation-bodies,” Liangyou 90 (1934).

using a dark background to gain the desired effect.23 Kuang Baihui 鄺百輝, a photographer active in the 1930s, taught amateurs to experiment with techniques by creating images of twin selves playing go or chess (duiyi, a popular pastime permeated with symbolism), standing on a bridge on both sides, or engaging in group activities.24 In the top left corner of figure 1.12, a device attached to the lens to block light between double or multiple exposures is shown. The device is commonly referred to as the “tool for ­transformation-body” (huashen qi 化身器), a curious name.25 Broadly speaking, the visual fascination with doubleness and the mirroring of images, or lyrical parallelism and ideals of a counterpoised, exhibits a harmonious state that underlies the general perceptions of the world.26 With regard to the pictorial tradition, the contemporary scholar pen-named Yang Zhishui attributes twin-selves photos to the “picture within the picture” device in traditional painting, arguing that the posture reflects the “refined tastes of the literati.” One prominent example of this is A Scholar with His Portrait, an anonymous painting attributed to the Song dynasty.27 In the painting, a literatus is sitting on a divan, behind which is a big screen with a portrait hanging from it. The scholar in the portrait resembles the one sitting

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on the divan. The Qianlong 乾隆 emperor (1711–1799) loved the idea of a “picture within a picture” so much that he had himself painted several times in that style and wrote an inscription on the paintings. In the series Is It One or Two? (shiyi shier tu 是一是二圖), the painting acquired its name from this inscription.28 Presenting an impressive record of pictorial examples, Yang Yu-cheng has convincingly argued that the compositions of “picture within the picture,” “picture of the shadow in the mirror” (jingying tu 鏡影圖), and “the picture of I playing with me” (wo yu wo zhouxuan tu 我與我周旋圖) in the late imperial era (especially from the late Ming) offered fruitful inspirations for the double and multiple-image motifs in photography.29 As revealed through the gestures and expressions in the photographs and accompanying texts, rather than using it to explore the unconscious or to convey a sense of split personality as seen in the Western culture, the photographic subjects and viewers visibly enjoy the amazing ability of this new medium to make artificial multiples appear real. Familiar cultural roles, pictorial conventions as well as popular religious concepts, significantly alleviate the alienating effects of new technology and serve as the referential framework to structure such practices, a point to which I return later.

COSTUMING AN IMAGE Imagine an affluent literatus living in Shanghai at the end of the nineteenth century. If he were to walk into a photo studio (such as the Yuelairong Studio) to have his photo taken, he would be given a choice of the type of clothing he wanted to wear (ancient Chinese, Japanese, Manchurian, or Western suits) along with a selection of settings (e.g., literati garden) and props (books, flower vases, and tea tables). Once the photos were printed, he would send copies to his friends, often accompanying the photo with a poem to solicit responses in verse. In Records of Trivial Matters in Eastern China, Shen Taimou briefly recounts how Chinese literati enjoyed being photographed wearing monks’ robes, cross-dressing, or even sporting Western accessories.30 Advertisements that appeared in Shenbao申報 (Chinese Daily News) from the 1870s onward suggest that the studios in Shanghai competed for business by offering a range of costumes and settings (e.g., a typical Chinese garden) for fantasy staging.31



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Such photographs, popular from actors and courtesans to elites and gentry alike, were referred to as “costume photos” (huazhuang zhao 化裝照). In literati portraiture, costumes played an important part in (re)fashioning self-representations in the Ming and Qing eras. Portraits involving official or religious robes, or being dressed as a woodman or fisherman, were painted to express personal tastes and the longing for alternative lifestyles. The portrait paintings of Lu Shusheng 陸樹聲 (1509–1605) and Jin Nong, marking different occasions or depicting distinct stages of life, show the subject as a fisherman, a wealthy person, a monk, a beggar, or a deity.32 Shen Taimou’s descriptions and numerous studio advertisements further remind us of the linkages of photographic practices to figure painting, in which the subject’s clothing and background (such as pine trees, bamboo, rocks, or a meandering spring) are crucial in the composition to achieve an overall rendition of the subject’s spirit.33 In this section, I present examples of political elites (Yi Xuan and Yuan Shikai) and the literati living in urban Shanghai (Qian Xiangru, Qian Huafo, and Zhou Shoujuan) to illustrate how costumes were used as an effective means for self-expression and the delivery of coded messages. The photo of Yi Xuan (aka Prince Chun), shot in 1886 and titled Seventh Prince Feeding Deer by the well-known photographer Liang Shitai (aka See Tay, 梁時泰), shows the Manchurian prince wearing a Chinese robe and standing with ornamental symbols (deer and plants) (figure 1.13). This photograph evokes the style of traditional painting as illustrated by the Painting of Collecting lingzhi (Caizhi tu 采芝圖) in which Prince Bao Hongli, depicted two years before assuming the throne as the Qianlong Emperor, posed as a Chinese Daoist.34 The resemblance in theme and compositional style (i.e., the subject of the disguised Manchurian prince in Daoist robes, the deer, the auspicious plants, and the pose) is conspicuous. The striking display of imperial seals with characters on both sides of the photographic image creates a dynamic tension between textuality and visuality. Two seals seem to forcefully enhance two-dimensionality, thereby attempting to tame the realistic image into a spatially flat one. At the same time, by impressing the imperial seals onto the photographic surface and verifying its authentication, Yi Xuan grants his authorial power to acknowledge this new medium. The most famous examples of high-profile costume photos are of the Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧太后 (1835–1908) and Yuan Shikai 袁世凱

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FIGURE 1.13  Seventh Prince Feeding Deer, albumen print, 1886.

Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LOT 9969 (G).

(1859–1916). Dowager Cixi, who referred to herself as “old master Buddha” (laofoye 老佛爺), appeared in a series of photographs in the guise of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of mercy, seated in a lotus pond as her eunuchs and servants completed the staging of the scene. Her newly developed enthusiasm for costume photographs was entangled in negotiations among imperial power, modern publicity, and gendered agency.35 Before he assumed the presidency, Yuan Shikai posed in fisherman’s garb and hat in a series of photographs that were shot in his residential garden in today’s Anyang. In these photos, Yuan and his brother Yuan Shilian 袁世廉 play a fisherman and a servant in a small boat, and one photo was published in 1911 in the widely circulated The Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌, 1904–1948). The  page also includes a frontal half-body portrait photo of Yuan in official attire and two photos of his residence and garden, which was where he spent time “recuperating



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FIGURE 1.14  Yuan Shikai in fisherman’s garb, gelatin silver print, ca.1911.

Courtesy of Shanghai Municipal Library.

from an illness” (yangke 養疴), a euphemism for his political withdrawal.36 The widely distributed photo of the fisherman served quite effectively to fashion him as a man with “refined tastes” and disguise his political ambitions. The caption on the magazine page also acknowledges that the reason Yuan posed in costume for the camera was for “entertainment” (yule 娛樂). One photograph from that series (figure 1.14) uses his garden as the setting for rendering the subject’s spirit, echoing the ancient pictorial practice of placing the figure in the background of mountains and rivers. Yuan, wearing a straw cape and hat, is sitting on the end of the boat, pretending to fish. Yuan’s poems on the photographs, included in the private collection, express his joy in costume photo shooting, nourishing his life apart from national politics, while at the same time articulating the political ambition of this “fisherman.” One couplet reads: “The heart of this old peasant carries weapons and armor, / the fisherman looks down on aristocrats” (野老胸中負兵甲，釣翁眼底小王侯). Through this private, poetic voice, a militant, ambitious face lurks behind the mask of a reclusive fisherman.37

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Two representative cases of literati in Shanghai in the 1910s come from photos by Qian Xiangru 錢香如 and Qian Huafo 錢化佛 (1884–1964), both of whom were active in Shanghai’s entertainment and publishing worlds. Qian Xiangru was a successful businessman, the editor of Entertainment Science (Youxi kexue 遊戲科學), and the pioneer of a series of books on magic (moshu). He took twelve photographs that were serialized in three issues of his magazine that were called “the editor’s playful images” (Bianzhe youxi xiaoying 編者 遊戲小影) (figure 1.15). Of these twelve, eleven are costume photos and only one is of a person in regular dress. Qian dressed himself as a Ming dynasty xiucai (a literati who had passed the prefectural level of the civil service examination), as a Daoist priest on Mao Mountain, as a beggar with broken feet, as a Manchurian military officer, as a foreigner, a bookworm, and so on, striking a signature pose for each of the roles. All twelve photos are accompanied by lighthearted poems written either by him or his friends. Among them are two cross-gender photos, one as a virago and one as a “beautiful Western woman” (Xiyang meinü 西洋美女). Haishang Shushisheng (aka Sun Yusheng 孫玉聲, 1863?–1936?), a well-known writer of popular fiction, commented on the photo of Qian disguised as a Western beauty by rewriting the lines of The Book of Songs: “This beauty is a Western beauty. / The Westerner is superbly beautiful. / I recognize the reincarnation (huashen) of the literati Qian Xiangru. / Both the literati and these beauties will last forever.” In another little poem, which is about Qian masquerading as a powerful-looking foreign official, Sun writes: “The illusory image (huanxiang 幻相) is so magical, / it manages to look like a powerful foreign official.” 38 In Qian’s pictures, the impersonations are performed with the serious expression and signature pose of each particular role, and the poetic commentaries simultaneously express excitement and a kind of (self-)critique for posing as these cultural types. The dynamics between photographs and poems, as a result of the collaborative efforts of Qian’s cohort, became “a kind of extended event.” 39 These took place in the public realm and in print media to facilitate a group spirit of entertainment (youxi), which was also the main theme of Qian’s magazine Entertainment Science. Similarly, Qian Huafo disguised himself as a Chinese gentleman, an official, a Mongolian, a poor man, and a Western beauty in an array of images, six of which were published as a composition in a single-page layout (figure 1.16). This photo collage offers a repertoire of roles, both conventional and new, all with vivid expressions of emotions. Through such carnivalesque role-playing,



FIGURE 1.15  “The editor’s playful images,” Youxi kexue 3 (1914).

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FIGURE 1.16  “Qian Huafo’s transformation tableaux,” Youxi zazhi 4 (1914).

both Qian Xiangru and Qian Huafo cross the boundaries of portrait and theatrical tableau to create a new form of leisure. The deliberate facial expressions, in comparison to the stoic or emotionless pictures of previous decades, reveal a self-awareness of artifice and the pleasure taken in acting. Early Republican photographic culture not only witnessed popular cultural types or fixed roles (e.g., the Daoist priest or the fisherman) but also further disseminated new types (the beautiful Western woman, the female student, or the foreign character) with signature bearings and postures.40 The series of costume photos of Qian Xiangru and Qian Huafo is to a certain extent a re-creation of “pleasure painting” (xingle tu 行樂圖).41 The popularity of culturally loaded images such as the fisherman and the beggar of the late Qing dynasty further evinces the photo images’ connection to the perennially favored imaginary roles projected by the literati.42 The term xingle fell out of fashion after the turn of the century, replaced by compounds such as

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youxi (entertainment or playing games) or yule (entertainment or recreation). Many of the participants in these games lived in the modern wonderland of Shanghai and were involved in magazines such as Entertainment Science and The Pastime, which were among the entertainment tabloids that emerged in the 1890s in that city.43 These terms also became catchphrases for costuming and self-performing in the photographic culture, which generated fun by referring to cultural archetypes; many photos are titled, rather literarily, “small shadows of entertainment” (youxi xiaoying 遊戲小影).44 The buzzword youxi, popular in the 1900s and 1910s, refers to an extensive range of pastimes and amusement; yule, a translation of the English term “recreation” and widely used in the Republican era, stands more broadly for physical exercise, new forms of entertainment (singing, dance, film, photography, etc.), the cultivation of a moral sense, the acquisition of knowledge, and the nourishment of body and mind.45 Gender-crossing costume photos offer the most captivating kind of costumes. Deeply rooted in China’s theatrical tradition, with male actors often playing female roles, Zhou Enlai 周恩來 (1898–1976), Ouyang Yuqian 歐陽 予倩 (1889–1962), and Li Shutong 李叔同 (1880–1942), not to mention the stellar performers Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 (1894–1961), Feng Chunhang 馮春航 (1888–1942), and Lu Zimei 陸子美 (1892 or 1893–1915), all took cross-gendered photos posed in theatrical roles and shot extensively in photo studios, with the resulting photos subsequently sold in the market. Sufficient evidence exists of cross-dressing by both genders beyond the theatrical realm, i.e., young male literati posing as beautiful women and female counterparts donning male clothes.46 The examples included here are studio shots of Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑 (1895–1968), a fiction writer and editor, and Zhang Jinzhi 張進之. In his essay “On Costume Photos,” Zhou mentions that he liked to imitate dan actors of Beijing opera at the time and had six photos taken of himself in cross-dress. Imagining being an exquisitely desirable female besieged by admirers, he fantasizes placing himself in the roles of Xizi and Zhuo Wenjun (two iconic beautiful women in history).47 As an intermedial transposition of theatrical tradition into photographic culture, this roleplaying, inspired by cross-dressed performers, was assisted by photographic technology, conveniently achieving its “quick turning” (subian 速變). Zhou’s identification and subsequent self-dramatization in cross-dressed photo shoots were also a wish-fulfillment of the literatus’s projection of the self onto the gendered other. Casting oneself in the role of an idealized “beautiful



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FIGURE 1.17  “Picture of wishing Heaven

FIGURE 1.18  “Novelist Zhou Shoujuan,”

to quickly turn me into a girl,” Xiangyan conghua, 1 (1916).

Youxi zazhi 4 (1914).

woman” (meiren 美人), often in a moment of yearning for love in her boudoir, is an act of self-fashioning and the assumption of a cultural mask. Furthermore, the fashionable Western woman emerged as an image of a new and exotic “modern woman” who attracted emulation. Figure  1.17 is a juxtaposition of two photographic images of Zhou in cross-dressing costumes and three printed texts (two poems by his friends and one excerpt from a piece of prose by Zhou himself). One shows a standing Zhou wearing a skirt and long jacket with a high collar and side fastening, along with another image of him sitting in Western suit, skirt, and leather shoes. He wears glasses and directly engages with the camera, appearing stiffly posed. His gestures are different in the two photos, with one more reserved and the other expressive, showing his arms folded behind the back of his head. Both photographs are shot against a decorative painted background with flowerpots arranged on the floor. Figure 1.18, taken during the same period, is a charming mixture of new

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FIGURE 1.19  “Picture of being

mysterious,” Meiyu 1, no. 9 (1915).

fashion (donning a wig, padded breasts, and Victorian style gown) and the classical feminine gesture of a woman holding a flower (the Buddhist symbol of purity and longevity), reminiscent of paintings of beauty (shinü tu). During this era, Zhou projected his self-imagination onto a range of women—from a traditional beauty, to a girl named Violet with whom he was romantically obsessed, to newly introduced Western women—dramatically combining contemporary, flamboyant fashion and the classical feminine gesture.48 In figure 1.19, published in the women’s journal Eyebrow Talk (Meiyu 眉語, 1914– 1916), seven images of the gentleman Zhang Jinzhi (two in Western male suits and five in cross-dressed female dresses) are juxtaposed together, with visible traces of assemblage. The composite piece illustrates the five significant phases of women’s conventional life journey from the teenage girl ready for marriage to the mature lady accompanied by a son.49 In both Zhou Shoujuan and Zhang’s cases, gender performance through costuming, referred to as “being mysterious” (pushuo mili 撲朔迷離),50 intriguingly reaffirms the abiding literati fascination with boundary crossing and gender fluidity.



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By re-creating new, composite self-images with the use of costumes, settings, props, and gestural tradition, photography helped people cross social, historical, and gender boundaries to fulfill cultural fantasies. The photograph’s capacity to transport us from ordinary daily life and to deliver us to “the possibility of being-otherwise” marks it as a profoundly imaginative endeavor.51 In recent years, scholars have been fascinated with the phenomenon of cross-dressing and with the power of photography to destabilize entrenched assumptions about gender, arguing that the “characteristics of photography as a form of representation reveal the ‘identity-as-choice’ premise of the modernity project.” 52 In Qian Xiangru and Qian Huafo’s photo collages, a multitude of transient moments have been captured by the camera, revealing the subject’s identities in different contexts that certainly evince heightened self-consciousness. Although induced self-awareness was certainly present in photo shooting, these seemingly free-floating identities were not usually indicators of heterogeneous subjectivity or radically transforming selfhood but were projections of cultural archetypes, master visual tropes, and costumes (in many cases conveniently offered by the studios). By citing and reenacting the personas of the xiucai, priest, beggar, bookworm, and beautiful woman, photographers and literati subjects collectively achieved a balance between these established images and their innovations, guided by reenvisioning and personal tastes; by writing poems on or about these images, the literati and their friends added personal voices to the experience, making it a congenial event. The experience of the modern self, not leveled or monopolized by the technical medium, is enriched and embodied through such creative practices. Meanwhile, photographers and subjects extended the boundaries of the self to communities through their adoption of costumes and roles, and the publication venues, in most cases, generated an endless but eerie enjoyment in public.53

REENACTMENT AND THEATRICALITY In Sun Yusheng’s popular installment fiction, Dreams of Shanghai Splendors, literatus Tu Shaoxia and courtesan Ah Zhen plan to take a series of photographs at the Zhizhen 致真 (lit., attaining the truth) Studio. Although Powkee (aka Baoji) Studio excels at shooting techniques, Ah Zhen comments

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that Zhizhen has acquired some of the finest ancient-style costumes, leading her courtesan friends to take a magnificent photograph of “celestial ladies scattering flowers” (tiannü sanhua 天女散花). Ah Zhen expresses her desire to take pictures of herself costumed as the leading male martial arts character in the Beijing opera, which surprises Shaoxia. After being given the price list (for color tinting and different costumes), the couple is given sample albums to peruse. Among the photos are eye-catching images of other courtesans playing heroic male figures. Ah Zhen and Shaoxia take a photograph together as a romantic couple in the genre “picture of being drunk with flowers under the moon” (zuohua zuiyue tu 坐花醉月圖); this is the result of delicate negotiations with Ah Zhen, as she has never before taken a photograph with a client. The photographs that Ah Zhen took prior to this episode were printed on handkerchiefs, porcelain, round fans, folded fans, and thin slices of ivory. Ah Zhen subsequently gives Shaoxia a handkerchief imprinted with her photo as a memento.54 The episode is fascinating in the way that it depicts the “real” scenes of photographic and courtesan culture in Shanghai at the turn of the century, giving us a glimpse into the customs of photo shoots. Most relevant here is that Ah Zhen expresses her desire to be seen in popular literary and theatrical personas; cross-dressing, together with the heroism shown in the original stories, are her favorite characteristics. The desire undoubtedly can be understood as a form of her self-voicing and aspiration. The adaptation of the theatrical by photography studios fed the growing popularity of such costume photography among its customers. The Rongfeng Studio, owned by a devoted fan of the Beijing opera, acquired a whole set of theater costumes and props and hired a makeup artist for theatrical photo shooting. In 1917, the Taifang Studio in Beijing invited Mei Lanfang to shoot more than seventy photographs. The theatrical scenes, including “Chang’e leaving for the Moon” (Chang’e benyue 嫦娥奔月), “Daiyu burying flowers” (Daiyu zanghua 黛玉葬花), “Qingwen tearing off the fan” (Qingwen sishan 晴雯撕扇), and “Mulan joining the army” (Mulan congjun 木蘭從軍),55 were converted into the mise-en-scène of photography. These photographs, available for purchase, continued to fan the interest of ordinary people in casting themselves in theatrical scenes during photography



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sessions in the convergence of theatrical performance, literature, painting, and photographic reenactment. As discussed previously in this chapter, early practitioners of photography in China imitated or took great inspiration from traditional genres and cultural forms, forming a close relationship that was both accommodating and competitive. Through intermedial reference, photography, fully aware of its own media specificities, reconstitutes itself in a complex relation within the visual tradition. The influences of portrait painting in photography in its early stages has been examined fruitfully by art historians over the past decade. In his discussion of eighteenth-century figural and portrait paintings such as Jin Nong’s self-portraits, Richard Vinograd delineates the conventional elements of portraits, thus revealing the constructedness of role and identity. Roberta Wue argues that the Chinese portrait is perhaps best understood as “a sequence of signs, signs that relied heavily on culturally specific codes for constructing likeness.”56 Both scholars highlight the importance of conventions and formal rhetoric in the making of Chinese portraits, and Wue further extends her points to a nuanced discussion of China’s early photographic portraits, which often used the same conventions or role types to compose images. Wu Hung carefully delineates the convoluted process of cultural dialogues and formulation of a “typical” Chinese portrait style, arguing for the contributions Western photographers played. He shows how Milton Miller, resorting to the Chinese ancestral portrait style, firmly established a fixed perception of typical Chinese portrait photography for a global audience around the 1870s, which further provided a basis for China’s imitation and self-imagination.57 In his astute treatment of the history of Chinese studios, Tong Bingxue offers rich accounts of the practices of the portrait photographic style, including the preferred front view of the face, the use of lighting to avoid shadows, the  composition of background elements, and the revision of the negatives to achieve the balanced effects of light.58 This scholarship demonstrates that the iconographic conventions, visual codes, and formal rhetoric of portrait painting from literati culture offered contexts, sources, and inspirations for Chinese practitioners in this new technological era.

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I would like to further explore how the accustomed role types, stylistic conventions, and codes helped participants unleash self-imagining and a feeling of pleasure.59 These costume photographs, as a kind of tableau vivant, offer simulacra or mimicry of classical scenes through which a profound sense of theatricality is implicated.60 Theatricality here refers not only to photo shooting’s reference to theatrical experience or “still” performance but also to “a density of signs and sensations built up on stage starting from the written argument.” 61 In her discussion of a distinct kind of theatricality in classical Chinese drama, Haiping Yan understands theatricality as a suppositionality (xunixing 虛擬性); “it actualized itself through acting that is suppositional in its overall mode of signification and extraordinarily stylized in its specific executions.” 62 This suppositionality is predicated upon props, shared assumptions between the participants and their audience, or “the principles of generations” in Kendall Walton’s formulation of “games of make-believe.” 63 These props and conventions prescribe what is intended to be imagined and interpreted under those conditions. Holding a flower, carrying a hoe, and playing a musical instrument are all suppositional gestures upon which specific imaginings related to cultural narratives and idealized characters are premised. It is through these premises and make-believe principles that costume photo shooting becomes a novel means of self-imagination and creative activities. Exactly because of this, the photographic subjects can comfortably claim that these somewhat affectedly posed figures in the artificially arranged studio setting reveal the self’s true “spirit.” The classical representation of “celestial ladies scattering flowers” usually shows the ladies in traditional garments holding flower baskets, with hand gestures indicating spreading flowers. “Celestial ladies scattering flowers” refers to a scene from the Vimalakīrti Sutra, an influential work of the Mahāyāna canon,64 in which a goddess dramatically appears in Vimalakīrti’s room and scatters heavenly blossoms to the bodhisattvas and disciples to offer lessons on the Buddha’s Law. This scene became a staple subject in traditional paintings and operas, including in a play by Mei Lanfang from the same era. The photograph of two courtesan-like ladies with a flower basket shown in figure  1.20 was produced by Sze Yuen Ming & Co. around 1900. Dressed up in a Ming dynasty gown, one lady pretends to be scattering the flowers from the basket on her head, with another lady in matching attire seated



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FIGURE 1.20  Ladies in Ming

costume, gelatin silver print, 10 × 14 cm, Sze Yuen Ming & Co., ca. 1900. Courtesy of Tong Bingxue.

beside her. Both of them wear their hair in a bun held up by pins. Figure 1.21 is a magazine page that includes a photograph of the female poet Chen Cuina 陳翠娜 (1903–1967) and her younger brother in nicely choreographed theatrical poses. The Chen siblings are dressed in traditional garments, with one holding up a flower basket toward the left and the other slightly kneeling down. The caption at the top suggests that the sister and bother “collaborated upon the picture of celestial ladies scattering flowers.” The text printed beneath the photograph, written by Chen Cuina, informs the viewers of the circumstances surrounding the photo shoot, which was initiated by her brother, who also insistently solicited the poems from her. One of the three quatrains that Chen composed for this occasion (reprinted beneath the photo) refers to the image as “material manifestation in emptiness” (kong zhong sexiang 空中色相), saying in a joking manner that old Vimalakīrti (lao weimo 老維摩) might find it hilarious.65 The literati clients’ infatuation with role-playing, as well as the relentless pursuit of “the extraordinary” (qi 奇) and pleasure, was taken advantage of

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FIGURE. 1.21  “Picture of celestial ladies scattering flowers,” Banyue 1, no. 13 (1922).

by the profit-driven entertainment business to create a new urban leisure culture. In her informative study of courtesan culture in the late Qing, Catherine Yeh depicts the captivating parallel world of Shanghai courtesans finding inspiration in literary characters, role types, and plots from the masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng 紅樓夢).66 These, in light of Walton’s ideas, function as props in games of make-believe. Some enduring scenes of lyrical sentimentality such as “Daiyu burying flowers” in the novel gained prevalence for reenactment in photo shoots and self-projections. Zhao Mianyun 趙眠雲 (1902–1948)—a poet and publisher who established the literary society Xing club 星社 (1922–1937)—took a photograph of himself cross-dressed in an elaborate gown and holding a gardening hoe over his shoulder as a prop (figure 1.22). Taking the figure carrying a hoe as Daiyu, the photographic subject and his viewing community prescribe specific imaginative and interpretive conventions. At least



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FIGURE 1.22  “Magazine contributor Zhao Mianyun’s costume photo: Daiyu burying flowers,” Kuaihuo 11 (1922).

six poems by friends in response to this image of him in fictional persona were published in magazines in 1922. Tu Shouzhuo 屠守拙, a member of the Xing club, wrote:

ON MIANYUN’S COSTUME PORTRAIT OF DAIYU BURYING FLOWERS

Exiled to red dust, [he] realizes [his] previous body; not changing [his] sympathy toward the flowers. If indeed the crimson pearl flower’s spirit is not clouded, [she] should know [she] has repaid the debt of her tears.67 題眠雲化裝黛玉葬花小影

紅塵再謫悟前身, 未改憐香一片情。 若果絳珠靈不昧， 應知淚債已還清。

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In the photograph, Zhao Mianyun projects himself as the character of Daiyu, who is prefigured as the “crimson pearl flower” indebted to the stone in her previous life, and attempts to pay back her debts of tears to Baoyu in her current life. This self-fashioning was further validated in the poems solicited by Zhao. In Tu’s poem, he interprets the cross-dressed image as Zhao’s “previous body” (qianshen 前身) (line 1) or incarnation (Skt. pūrva-deha, pūrva-nivāsa). Fan Yanqiao 范煙橋 (1894–1967), Zhao’s friend and an active figure in the Xing club (Xingshe), also identifies the cross-dressed image as a “previous body” (qianshen) in his poem.68 In both poems, cross-dressing is understood in terms of the transience of identities and bodies in Buddhist thought. In contrast, contemporary scholarship on traditional cross-dressing often tends to ascribe either psychological or feminist readings of crossing gender boundaries onto the practice, projecting present values onto people who were otherwise deeply immersed in Buddhist ideas of the body and its transformation. The collective simulation of tradition among courtesans and artists turned the photography session into a playground similar to the Jade Pool or the garden in Dream of the Red Chamber. One good example of composite photos inspired by these classical scenes is a pair of costume photographs of the ladies from Hangzhou playing the fairies of the Jade Pool (figure 1.23).69 This example displays two photographs printed side by side on the same page. The one on the right is of twenty ladies, and the one on the left is of fourteen ladies, all dressed in traditional theatrical garments. A mature-looking lady, who can be identified as the Queen Mother of the West, sits on a chariot at the center of the right-hand photograph. A few of the ladies pretend to play musical instruments (e.g., pipa), and one in the back carries a flower basket like Daiyu. Another lady makes a gesture like that of the flying spirits depicted in Dunhuang Cave, and the rest just stand around in slightly different poses. These two composite photographs are also painted with added settings and celestial symbols associated with the Queen Mother, together with inscriptions on the top. No additional information has been found to explain the motive or process behind this intriguing work. What we can discern, however, is that the feminine utopian vision concerning the Daoist story of the Jade Pool is visually realized here through collective masquerading and pastiche. Photography, as a new form of commercial mass entertainment, was readily mobilized to recycle cultural types, personas, and scenes through



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FIGURE 1.23  “Costume photographs of well-known boudoir ladies in Hangzhou playing

the fairies of the Jade Pool,” Youxi zazhi 17 (1915).

repetitive imitation and ceaseless reproduction, interlayering image upon image.70 These photographic tableaux, as negotiations between individual creativity and topicality, bring traditional pictorial and theatrical elements into visual processes of self-expression, imagination, and aesthetic joy. Unleashing theatricality in photo shooting is a liberating force that contests photography’s technological mechanism, moving from the mind’s eye to the bodily eye for the sake of visual realization.71 Theatricality in this form of reenactment is not a form of naturalized representation; it signifies rather the gestures, personas, and scenes upon which symbolic truth is rendered. It is by means of iterative convention and embodied theatricality that the new medium assisted participants in achieving the fanciful self and dramatic imaginings, pleasure-seeking experiences, and wondrous narrative tableaux.

BETWEEN TRUE AND UNTRUE Photography creates an array of selves—sartorial, gendered, cultural, emotional—as well as a range of cultural prototypes and fashionable new roles. How did photographic subjects and their contemporaries understand the synchronic

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FIGURE 1.24  Portrait of Shaoyu in the guise of Liu Ling (central part), unidentified artist,

handscroll, ca. 1795. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

juxtaposition of multiplied self-images? Why did these practices capture the Chinese imagination at the time and enjoy widespread popularity in addition to producing obvious pleasure? What are the conceptual frameworks underlying such photographic manipulations and visual metamorphoses? Before addressing these questions, I would like to briefly discuss one late eighteenth-century painting and its inscriptions, which illustrate the continuity of the conceptual framework that structures such a practice. At the center of the long handscroll Portrait of Shaoyu, the painted subject Jin Shaoyu 金少愚 (?–1810?) rides in a deer-drawn carriage, accompanied by two servant girls on each side of his carriage, with one of them carrying a spade (figure 1.24).72 In the colored pictorial representation, the solemn-looking, bearded Jin Shaoyu is projected into a historical persona of the iconic figure Liu Ling 劉伶, who rides on the deer-drawn chariot and leads a carefree, aesthetic life in wine and words. Fourteen people, including Jin Shaoyu himself, wrote the colophons over the course of more than half a century, reading the piece



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as the fulfillment of typical literati dreams of immortality. Among the fourteen inscriptions is an extensive colophon by Jin’s relative Tao Xuan 陶軒 that contains this rhetorical question: “Don’t you see that the Chan Buddhist can be transformed into millions of bodies, / and the Daoist has the numinous techniques of transforming bones” (君不見禪家化身千百億，道家 換骨傳靈術)? This narrative painting serves as one example among many of the literati imagination acting out different historical or cultural personas in the paintings of the late imperial era; it is intriguing that the inscriptions empathically capture two major conceptual sources (Buddhism and Daoism) that informed this kind of role-play. With this history as a backdrop, I pay particular attention to names and key phrases in titles or accompanying poems that offer clues to the underlying conceptual framework embedded within the production of photographic messages. Articles and captions for photographs in the 1910s show that the Buddhist term huashen was used extensively to refer to portraits in which the same subject was reproduced multiple times. However, the term was so loosely defined that costume photos, usually categorized as huazhuang zhao, were also sometimes called huashen zhao because in some cases the photos involved both costumes and multiple-self subjects. The term transformation-body or emanation-body (huashen or nirmāṇakāya) refers to one of the three bodies of the Buddha in trikāya theory. Whereas the essence-body (dharmakāya, fashen 法身) is foundational, abstract, and nonphysical, the transformation-body and enjoyment-body (saṃbhogakāya, yingshen 應身) are concrete, visible bodies belonging to the phenomenal world.73 Huashen, initially employed to describe the “doubleness” of the deity in Mahāyāna Buddhism, refers to the human, animal, and inanimate forms involved in temporary manifestations in response to worldly demands.74 Dharmakāya, as a transcendental force, must rely on the image or sign (xiang 相) to convey its essence. Wuxiang (no image) is the source of all xiang (images) and the forms of empirical multiplicity.75 This concept of multiple emanations of a single deity in the form of huashen, visible to human eyes, contributed not only to the proliferation of Buddhist icons and visual renditions in history,76 it was also appropriated to structure a new visual practice in the modern era. Photography’s infinite potential to project a kaleidoscope of looks and personalities, as well as its inherent reproducibility, were quickly perceived

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and commented on by poets. A case in point is a poem by Shen Daofei 沈道非 (1879–1946), a member of the Southern Society (Nanshe 南社, 1909–1923). The poem inquires about zhenshi xiang 真實相 (the marks of reality) in an array of cross-dressed photos of dan performer Feng Chunhang, provided by Liu Yazi 柳亞子 (1887–1958).

WRITING ONE QUATRAIN FOR YAZI, AS HE SHOWED ME MULTIPLE COSTUME PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHUNHANG

A beautiful lady is about to cross the waves, how alluring is the jade tree before the wind. Which are the marks of reality of Vimalakīrti, he never feels his millions of manifestations can be too many.77 亞子出示春航化粧小影多張為題一絕

亭亭倩影欲淩波， 玉樹風前艷若何。 誰是維摩真實相， 化身千百不嫌多。

Alluding to the beautiful Lady Luo (line 1), and Vimalakīrti (a lay bodhisattva and protagonist in The Vimalakīrti Sutra) who has the ability to manifest in a million different bodies, the poem compliments Feng’s poses in multiple costumes. It expresses the poet’s awe at the power of the photographic image and its remarkable ability to be replicated and transmitted, as well as its capacity to realize the ancient Buddhist doctrine of having multiple bodies. The “marks of reality” (Zhenshi xiang) (line 3) ironically refers to the realistic photographs of an actor in costumes. True reality, conditioned and without absoluteness, can be manifested in different ways, just like the camera’s magic power of replication. Zhang Ruilan 張瑞蘭, Zhou Shoujuan’s friend, wrote a poem (reprinted in figure 1.17) commenting on Zhou’s cross-dressed photos, referring to his image as an “illusory appearance” (huanxiang).



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ON ZHOU SHOUJUAN’S CROSS-DRESSED PHOTOGRAPHS

Transcending [fire] to become a red lotus, free in body, an illusory appearance with someone scattering flowers. Now you receive the color of rouge, and can draw the goddess of the Luo River from the magic land. Vimalakīrti is manifested as beautiful Luofu, seeing her, I fall in love, not to mention that old man. Let Liu Zhen view her straight-on, her body so different from the tavern girls.78 周瘦鵑喬裝小影

解脫紅蓮自在身， 諸天幻相散花人。 而今分得胭脂色， 好向芝田畫洛神。 維摩居士現羅敷， 我見猶憐況老奴。 盡許劉楨平視去， 此身原異酒家胡。

The allusion in line 2, “Goddess scattering flowers” (tiannü sanhua), refers to Zhou Shoujuan’s cross-gendered image holding up a flower. The poem is tinged with eroticism but maintains a humorous tone. Both this poem and the poem by Shen Daofei evoke the figure of Vimalakīrti, stressing the relationship between different forms and emptiness.79 In both Shen’s poem (line 1) and Zhang’s poem (line 4), there is an allusion to the goddess of the Luo River who is fashioned into a literary figure of tragic love in Cao Zhi’s “Rhapsody on the Luo River Goddess”(Luoshen fu).80 The flower-scattering goddess, the grievous goddess of the Luo River, and beautiful Luofu, are realized in a secular, modern context and can be appreciated and gazed upon by ordinary readers. The sexual taboo, indicated in allusions, also seems to have evaporated, as if the role of a beauty can readily be played by

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donning a costume and being captured by a camera. By alluding to these stories in a new configuration of the female image, romance, and entertainment, the taboos only add a sense of thrill and salacious entertainment to costume play. Evocation of the conceptions of “real” or” true” (zhen), “illusion” (huan 幻), and “transformation” (bian 變), constitutes one of the recurring themes in these poems about photography. The dichotomy between the real and the illusory or between the “spirit” and the “manifestation” of the self is always foregrounded. Conventions, formal rhetoric, and a pleasure-seeking spirit all facilitated the achievement of illusion and an interchangeability between the real and unreal. These personas and artificial elements are not understood as fictional but as quotable signs and symbols that constitute a refashioning of the visual self to achieve “the ultimate truth” or “perfection” (zhen). I would like to briefly ponder this polysemous concept, which has had a range of overlapping meanings. In his explanation of the concept of zhen in Chinese aesthetic and philosophical discourses, Kasahara Chūji shows that zhen differs from the concepts of scientific objectivity or the objective validity of the universal in the Kantian sense. Rather, zhen is synonymous with the fundamental ideas of shen (spirit), qi (air or vital force), and li (principle), which refer to the absolute essence in the world.81 As the ninth-century painter Jing Hao 荊浩 writes in his famous treatise, differentiating si (resemblance) and zhen, “resemblance (si) means to achieve the form of the object but to leave out its spirit; truth (zhen) means that both spirit and substance are strong.” 82 Zhen does not simply refer to the relationship of the image to reality but represents the combination of “air”, “spirit” and “substance” (zhi). Accordingly, xiezhen 寫真 (lit., transcribing truth) does not refer just to an accurate rendition of the human subject but emphasizes the “rendition of its spirit” (chuanshen 傳神). Xiezhen, particularly in portrait painting in the late imperial era, was defined as a genre in which the painter should “preconceive the meanings before taking up the brush, and follow upon with the qi.” 83 Going beyond likeness, xiezhen emphasizes the workings of mind in order to capture the spirit of a living person (xiezhen chuanshen). Although the daguerreotype process was introduced to Japan in 1848, the term shashin (寫真) was not applied to photography until the 1870s.84



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Curator Yokoe Fuminori astutely calls attention to the meaning of zhen in xiezhen: “the ‘true’ in the Chinese xiezhen (Japanese: shashin) did not refer to a simple realism but an attempt to grasp the inwardness of the subject that goes beyond external form. Thus, a portrait would be said to be true only if it integrated a grasp of both the external appearance and the inner nature of the subject.” In his opinion, this connotation of shashin, with its emphasis on the inward spirit, may have contributed to the initial hesitation in adopting this term for photography because people in the Meiji era did not perceive photography to be an aide in “reaching truth.” 85 The concept of zhen in the pictorial tradition underwent changes during this era with regard to visual culture that tilted its semantic range toward the accurate representation of the objective world,86 but the subjective and “spiritual” strains of meaning remained a powerful undercurrent. Understanding zhen not as fidelity to reality but as the expression of spirit or ideals has substantially informed artistic practices and China’s revamping of the Western concept of realism.87 It is in this sense that we understand the claims in many poems that the costumes or contrived compositions capture the zhen (spirit) of the self or ideal scenes. The speaker in the poem about the “entreating the self” photograph, quoted previously, comfortably states that the contrived double image of one self kneeling to another self, showing a spirit of self-reliance, “depicts a true me” (hui zhen wu). Instead of obsessing over whether the photograph is true or not, Chinese viewers were intrigued by the in-between state, referring to it as “seeming real or unreal” (yizhen yijia 疑真疑假) or “mysterious” (pushuo mili).88 Many of the photos published in a series or as collages (e.g., figures 1.15, 1.16, 1.17,  1.19) complicate the referential link between the multiplicity of photographic images and the singular human subject. The conceptual questions regarding visual truth and illusion that have been raised through these practices can be further comprehended through the poems on photography that frequently address secularized religious conceptions. One of the bamboo-stick poems describing Hankou culture in the early Republic captures the viewer’s attitude toward photographs of multiple selves.

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BAMBOO-STICK SONG FROM HANKOU

There is no need to distinguish true or untrue in form and shadow, The person in the mirror is the one in my heart. Recently, [I] have just realized the method of the divided body, Buddha holds up a flower, responds with a smile, [the image] reaches profound causes.89 漢口竹枝詞

形影何須辨真假， 鏡中人即意中人。 近來始悟分身法， 一笑拈花證妙因。

This poem by Luo Han 羅漢 suggests that this is the stage between resemblance and non-resemblance, and this subtle place in-between the two states fascinates the Chinese. The second line states that the person in the mirror is my sweetheart. As Bernard Faure asserts, “A Buddhist image is not, as is a Western one, caught between mimesis and invention but derives from a problematic of the double.” 90 Line 4 alludes to the well-known Chan Buddhist story of the Buddha’s silent mind-to-mind transmission of the dharma, in which the Buddha silently holds up a flower at an assembly of the sangha on Vulture Peak, and only his disciple Mahākāśyapa breaks into a smile.91 Does this evocation of a Chan narrative suggest that the message of the photograph of the divided body is most intricate in its nonrepresentational and unspeakable state? Or does the viewer, like the disciple Mahākāśyapa, receive the silent message through the act of viewing and not through verbal transmission? It seems to suggest that the image of multiple bodies in costume photographs aspire to convey messages beyond words and visual resemblances. The causal link between zhen and visibility of the form is not overly determined; rather, in this context the visible images of Buddhas are not the true Buddha but mere transient manifestation of the Buddha.92 These poems also point to the concept of illusion (huan) in relation to transformation or metamorphosis (bian).93 Tracing the etymology of the word bian as



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a Buddhist technical term, Victor Mair points out that transformation implies “the coming or bringing into being (i.e., into illusory reality, māyā) of a scene or deity.” Bian, as used in bianwen 變文 (transformation-text) or bianxiang 變相 (transformation scenes or tableaux), refers to a sequence of mutations in the storytelling or visual illustration of Buddhist teaching. Qian Huafo’s series of eight portrait photos was captioned “transformation tableaux” (bianxiang) (see ­figure 1.16 caption).94 In other words, the collage of costume photos of Qian Huafo was wittingly or unwittingly associated with the genre of sutra illustrations. Establishing the direct etymological connection between nirmāṇa (transformation or bianhua) and māyā (illusion or huanhua), Mair draws attention to the importance of bian and huan for Indian and Chinese practices of creativity, i.e., creating things that are not entirely new but are transformations based on prototypes.95 The “creative” impulses were expressed through quoting and recycling visual vocabularies, formal property, costumes, personas, and roles from the past. Set free by imagination and aided by technology, creativity is realized by refashioning self-images that are manifested in transformed forms and shapes and that can only be established through a delicate balance between the pursuit of novelty and adherence to convention. The mediation of Buddhist magical tropes was assimilated into photographic culture and reappropriated, highlighting the technology’s ability to create optical illusions. Just as the Buddha is said to have emanated in myriad forms of appearance, Qian Xiangru, Qian Huafo, and many others appear in a “repertoire of images,” actively engaging in the production of multiple selves. Illusion (huan) is not the misperception or false representation of the self but is a wondrous, expedient manifestation through multifaceted expressions such as mirroring, shadowing, dream states, and fantasies. Although I argue that widely disseminated Buddhist notions significantly contributed to Chinese practice and understanding of portrait photography, I hasten to add that Buddhist concepts are only one of the signifying systems on which this indigenous practice depends. Such photos of multiple bodies— also referred as fenshen xiaoying 分身小影 (lit., little shadow of the divided body), or shen wai shen 身外身 (bodies beyond bodies)—were often understood as employing “magical techniques of reduplicating bodies” (fenshen youshu 分身有術), a well-known Daoist stratagem. “The Visualization Diagram” (cunsi tu 存思圖), which depicts the Daoist adept’s body surrounded by

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deities on clouds emanating from his head, suggests visual mediation as the imagination transforms the physical body into a comic one in and through which myriad deities travel.96 Daoist canons further elaborate on “dividing forms” (fenxing 分形) and the magic of replication using the bright mirror. One Daoist text states that “the way of the bright mirror, could be used to divide the form and engage in transformation, taking the One to be the ten thousand things.” 97 Through the practice of image-oriented meditation (cunsi) in Daoist schools such as Shangqing, the One can be multiplied into ten thousand things, which signifies the multiplicity and unity of things. This concept of “dividing forms” proves perennially fascinating to the Chinese, especially because it is best represented by the magical metamorphoses of the character Monkey (Sun Wukong) in the novel Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西遊記), who can be instantaneously transformed into a wide range of animals and objects.98 In a poem on a friend’s twin-selves portrait, Lai Shaoyao 賴紹堯 (1871–1917), a Taiwanese poet, alludes to the goddess Nüwa, who used mud to create human beings; a Buddha with millions of bodies (huashen); Zuo Ci 左慈, a Daoist deity who knows many magic tricks; and classic Daoist mediation techniques.99 In other words, different streams of ideas (Buddhism, Daoism, folk myths, and worldviews of synchronicity), integrated with late imperial literati culture, collectively informed the practices of the new media (photography, Western-style mirrors, and telescopes).100 The strong tendency toward synthetization and intertextuality was carried forward effectively into early-twentieth-century visual practices to achieve the ancient dream of one becoming millions. Seeing is (dis)believing. Understanding the emergence of photography as a new positivism, Tom Gunning argues that photography was also experienced as “an uncanny phenomenon,” “one which seems to undermine the unique identity of objects and people, endlessly reproducing the appearances of objects, creating parallel worlds of phantasmatic doubles alongside the concrete world of the sense verified by positivism.”101 Although Gunning’s points are insightful, they cannot be readily applied to Chinese cases. Contemporary scholarship on China’s manipulated photography often overly ascribes tensions and anxieties to readings of these “phantasmatic doubles” and appropriates Gunning’s interpretation without sufficiently attending to the Chinese context at the turn of the twentieth century, in which the positivism and realism implied by and attributed to the photographic medium had not



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yet achieved pervasive influence. Rather, in the constant presence of image doubles, these Chinese patrons (literati, courtesans, or actors) enjoyed performing the fluid identities without much anxiety about the uncanny or the expression of identity disorders that were frequently found in the Western experience of modern visuality. I have argued that by calling this type of photography huashen or fenshen, which allows multiple self-images to exist simultaneously in the same frame, Chinese urbanites situated the new technology within the existing framework of knowledge and conventions to tame its foreignness and unparalleled, aggressive power and to use it to realize ancient dreams of “miraculous transformations.” To put it another way, secularized religious thoughts and indigenous rhetoric aided these practitioners, helping to untether their creativity through the new medium to reveal manifold layers of being, gender fluidity, and embodied existence. Engaging photography mainly as a subjective and cultural enterprise, this chapter has explored the tacit religious beliefs, combined creativity and conventions (borrowed from pictorial and theatrical traditions), and visual pleasures that came to be important factors in China’s domestication of technologies that were both threatening and promising. In so doing, Chinese practitioners and clients went beyond using photography to record reality and reoriented cultural perceptions of what photography meant, steering it to stage fantasies or cast cultural imaginaries. Using the new technology to experiment with the multiplicity of the self and its imagined roles, these visual and cultural practices helped to further blur the boundaries between truth and artifice, fantasy and reality, merging the distinct status of the new mechanical image-making with the cultural longue durée. Bian or hua (transforming) thus emerged as both an indicator of and a metaphor for synthesized aesthetic experiences available to the image-oriented modern society on the horizon in the early twentieth century.

CHAPTER 2

Envoicing the Paper Mirror Autobiographical Moments

I

n the spring of 1903, a young Zhou Shuren 周樹人 (later known as Lu Xun) had a photograph taken of himself in Japan. He wore a  military-style jacket, with his queue recently cut off (an iconic gesture of anti-Manchu sentiment). Zhou sent the photograph, together with a seven-character quatrain inscribed on the back, to his friend Xu Shouchang 許壽裳 (1883–1948).1 PERSONALLY INSCRIBED ON A PORTRAIT

This spirit tower holds no plan to dodge the arrows of gods or man; These storms that strike like rocks a-fall enshroud our land in their darkening pall. A shooting star might convey men’s will, but the Fragrant One lacks judgment still; So I shall offer my blood up for Xuan Yuan, our progenitor.2 自題小像

靈台無計逃神矢， 風雨如磐暗故園。 寄意寒星荃不察， 我以我血薦軒轅。



FIGURE 2.1  Portrait photo of Lun Xun in Japan, 10 × 6 cm, ca. 1903, Lu Xun wenxian tuzhuan.

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FIGURE 2.2  Lu Xun’s poem in calligraphy,

183 × 45.5 cm, 1931, Lu Xun wenxian tuzhuan.

This compelling photograph signals Zhou Shuren’s conscious self-presentation as  a modern aspiring student and his willingness to pose for the camera, which captures the details of his newly cut hair, stern gaze, and Western-style school uniform (figure 2.1). The serious look shows a young man full of vim and vigor. The resounding poem, written at the age of twenty-one, contains the lofty line: “So I shall offer my blood up for Xuan Yuan, our progenitor” (line 4). This first-person, heroic articulation announced an ambitious vision of the young self and his dedication to the larger community, and it was a voice that would soon reverberate across the modern era. Meanwhile, it should also be noted that the original photograph with the inscribed poem was lost and that Lu Xun later rewrote the poem in his distinctively archaic, unadorned calligraphic style several times over the course of his life, including this version in 1931 when he was fifty-one years old (figure 2.2). The temporal gaps between taking the photograph and copying the poem at

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different points over his extraordinary career supplies more historical drama and fertile emotional underpinnings to each act of writing the calligraphy. On October 31, 1938, Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), then serving as ambassador to the United States, inscribed a poem alongside a photograph of himself and gave the photo to his friend Chen Guangfu 陳光甫 (1881–1976). The following year, on August 21, 1939, Hu Shi offered the same photo, together with the inscription and a poem, to Li Dijun 李迪俊 (1901–?) on Li’s departure to Cuba (figure 2.3). The cosmopolitan look of Hu Shi in a Western suit and with a gentle, confident smile is framed with elegant handwriting on both sides. The poem, written in the vernacular style and with end rhymes, is inscribed on the empty space on the left side of the print:

ON MY PHOTO TAKEN NOVEMBER LAST YEAR

With a few white hairs, and feeling closer to middle age; A pawn who has crossed the river can only risk his life to continue on.3 去年十一月自題小像

偶有幾莖白髮， 心情微近中年； 做了過河卒子， 只能拼命向前。

By inscribing words onto a photographic surface and adding specificity, both Lu Xun and Hu Shi brought personal and historical significance and emotional depth to a mechanically reproduced work. My concern here is not with the patriotic feeling expressed in the two poems (that subject has been extensively explored and politically exploited by others) but with the relation of self to image, as well as the very act of inscription. Both considered to be “fathers” of modern Chinese vernacular literature, Lu Xun and Hu Shi wrote poems with references to the new medium of photography, bringing China’s unique literary genre of



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FIGURE 2.3  Photograph of Hu Shi

and his inscriptions, 1939. Courtesy of Hu Shih Memorial Hall at Academia Sinica.

“writing about the portrait of the self” (ziti xiaoxiang 自題小像) into modern times.4 Historically speaking, the display of literati portrait paintings in gentry households and temples after the An-Shi rebellions of the midTang dynasty represents a significant paradigmatic shift in artistic production.5 Participating in this development, the painted subjects themselves often commented on the portraits in the form of four-character verse called self-encomia (zizan 自贊), as well as in other types of inscriptions in rhythmic verse.6 These miniaturized autobiographies offer us insight into the writing and viewing of subjects’ interior worlds.7 The subjects’ verses on the portraits of themselves often hinged on the ethical apparatus constituted between the idealistic, expansive vision of the self in traditional Confucian ideology and the circumscribed actual self and its image depicted in a specific space and time. These lyrical moments, induced by the act of viewing the self-image, offered the writing subjects occasions for introspection and provided the communities among which they circulated the images a point of access into their inner thoughts. This chapter presents a study of recurrent moments of lyrical selfreflection through a range of selected examples by canonical and obscure writers of “poems on the portrait of the self” (ziti xiaozhao 自題小照) from

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the late Qing dynasty to the Republican era. In addition to identifying several motifs inscribed in this genre, I address critical questions such as how the ethical and sentimental mechanisms of the genre extended into photographic culture; what conceptual changes concerning psychologically oriented philosophy came with this new image-text hybrid; and how Chinese poets understood the objectified or gendered self through self-encounter. In light of a number of Western writers’ conceptions of photography, these rarely discussed poems on photographs (often referred to as xiaoxiang, xiaoying, or xiaozhao) also offer fertile ground for exploring the implications of similarity and difference in the visual encounters through a cross-cultural perspective. In the first section of this chapter, I explore the ethical implications and sentimentality of these confrontations with the self-image. The second section focuses on the alterity that occurred in the visual self-encounters and on the fractures and instability that emerge in modern subjectivity as revealed in these encounters. In the final section, I discuss gendered consciousness, induced by the images and reflected in the poems, and the function of public media in presenting and shaping the identities of women writers. In so doing, this chapter offers a new understanding of text-image dynamics, with insights into the cultural, affective and gendered articulations of the self in the context of a new visual culture.

IMAGES AS TEMPORAL PASSAGES In his illuminating study of Ming self-encomia, Hajime Nakatani traces the development of the genre from the Song through the Ming dynasty, documenting shifting models of the self as the literati subjectivity of the Northern Song gave way to a more unstable configuration of self and image. The essay offers a perceptive discussion of the ethical mechanism built into the structure of the zizan and its formative power—implying a “call for an active effort to extend oneself, a relentless and ambitious process whereby the self eventually becomes coextensive with the totality of the communal universe.”8 The circumscribed self achieves an expanded perspective from which to comment on the image and engage in self-cultivation on aesthetic grounds, accounting for the genre’s remarkably broad appeal to Chinese writers. In a similar manner, the poems



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from Lu Xun and Hu Shi are both exemplary in exploiting the genre’s ethical dimensions and self-encouragement to achieve their larger-than-life goals. The poetic voice forcefully extends the self’s relation to others and to a larger imagined community, such as one’s country (or Xuan Yuan). This projection of the self-image can be validated only through the fulfillment of its social role and cultural mission and its alignment with an ethically cultivated selfhood. Tan Sitong’s 谭嗣同 (1865–1898) sole surviving song lyric (ci 詞) was written in 1882 when he was eighteen:

TO THE TUNE WANG HAI CHAO: ON MY PORTRAIT

Experiencing rough seas, coming back to the desert again, on the frontier four thousand li from the capital. Prattling about a prophetic body, My innards churning, looking back, eighteen years have past. Have [you] woken from spring dreams? Facing the spring sail in fine rain, chanting alone. There are flowers in a vase; A few keep me company, no need for more. Only on the cold river I remove my straw rain cape. A face left to the wind and dust, how does it see itself? The mirror doesn’t depend on human will the self-body even asks its reflection, Is the mirrored face red because of drinking? Unsheathe a sword, wanting to belt out a song. How many chivalrous bones can endure such suffering! Suddenly someone says this person is me, Eyes open wide, I take a closer look.9

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望海潮·自题小影

曾經滄海，又來沙漠，四千里外關河。骨相空談，腸輪自轉， 回頭十八年過。春夢醒來麼？對春帆細雨，獨自吟哦。 惟有瓶花，數枝相伴不須多。 寒江才脫漁蓑。剩風塵面貌，自看如何？鑑不因人，形還問 影，豈緣醉後顏酡？拔劍欲高歌。有幾根俠骨，禁得揉 搓？忽說此人是我，睜眼細瞧科。

After reflecting on momentous life experiences in the first stanza, the second stanza presents an interesting moment in which a man with an abandoned spirit looks at his own image. Toward the end of the second stanza the poem inquires “how many chivalrous bones / can endure such suffering” (lines 19 and 20). The speaker endows the corporeal with metaphorical meaning by referring to the image as guxiang 骨相 (prophetic body) and xiagu 俠骨 (chivalrous bone). Tan Sitong, like the young Zhou Shuren, expansively envisions a higher self and articulates a heroic sentiment. Figures 2.4 and 2.5 show photos juxtaposed with poems in magazine publications, further revealing the moral tone in the enunciation instigated by the visual encounter. The poem of Dong Jian’an 董劍厂, set to the tune Diaoqiu huanjiu 貂裘換酒 [Trade a fur coat for wine] and typeset below his photo, expresses unfulfilled personal aspiration. The body, not shown in the headshot, is described as masculine and tall (angcang qichi 昂藏七尺), and the sober tone of the poem conveys frustration and the wish to descend into intoxication (figure 2.4). Jian Youwen 簡又文 (penname Dahua lieshi 大華烈士 [1896–1978]), a politician and writer who later became a well-known scholar in Hong Kong, is seen from the torso up in a military uniform, slightly turned, bearing a masculine air (figure 2.5). The photograph was taken around 1927 when he played an important role in Feng Yuxiang’s 馮玉祥 (1882–1948) military forces. Jian Youwen composed ten doggerels (dayou shi 打油詩) in calligraphy (reprinted in the magazine with seals, as shown in figure  2.5) and commented on his life trajectory with playful irony and self-reflexivity in lines such as “The sword rusts, but the pen flowers” (dadao shengxiu bi shenghua 大刀生鏽筆生花).10 These poems on photos propelled the viewers/writers



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FIGURE 2.4  Portrait photograph of Dong Jian’an and his poem, Huaji zazhi 3 (1914).

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FIGURE 2.5  Portrait photograph of Dahua

lieshi and his poems, Lunyu 49 (1934).

toward contemplation of the course of life and of the aspiration to achieve an ideal self, resulting in an embittered sentiment in Dong’s poem and selfmockery in Jian’s poem. At the age of thirty, Qiu Fengjia 丘逢甲 (1864–1912) wrote the following inscription on a photograph of himself: “Past events flash pitifully like lightning, / my heroic gesture cannot match the portraits [of meritorious officials] in the Misty Tower” (往事已憐成過電，雄姿未稱畫凌煙).11 Kong Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927) describes a portrait of himself also at the age of thirty in 1887. The last four lines read: A ridged forehead and tortoise-shelled feet are the image of a fine future, In the midst of thunder and lightning, visionary hope and its futility, I recognize these eyebrows and beard. What will be contemplated in the future is not me, Casually wearing a crooked pin to recognize my former self.12

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犀頂龜文何肯相， 雷光泡影認眉鬚。 他年把玩應非我， 散帶斜簪認故吾。

Written in his prime on the eve of momentous political events, Kang Youwei describes the self-image as auspicious (as revealed in the phrase “a ridged forehead and tortoise-shelled feet”) but also imagines a moment in the future when “[I will] recognize my former self” (ren guwu 認故吾). The phrase “in the midst of thunder and lightning, visionary hope and its futility” (leiguang paoying 雷光泡影) could refer literally to the photographic flash, but it also carries a Buddhist sense of the futility of human achievement. Physiognomic descriptions in the poems, which do not necessarily resemble the visual images, refer to the macrocosmic perspective in understanding self-image. As Richard Vinograd points out, the Chinese character xiang 像 suggests that “the portrait image reflects a heaven-endowed appearance that can be interpreted in ways related to the process of fate reading in physiognomic evaluation.”13 After engaging in the auspicious fate reading, writing a poem on a photo of the self has the potential to be a deeply ethical act, steering toward the “Confucian’s progress” by examining the self in terms of a progressive vision of idealistic self-development.14 Modeled after Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130–1200) canonical gesture of “facing the mirror to write about the image, writing it to encourage the self” (duijing xiezhen tiyi zijing 對鏡寫真題 以自警),15 these inscribing voices register the moral economy of the genre, initiating reflections on the ethical role of intellectuals. The gesture of introspection intrinsic to the genre, arising from the occasion of viewing the mirrored or represented self, was repetitively imitated and performed from the late imperial age into the modern era. Many such poems subscribe to the genre’s ethical mechanism of self-pursuit and the linear progression of a life trajectory. Here the issue of temporality is at stake. The following poem by Shen Zengzhi 沈曾植 (1850–1922)—a preeminent Confucian scholar and so-called leftover Qing official (yimin 遺民) in the Republic—expresses a different sense of time and sentiment imbued with Buddhist sensibilities.



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XU JIYU [XU NAICHANG] SHOWED ME A PHOTO OF MYSELF TAKEN IN THE YEAR OF YISI AND ASKED ME TO COMPOSE A POEM

We seemed to have met before, what year was that? The wheel of illusory flames revolves a million times. How does Fanzhi know the former me, Yangxiu was likely a great scholar in the past. There is no answer to the question of the penumbra’s shadow, Becoming insects and sand in the boundlessness. Depending on the golden pagoda for a living, In the next life I wish to be a monk.16 徐積余出余乙巳年攝影索題

似曾相識是何年？ 幻火輪中萬轉旋。 梵志寧知前日我， 陽休或是古時賢。 影諮罔兩應無對， 化等蟲沙已渺然。 寄附錢王金塔畔， 他生有願作那先。

In 1912, at the request of his friend Xu Naichang 徐乃昌 (1869–1943), Shen wrote this poem on the 1905 photograph, taken when he was about fifty-six years old.17 Figure 2.6 shows a solemn-looking Shen with his hands folded (symbolic of political withdrawal). In the first couplet, the speaker’s inquiry, posed to the familiar figure in the photograph about the year they last met, is immediately followed by a striking image of the wheel of flames, the incessant cycling of life and death.18 The conventional sentiment about the passage of linear time is thus immediately framed within an unbreakable cycle of life and death.19 If the old photo made Shen conscious of passing time and the fragility of human existence, the speaker was torn between

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FIGURE 2.6  Photograph of Shen Zengzhi, ca. 1905, Shen Zengzhi nianpu changbian.

the linear time represented by the photograph and the concepts of karma and cyclical time. Evoking a past, present, and future life, toward the end the speaker accedes to the perpetual renewal of time through its cyclicality to allay the anxiety prompted by its linear progression, voicing a desire to return as a monk in his next reincarnation. In the history of the genre, a visual image and its inscription often display a stark recognition of temporality and the fragility of human existence. Photography only heightened this awareness. Articulating a “new time-space category,” the photograph establishes “an illogical conjunction between the here-now and the there-then.” 20A photograph captures, in an instantaneous flash, a moment in the linear progression of time, presenting viewers with the consciousness of having-been-there, forgetting in memory, and death in life.21 Photography (unlike motion pictures) freezes the image in a particular instant of space-time, without the ability to represent the flow of time. Shen Zengzhi’s allusion to Fanzhi 梵志 (line 3) is suggestive. The story comes from “Discourse on Things Not Changing” (Wubuqian lun 物不遷論) by Sengzhao 僧肇 (374?–414), a monk in the Jin dynasty. The story goes that when the monk Fanzhi returned home with white hair, his neighbors asked: “Are you still the man you were in the past?” Fanzhi replied: “I am still the



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man from the past; I am not the man from the past.” Shocked, the neighbors could not understand what he said.22 Fanzhi offers the contradictory message that today’s self is yesterday’s self, and yet not yesterday’s self, highlighting the lack of enduring self-identity. Unlike Confucius’s lament on the river bank that time passes like a flowing river, time in this story is not a continuum but motionless, and it can be infinitely divided. The past remains in the past, whereas the present remains in the present. Thus, the speaker in Shen’s poem can ask, “How does Fanzhi know the former me?” When time stands still or is broken in a linear fashion, it paradoxically becomes eternal, and overcoming anxiety about its linear development becomes possible.23 Because it has been captured on a piece of paper at a particular moment in 1905 and bound in a small physical space (as opposed to being susceptible to the ravages of time), the mirror image achieves a kind of constancy and eternity and accentuates the present moment. Situating the consciousness of time and photography in a different context, Pierre Bourdieu describes photography’s temporal dimension thus: An instant incision into the visible world, photography provides the means of dissolving the solid and compact reality of everyday perception into an infinity of fleeting profiles like dream images, in order to capture absolutely unique moments of the reciprocal situation of things, to grasp, as Walter Benjamin has shown, aspects, imperceptible because they are instantaneous, of the perceived world, to arrest human gestures in the absurdity of a present made up of “pillars of salt.”24

Photography’s figuring of time and time-lapse is rendered through the biblical story of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt because she looks back.  “Pillars of salt” and the reference to Fanzhi both capture the sense of unmoving time that photography allows, with temporal fragments eternalized. The experience of the Now, “frozen” in the course of history, emphasized by Water Benjamin can be further illuminated in relation to the presentness in the act of seeing that we find in Hans Jonas’s phenomenological account. Jonas describes how viewing the object makes possible an extension of the present through what he calls “the simultaneity of sight,” which “allows the distinction between change and the unchanging and

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therefore between becoming and being.” Jonas writes: “The very contrast between eternity and temporality rests upon an idealization of ‘present’ experienced visually as the holder of stable contents as against the fleeting succession of nonvisual sensation.” 25 Jonas’s description of the temporal aspect of seeing is illuminating when it comes to describing the visual sensation involved in viewing a photo of the self, a constant reminder of serial time and the ontic temporality of human existence. On the one hand, it is commonly understood that photography freezes time by capturing movement and becoming in the stillness of an image; on the other hand, photography also enables phenomenological descriptions of the experience of time by triggering memory, by exposing the trace of the appearance of time as it disappears, and by urging people to reflect on the contrast between old selves and the present ones. “Writing on a photo of the self,” a literary genre accompanied by visual and sensory experiences, can thus be understood as a deliberate staging of moral or philosophical introspection in the dramatized temporal unfolding of the course of life. As one author put it when he described his own photograph in vernacular verse, “this is the me in the present and the me in this place” (這是現時的我、此地的我),26 revealing the visual image’s primacy of the present. In possessing this extended now, viewers can envision the self in a state of becoming within different conceptualizations of time, either in linear or cyclical terms. Beholding the image of the 1905 “Fanzhi” in 1912 and provoked by the visual image of the self at that moment, the voice in Shen’s poem foresees the self as a monk in the karmic transmission. Furthermore, in 1910, viewing a photograph of himself in which he is wearing a monk’s robe, Shen Zengzhi wrote:

INSCRIPTION ON A SELF-PORTRAIT IN A MONK’S ROBE

Finishing with this official body, that is the way of Buddha. As with the Buddha, so with all living creatures, all captured in the same magical light.27



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自題僧服小影

了此宰官身， 即是菩薩道。 無佛無眾生， 靈源同一照。

The last line is particularly interesting in that it can be understood as physical light from the camera in a literal sense and at the same time as philosophical and spiritual illumination. Wearing the monk’s robe indicates a kind of purification of Shen’s spirit and mind, acquiring a new identity amid political disillusionment. The “aura” (lingguang 靈光, in Chinese rendition of Benjamin’s influential concept) is thereby recaptured by the camera. A majority of the poems on these photos of the self, however, were written with the moral imperatives and sentiments that pervaded traditional culture. This body of writing became a favorite topic of intellectuals and urban dwellers into the early twentieth century, spreading to different levels of society and extending well into the 1940s. For instance, members of major classical-style poetry societies, such as the Southern Society and Yu Society 虞社 (1920–1937) in Changshu, loved to compose poems on photos of themselves or others and enjoyed circulating them among their members. Student Literary Writing (Xuesheng wenyi congkan 學生文藝叢刊), a popular magazine in Shanghai that mainly featured writings by middle-school students, also published a number of poems on photos in the late 1920s and into the 1930s. The majority of the poems are written in classical style, but some examples in the vernacular style (yuti shi 語體詩) also exist.28 In a formative age of acute self-awareness, this genre, together with photographs of the self, became a new means to fashion youth’s quest for the meaning of life. The poems “On a Photograph of the Self at Age Fifteen” by Weng Linsheng 翁麟聲 (1908–1994), a high school student in Beijing, and “On a Photograph of the Self at Age Seventeen” by Zheng Haoru 鄭浩如 both express restlessness about the passage of time and a kind of self-encouragement and sense of aspiration.29 As an effective means for reflecting and regulating the autobiographical self, the newly popularized image-text relationship became the techniques

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of “the care of the self” performed on the self by the self, shaping its selfpresentation.30 Such portrait photography with writing can be understood as a technique allowing writing and viewing subjects to engage in self-stylization through critical self-examination of the body, mind, and actions that aims at a better or more idealized state of the self. The productive gap between being and becoming inscribed in the visual encounter, combined with the understanding of self as possibility inherent in writing, does much to explain the genre’s continued appeal to younger generations. This section concludes with two examples of the Chan Master Xuyun’s 虛雲 (1840–1959) inscriptions on photos of the self, which were taken during the same period in the 1940s. Through the inscriptions, which present an account of his own life in his own voice, Xuyun also gains control of the messages conveyed by the photographic image. Figure 2.7 is an upperbody shot of a slim Xuyun from a slight side angle. With closed eyes, Xuyun wears a dark robe and is counting the beads in his hand, appearing pensive and meditative. Below this oval photographic image, there is a passage of ziti 自題 (self-inscription), in a humorous dirge format, handwritten by Xuyun himself in a formal script. Working tirelessly and unwaveringly to revitalize monasteries in remote areas of modern and socialist China, Xuyun was one of most eminent and influential Buddhist leaders in the twentieth century. In a lightly mocking tone, the speaker pokes fun at this “muddle-headed fool” (chihan 癡漢) and describes his firm devotion, courage, and loneliness on his journey. The poem, written at the request of the Layman Kuanjing 寬鏡居士, becomes Xuyun’s favorite, inscribed on different photographs of himself. Xuyun writes: This muddle-headed fool, why are you so tirelessly hardworking? In an age of the disappearance of the true dharma, why would you become the leader? Alas, the lineage of sages is hanging by a thread. You set aside your own business, and devote yourself to caring for others. Facing the lonely peak, fishing for carp with a straight hook, plummeting into the bottom of the sea, plucking fire in boiling water. Nobody understands you and you are saddened in vain. Laughing at the emptiness, yelling gibberish at the world. Alas, asking why you do not give up, it has to do with putting an end to the suffering of the masses.31



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FIGURE 2.7  Xuyun’s half-body photograph

FIGURE 2.8  Xuyun’s full-body photograph

and his inscriptions, Yunshui chanxin.

and his inscriptions, Yunshui chanxin.

這個癡漢，有甚來由，末法無端，為何出頭。嗟茲聖脈，一髮危 秋，拋卻己事，專為人憂。向孤峰頂，直鈎釣鯉，入大海底，撥 火煑漚。不獲知音，徒自傷悲，笑破虛空，罵不唧溜。噫，問渠 為何不放下，蒼生苦盡那時休。

Figure 2.8 offers a full frontal view of Xuyun wearing a worn, patched-up robe and standing in a corner of the monastery. Emaciated and striking, with head lowered, Xuyun seems to be in a contemplative state with beads in hand. He inscribes a poem down either side of this image. After a series of lines in which he mocks himself, the concluding couplet inscribed to the left side of the portrait reads: “[You] have wasted the donor’s money and grains, / diligently toiling away your whole life in vain” (浪費施主錢 和米，空勞一生徒苦辛). Toward the end of the inscription he states that the photograph is to be presented to his disciple the Layman Kuanqin 寬勤居士. In both inscriptions, Xuyun affects a self-effacing and mocking

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tone but paradoxically reveals a great sense of pride, emphasizing his dedication to his cause and emphatically articulating his spiritual resilience and self-preservation amid hardships. Renowned for his poetry and prolific literary output, Xuyun often mixes colloquial words with classical diction to engage in Chan Buddhist preaching through vivid imagery and in a directly effective manner. Throughout his lifetime, Xuyun also loved to be photographed. He often gave his disciples photographs of himself, and these photos survived in the records compiled by his disciples.32 In all the photographic images of Xuyun (including the group photos with others), he slightly lowered his head and appeared to close his eyes, never directly engaging with the camera’s gaze. Before his death, he was photographed and gave copies to his disciples along with his treasured personal items, which in a way shows the significant value he placed on “image” (xiang).33 As Francesca Tarocco argues, in the context of modern Buddhist practices, photographs, like icons, relics, or traces, could provide Buddhist disciples with new ways of seeing, worshipping, and imagining the master, as well as help facilitate his spiritual presence.34 Caring for oneself and establishing an ethically exemplary way of life are the premises of properly caring for others. A Buddhist master’s inscriptions, accompanying the conveniently reproducible images, are a new form of claiming one’s account of one’s own life and voicing self-encouragement and moral standards. At the same time, in Xuyun’s case, the photographs with inscriptions, references to an eminent living body, also became a significant new means of disseminating spiritual messages among disciples and patrons.

ENCOUNTERING THE SELF AS THE OTHER In contemplating the self-looking-at-itself, Walter Benjamin describes an experience of shock and alienation: Perhaps more frequent are the cases in which the twilight of habitude of years denies the plate the necessary light, until one day it flares up from an outside source like ignited magnesium, and now the image is captured as a snapshot on the plate. But we ourselves always stand at



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the center of these curious pictures. And that is not so puzzling, because such moments of sudden illumination are at the same time moments of being-outside-ourselves, and while our wakeful, habitual, daytime self mixes, active or sorrowful, into events, our deeper self rests elsewhere, and is stricken by shock like the magnesium by the flame of a match. This sacrifice of our deepest self to shock is what creates the most indestructible images for our memory.35

For Benjamin, viewing a photographic representation of the self triggers a moment of “being-outside-ourselves,” a process involving the “sacrifice of our deepest self to shock.” After quoting Benjamin, Linda Rugg explains that “photography drives a wedge between the photographed self and the observing self, between the living self and the ‘dead’ photographed self, between the present moment as experienced and the present moment as observed.” 36 That is to say, photography has the special ability of exposing us to a static, dead, disconnected, out-of-context view of ourselves, and this exposure causes us to reflect on the notion of being a self as well as the movement, flux, and becoming-otherwise of selfhood in general, which had been taken for granted as unified and undivided. The advent of photographic technology, combined with self-recognition and self-alienation, transformed people’s experiences of encountering the self. Yet this new experience of the visual self, enfolded within the larger context of culture, had to negotiate the existing system of knowledge, conceptions of the self, and affectations associated with this kind of encounter. How did Chinese poets react to and write about this disquieting moment of being-outside-themselves via a visual encounter? When composing their poems on portrait photographs in order to grasp the new medium, these poets drew on classical vocabulary and rhetoric to absorb its shocking and alienating effects. Intrigued by the photographic veracity and objectivity (as compared to most traditional painted portraits), the poets were no longer focused on the issue of likeness (si) in the portrait viewing. The new medium’s representational power engendered a different visual experience, directing the poets to engage in other aspects of reflection, often in dialogue with the image, in which the issues of zhen (real or true) and huan (illusionary) and the conception of the self are further complicated.

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The speaker, as beholder of the image and as one who is allowed to disassociate from the self-image and assume a detached perspective, examines the image and points out the discrepancy between the representation and the “original” self. In the poem by Tan Sitong, after brief confusion, the poet is reminded that “this person is me” (ciren shiwo 此人是我), propelling him to scrutinize the self-image more intently to close the gap between the “I” and the photographed “I.” Another now-obscure author wrote a series of five poems, highlighting the passage of time with a juxtaposition of “former me” (guwu 故吾) and “the past body” (qianshen 前身) in contrast to “today’s me” (jinwu 今吾) and “this body” (cishen 此身).37 If viewing simply means confronting a photographed self that remains self-contained, the act of writing activates the dynamic between the seeing subject and the seen object. In writings about these self-portraits the act of recognition and visceral experience is constantly built on the rhetorical device of the writing subject “I” speaking to the image, entering into a situation of mutual intercourse. The device of dialogue highlights the difference between the present “I” and the former “I,” the speaking body and the represented image. These poems describe the moment of viewing the self in a paper mirror, even of rubbing one’s eyes to get a clearer look: Is this really me? The poets seem hesitant to claim their image in this moment of “recognizing the former self.” Shen Zengzhi writes, “we seem to have met before”; Yan Fu 嚴復 (1854–1921) refers to his 1878 photograph in Paris as “indeed the body in a previous life in the mirror” (jingli fenming geshishen 鏡里分明隔 世身); Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1875–1907) asks the cross-dressed image of the self, “Who is this solemn person before me” (yanran zaiwang ciheren 儼然在望 此何人)?38 Such reluctant recognition is indeed a rhetorical trope found in older writings on portrait paintings, but the frequent use of the old trope here indicates a new visual sensation involved in viewing the photographic image of the self. There is an obvious self-alienation and reluctance to embrace the self-image, pointing to the realization that today’s self is different from yesterday’s self captured in the photograph. That is, time leaves its traces in the incongruities between reality and memory. These subtle discrepancies are amplified through optical technology and “a kind of dissociative seeing.” 39 Even more significantly, when the “I” views



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its own objectified, liminal image, it engages in a process of othering and experiences self-estrangement. The rhetorical question of “whether this is really me” registers self-alienation and momentary reluctance to embrace the self-image. The “I” tries to contemplate itself from a retrospective or independent viewpoint, to experience a “signified past self as at once the same as his present self, continuous with it, and yet strangely, uniquely, as other to it.”40 This self-fissure echoes Barthes’s understanding of the photograph as the advent of the self as other.41 In these Chinese accounts, this alterity or self-alienation is created by the passage of time, but more than this, through the phenomenon that occurs in the process of self-splitting as the subject is externalized as a former self (guwu) or a past body (qianshen). This all indicates that the modern experience of otherness and the concept of the contingent self at a certain point converges with the Buddhist formulation of the transitory or multiple self. During the viewing experience that involves viewing the self as other and involves feelings of estrangement, what role does dialogue as a rhetorical device play in this process? One of the earliest literary precedents of the dialogue between the self and its double is Tao Qian’s 陶潛 (365–427) threepoem series “Form, Shadow and Spirit” (Xing ying shen 形影神), in which the three engage in dialogues about the brevity of life and its transcendence.42 In writings about viewing painted portraits in the late imperial era, contemporary scholar Mao Wen-fang observes that the self outside the painting (huawai wo 畫外我) and the self within it (huazhong wo 畫中我) often participate in a series of dialogues. The viewing self enjoys an advantageous position as onlooker and can read the self within the painting. In so doing, the poet elevates the self in the painting to the status of the viewer, a process completed by the viewer/writer in writing the zan (encomia).43 Nakatani further elaborates that the staged rhetorical confrontation between I-you “dramatize(s) the chasm between two existential states—what one is and what one ought to be,” an idealistic self and a circumscribed self—which was a central concern of literati subjectivity in the early and mid-Ming dynasty.44 This suggests that the dialogue between self and image incorporates the temporal aspect of seeing, which Jonas called the “simultaneity of sight,” for projecting the ideal self into the future. Some poems inscribed in the vernacular

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style on a photograph by the photographed subject clearly illustrate this type of dialogue between the “I” and “you,” interrogating the mute “you” as to why “you” waste your youth, as well as encouraging “you” to succeed. If the viewing subject initiates a splitting of the self through dialogue with its own image, this viewing-cum-writing subject is ultimately reunited with the self-image in a particular space and time by way of giving voice to the mute image.45 Envoicing, taking the form of literary dialogues, serves a unique function in this visual self-encounter. The poems on these portrait photographs may register the sense of estrangement and alienation of the initial visual confrontation; but unlike Benjamin’s description in which the deeper self is “sacrificed” to the image, the Chinese poets elevate their images and endow them with voice in dialogue with the self, which effectively domesticates the strangeness, shock, or other disquieting sensations. The following examples illustrate the poetic attempt to understand self-images through conversations to dispel their alienating effects. One author with the penname Mr. “Drunk” (zui 醉) wrote the following doggerel: Like me but not me, perhaps him but not him. Neither him nor me, facing each other [he and I] laugh.46 似我原非我, 疑他不是他。 既非他與我, 相對笑哈哈。

Another poet with the penname Ms. Binghun (冰魂女士) composed “Written on taking a photo with friends” (Ziti xieyou cuoying 自題偕友撮影), linguistically mixing four-character lines and the vernacular: Real but not real, fake but not fake. Two of me,



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two of her. Resemblances of forms. I no longer care to distinguish those things that do not matter. All I know is, I definitely saw her, and I examine one self. It’s better to be casual about it, why look for the ultimately real!47 是真非真； 是偽非偽；是二我； 是二伊；是相似形。 我不願再去分別這些無謂的， 所知道的，的確看見了伊； 又還自鑒一個我。 就此隨意些也好，何必苦求全真啊！

On New Year’s Day in 1925, Dai Kedun 戴克敦 (1872–1925), one of the founders of the Zhonghua Publishing House, wrote two dirges in classical and vernacular language, respectively, to “humorously comment” (xiti 戲題) on a photograph of himself. The vernacular inscription reads: Who is this person? Is this me? Is this really me? Dozens or hundreds of years ago, there was already a me, but this is not today’s me; dozens or hundreds of years later, there is still a me, but this is not today’s me; thus today’s me, former me, and future me, are all a false me in a given instant, and not the permanent me in eternity. Thus, where is indeed the true me (zhen wo 真我)? The true me is clouded by the fake me (jia wo 假我). The false mes are all eradicated, then the true me can emerge.48

Is this “me” (wo 我) represented in the photograph really the “me” as I am? The three examples presented here are emblematic of the fact that the poets experience an intensified battle of (mis)identification in viewing these self-images and must negotiate the boundaries of the self, representation, and reality. The photographic image as resemblance (xiangsi xing 相 似形) or likeness captures the self-image in a given instant, but these poets go further and contemplate the dialectical binaries between the real and illusory, the true and false me, yesterday’s and today’s self, not-me and me,

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largely drawing the conceptual framework and sentiment from religious tradition. Poets regularly adopt phrases such as “dream within dreams” (mengzhong meng 夢中夢), “painting within a painting” (Huazhong hua 畫中畫), and “body beyond body” (shenwai shen) to address the doubling and multiplicity of self and self-image. The dichotomy of self / non-self, together with phrases involving illusion (huan) and dream (meng), liberates the photographic image from its liminal status and its referential relationship with the world. Through dialogical voicing, frequently with a mocking tone, Chinese practitioners and consumers yoked traditional notions to assuage the alienation or otherness experienced in the initial stage of visual self-encounter. The usual rhetoric about the medium lacking the ability to capture a person’s “real” spirit was constantly evoked, but many also acknowledged the power of visual media, however reluctantly. The female poet Wang Taowen 王弢文, a member of the Yu society, comments: “delighted at leaving a real image on the small space of the paper, / what are you? The former body” (寸紙欣留面目真, 阿儂何物是前身). Another author, Hu Kai 胡楷, writes, “It’s me but not the double, / both have the features. I plan to leave the real image, / to be viewed by the world” (是我原非二，依然具五官。預 將真面目，留與世人看).49 Both inscriptions avoid condemning the image conventionally; instead, the poets seem to appreciate the independent reality of the image as well as its ability to outlast corporeality. Frequent deprecation of portraiture is featured in the long rivalry between writing and painting throughout history.50 In this new context, however, writing no longer holds a privileged, higher ground; it frequently concedes power to the new medium. The poet accepts the fact that the supposedly inferior image not only captures “the essence” of the self but also, like writing itself, survives the passage of time, extending one’s existence for posterity. On the one hand, the viewer has great anxiety over the fissure between the self in reality and the self as an image in an alien medium; on the other hand, familiar ways of writing, rhetoric, and an underpinning of a larger cultural and sensory reference system can greatly alleviate the anxiety caused by this self-splitting. This series of today’s me or yesterday’s me, real me or fake me, bodily self or image of the self offers images that are not dualistic in structure but are a manifestation of an “I” at multiple times and in spaces.



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FIGURE 2.9  “Is this me?” Youxi zazhi 10 (1914).

Thus the significance of inscription and writing in this situation is encapsulated in the following couplet: To be true is thought to be illusive, to be illusive thought to be true, [I] write to reveal the body beyond this bookworm’s body.51 真疑是幻幻疑真， 寫出書癡身外身。

Generally speaking, as I have argued, the photographic image, with its promise of greater verisimilitude, may have played a role in the rise of modern individual identity, expressed in the conspicuous inscribing “I” (wo 我). The formula me vs. not-me and the present-me vs. past-me, the flesh me vs. imagistic me has been appropriated in new attempts to address the intriguing encounters with the self as other or double. Published in The Pastime (Youxi zazhi), the image in figure 2.9 fascinatingly illustrates this point. Two phrases are inscribed onto this “twin-self photo” (erwo tu): “It’s me” (shiwo 是我) and

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“I am” (woshi 我是). Playful captions along the sides read: “This one am I” (zhe yige woshi 這一個我是) and “That one is me” (na yige shiwo 那一個是 我). Text and image establish their deceptively transparent relationship with a focus on the play of recognition and misrecognition. This combination of two slightly shifted views of the same subject in one frame is accompanied by the two reversible linguistic phrases: shiwo and woshi. The vernacular woshi (I am) can be completed with an infinite variety of predicates, but it can just as easily become an interrogative with a question mark. Photography creates a striking moment of recognition of the objectified self-image, and the equivalent relationship between representation and its referent is strengthened by the denotative inscription, shiwo (it’s me). At the same time, the announcement of self-identity and its veracity are simultaneously undercut by the doubling of the self-image, highlighting the nature of the image as an artifact. The  multitude of self-images and infinite possibilities of identity not only undercut the referentiality of the image but also ultimately suggest the destabilization of the self’s subjectivity or the disjuncture of representation and the self. The playfulness of words and gestures in the photograph, however, indicates that the subject enthusiastically embraces modern visual practice, especially when the One can mischievously become the Two and multiple.

THE GENDERED VOICE AND IMAGE In the flourishing women’s writing culture of the Ming and Qing dynasties, talented women (cainü) actively engaged in visual self-representation and inscriptions on portrait paintings, strenuously negotiating gendered codes in Confucian society.52 In this section, I examine a loosely related, socially progressive group of women writers (mainly in the Jiangnan area) whose identities span the continuum from talented women in this female writing tradition to modern women involved in the growing print media and women’s journals. The critical tasks are twofold: on the one hand, adopting classical versification, how can she negotiate between her own personal voice and a language deeply ingrained in patriarchal patterns; on the other hand, in what ways did new public media and forms of publicity offer opportunities to this generation of women writers? In a handful of poems by female writers about



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photographic images of themselves, there is a distinctive female perspective at the moment of intense self-scrutiny. Resisting the erotically charged implication of the female body, the poetic voice often resorts to its literary authority for self-reflection. Two poems respectively by Xu Yunhua 徐蕴華 (1884–1962) and Zhu Suzhen 朱素貞, both entitled “Inscribed on my portrait,” exemplify this feminine and confident voice.

INSCRIBED ON MY PORTRAIT

A lonely courtyard in leisure with the setting sun, A corner of an autumn mountain rising up and my chanting shoulders, Standing in the shadow of flowers in the cold with my hair down, Not allowing others to pity me, but taking pity on myself.53

自題小影

寂寂閑庭夕照天， 秋山一角聳吟肩。 寒花影裏低鬟立， 不許人憐只自憐。

INSCRIBED ON MY PORTRAIT

Surprised that the smile and frown haven’t changed, carefully examining Zhenzhen in the mirror. From now on nights of wind and moonlight in the tower, many of your forms and shadows are in intimacy. In spring breezes the curtain opens to dawn, lingering for a moment in the season of fallen flowers. What serves as evidence of sorrow, printed on the bright mirror decorated with the lotus picture.54

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自題小影

居然不改笑和顰， 省識真真鏡裏人。 從此小樓風月夜, 多君形影共相親。 簾幕春風向曉開， 落花時節暫徘徊。 何當有個愁憑據， 印入芙蓉鏡子來。

This self-presentation of Xu Yunhua in the first poem adopts the trope of femininity—the slender lady standing alone at sunset—but the image of “chanting shoulders” (yinjian 吟肩 in line 2) fashions the self as a writing subject. In the second poem by Zhu Suzhen, she uses familiar vocabulary to refer to herself (e.g., lady Zhenzhen [line 2] standing for the female image in the painting, a topic I return to in chapter 4), but the replication of “you” in multiple forms and shadows (referring to the photograph and the mirror) registers a sense of self-embrace and self-affection in her lonely emotional state, treating the self-image as a dear companion or someone who appreciates her tone. Two modern female poets form their supportive relationship with their respective photographic self-images to articulate self-care, deviating from the archetypal plot of the Tang lady Xue Yuan who attempts to win back her husband’s heart by sending him the portrait painted by herself, accompanied with her poem “Sending the husband my portrait painting” (xiezhen jifu 寫真寄夫).55 The overall feelings expressed in these poems (e.g., loneliness and self-reliance) by the early Republican ladies and their gently refined voices can be characteristically aligned with those of the women writers of the late imperial eras. However, publication venues or publicity matters. In the context of women of the scholar-gentry class and their poetic output in women’s periodicals at the end of the Qing era, Grace Fong points out that poetry, still conceived of as personal expression, concurrently became “a form of public and progressive expression,” creating a new discursive space.56 The publication of the poems in print media, especially the juxtaposition



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of female portrait photographs with poems in women’s magazines in the 1910s, instantiates new gendered practices and historical significance, thus piquing our critical attention. At the turn of the twentieth century, the “female” portrait photographs that appeared in the print media were mainly of courtesans and actors, with conventional gestures including “holding a sprig of flowers” (nianhua 拈花) or “leaning on a bamboo tree” (yizhu 倚竹). Portrait photographs of educated women from well-to-do family backgrounds were a point of contestation; concern for gendered space and moral decorum meant that such women were rarely seen in public. From what is currently available, the earliest examples of literary ladies are all of those who participated in women’s education, politics, and progressive social movements. In 1902, the photographs of Luo Jialing 羅迦陵 (1864–1941, the wife of Jewish businessman Silas Aaron Hardoon) and Wu Mengban 吳孟班 (1883–1902) were published in the Chinese Girl’s Progress (Nü xuebao 女學報, reissued in 1902–1903). In 1904, the full portrait photograph of Xue Jinqin 薛錦琴 (1883–1960), China’s first female public speaker, appeared in Women’s World (Nüzi shijie 女子世界, 1904–1907) in Shanghai.57 Between 1911 and 1917, The Women’s Eastern Times (Funü shibao 婦女時報), the first commercial female journal, published a series of photographs of its female contributors, many of whom were pioneers in spearheading women’s education and a feminist agenda. Two photographs of the poet and educator Lü Bicheng 呂碧城 (1883–1943) appeared in The Women’s Eastern Times in 1911 and 1913. One photograph features Lü’s back with her striking hair bowknots, surrounded by smaller portrait photographs of four other female educators with stylish clothing and hairstyles.58 The page layout illustrates a reconfigured presentation of the female image, stepping out of the boudoir and into the public eye. Wu Zhiying 吳芝瑛 (1868–1934), poet, calligrapher, and descendent of the acclaimed Tongcheng learning, keenly engaged in traditional and new artistic media. Records show that she appears in photography dressed as a fashionable Western beauty (xiyang meiren 西洋美人).59 Late in 1907, after learning about the horrific execution of Qiu Jin, Wu sent her heart-wrenching messages to Xu Zihua 徐自華 (1873–1935) for a dangerous mission of the burial of Qiu Jin at West Lake. One message was handwritten on the letter paper with the photographic image, made privately from “the Small House of Ten Thousand Willows.”

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FIGURE 2.10  Xu Yunhua,

“Inscribed on my portrait,” Funü zazhi 1, no.1 (1915).

The bust shot of Wu in elaborate Western dress, a decorative scarf, and a bonnet, printed on the lower left of the paper, becomes an embodied testimony of Wu’s courage in support of her dear friend.60 Modern mediated public identity is often the result of negotiations between male editors and female contributors, but new media practice offers female activists and writers the potential for further visibility and new ways to engage the audience in the public realm. The photograph of Xu Yunhua in Western garb, wearing a flamboyant hat, printed in the inaugural issue of The Ladies’ Journal (Funü zazhi 婦女雜誌, 1915–1932) in 1915, acquires a special significance (figure 2.10). On the same page as the photograph are the captions “friends of the female circle” (nüjie zhiyou 女界之友) and “encouraging women’s education” (dunli nüjiao 敦励女教), showcasing female readership in support of the magazine. The image-texts are juxtaposed with three other photographs of female activists, one of whom is Xu’s sister Xu Zihua on the lower left. At this early stage, when educated women exposed themselves to the public gaze, they also used the public quality of mass print media to openly express their feelings and to strategically carve out self-identities or



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consolidate images. Xu Yunhua’s poem quoted on page 99, “Inscribed on my self-portrait,” is printed vertically along the right edge of the magazine page, much as a caption would be, but containing richer meaning. The authorial voice is integrated with the image, forming one prudently orchestrated message of independence. If the photograph of Xu, shot with the Western-style dress and the flower pots as props in the studio, is open to different interpretations, then the poem, placed next to it, stabilizes the readings of the image, confidently presenting the female self as an independent woman author. In this public realm, composing a poem, a traditional cainü act, not only inscribes the image with voice and subjectivity but also prescribes one intended reading of this image to readers and posterity. In the same year, The Ladies’ Journal published an intriguing photo of the poet Shi Shuyi 施淑儀 (1876–1945) and her cousin Lu Yibin 陸亦彬. The photo presents a frontal view of the cousin, who wears an early Republican style garment with a higher collar and holds needles and thread, signifying a conventional feminine occupation. Shi Shuyi, wearing a modern long overcoat with a slim fit, turns her back toward the camera, posing as if writing her sorrow on banana leaves. A poem is inscribed on each side of the photo, one composed by Shi Shuyi for her cousin and the other for herself (figure 2.11). Her poem about herself on the left of the photograph reads:

FIGURE 2.11  “Poetic inscriptions by

Shi Shuyi from Chongming,” Funü zazhi 1, no. 2 (1915).

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ON MY BACK-VIEW PORTRAIT OF WRITING ON BANANA LEAVES

The tear traces have dried and my back is toward the flowers, sorrow is like banana leaves and my pen moves with difficulty. At year’s end I watch my emaciated shadow, afraid to look in the mirror and afraid that others will see.61 自詠題蕉背影

背花悄拭淚痕乾， 愁緒如蕉下筆難。 自顧年來憔悴影， 怕臨青鏡怕人看。

These lines seem to offer an explanation for why Shi Shuyi posed with her back to the photographer.62 Their postures represent the activities of talented women (writing and needlework), which are intricately coordinated with the two poems inscribed on both sides. The carefully designed page surrounded by the text, reminiscent of woodblock printing, reveals Shi’s media consciousness and awareness of the public gaze. On the top and bottom of the photograph, she inscribed the date of “Xinchou mengdong” (the first month of the winter in the year of Xinchou [1901]), the signature of “Chongming Shi Shuyi” and the location of Shangzhi Girls’ School. The act of writing is accentuated in both Xu’s and Shi’s poems. This combination of the visibility of the bodily image and the poetic voice becomes a self-empowering gesture, enabling them to portray themselves as writing women while maintaining conventional feminine decorum. Self-presentation and the adoption of male attire and masculine language were strategies often used by women to react against the entrenched gender structure. Widely known as an early female revolutionary in her short life, Qiu Jin enjoyed going to the studio to have photographs taken. According to Xu Zihua’s memorial essay, Qiu Jin would invite her lady friends to join her for cross-dressing photo shoots for their own entertainment and solicit commentaries and verses from Xu afterward.63



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Qiu Jin’s cross-dressing has often been interpreted in a revolutionary spirit through the lens of transgression of traditional gender boundaries. It is not my intention to downplay her heroism, but her cross-dressing also must be placed in the context of late Qing photographic culture, in which cross-dressing by both genders was in vogue and socially acceptable. Nevertheless, Qiu Jin’s donning male clothing beginning in early 1904 was more serious than one-time costuming for photography shoots.64 In a photograph taken in 1906 in Shaoxing, an earnest Qiu Jin is featured in a Chinese male gown with a long single queue, tightly holding an umbrella in her left hand.65 The subject self-assuredly returns the camera’s gaze, revealing a sense of determination in a somewhat theatrical display. The picture is completed with a pot of flowers on a bamboo side table against the backdrop of a painted pavilion, which was a standard composition in studio photography at the time (figure 2.12). The well-known seven-character regulated verse “Inscribed on my portrait in male attire,” composed for this occasion, documents Qiu Jin’s grappling with her own image.

FIGURE 2.12  Qiu Jin in male

attire, 1906. Courtesy of Qiu Jin Research Association in Shaoxing.

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INSCRIBED ON MY PORTRAIT IN MALE ATTIRE

Who is this solemn person before me? The chivalrous spirit of a former life has been reduced to this body. It turns out the past body is just illusion, and the future realm is likely real. Regret at meeting so late and gathering emotion, I lift my head with a sigh and feel energized. When you meet my old friends one day, tell them that now I’ve swept away the dust.66 自題小照 男裝

儼然在望此何人？ 俠骨前生悔寄身。 過世形骸原是幻， 未來景界卻疑真。 相逢恨晚情應集， 仰屋嗟時氣益振。 他日見余舊時友， 為言今已掃浮塵。

Contemporary critics often ascribe a feminist reading to this poem, neglecting Qiu Jin’s vigilance against such a simplistic celebratory view of cross-dressing. The poem describes complex feelings that are aroused when the perturbed self encounters her uncanny image in male attire, an oscillation between belief and disbelief, identification and displacement. The poem begins with the familiar difficulty of encountering the self as alterity, as previously discussed, but the conception of the gendered body further complicates the process of identification. Evoking the Buddhist concepts of rebirth and the transformation of the body, the first half of the poem contextualizes the shifting of the gendered body in the traditional religious framework. Her cross-gender dream echoes that of the female poet Wu Zao 吴藻 (1799–1862), who loved to drink and read “Encountering Sorrow” (Lisao 離騷). Wu Zao was once characterized by a male literatus as “a famous literatus in a past life,



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a beautiful woman in the present life” (qiansheng mingshi jinsheng meiren 前生名士, 今生美人).67 This characterization seems to be performatively reenacted through the design of the costumes. Qiu Jin’s moment of selfexamination is exposed through the unfolding and shifting of a gendered body and form through the Mahāyāna Buddhist sequence of time (a past, present, and future body), a thematic trope that populated many such poems. This is to suggest that gendered identity is not a fixed or actual condition. Furthermore, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in the majority of their work, Qiu Jin’s and Wu Zao’s mimicry of masculine language and voice and reversal of gender roles results in an unwitting replication of binary gender oppositions by resorting to the conflicts inherent in the opposition.68 They do, however, certainly express a strong desire to break away from conventional gender structures, posing a challenge to the patriarchal order. Reflecting on this critical understanding of Qiu Jin’s writing, I find the hesitation and uncertainties expressed in this poem on the self-portrait captivating. The speaker does not simply resort to the opposite gender; rather, in this subversive shifting of gendered identities, the poetic voice expresses a deep-seated indecisiveness and an ambiguous state in-between truth and illusion, along with an articulation of the problem of identification. Frustrated with being trapped in a female body and masquerading in male apparel, the author announces the mood of a daydream or trance in the first four lines of the poem, rife with ideas of the real and illusory, identification and ambivalence. The voice as a viewer temporarily experiences radical disorientation, instigated by the cross-dressed photographic image of the self. This tension-filled moment is mitigated as the writing subject comes to view the cross-dressed image through the prism of traditional conceptions to tame its strangeness. In the latter part of the poem, the poetic voice is seemingly able to overcome her anxiety and stabilize the situation by eagerly meeting with and embracing the new cross-dressed image. This poem captures the peculiar fluidity of gendered identity—in terms of Buddhist conceptualizations of time and body—and subtly performs an act of momentary gender boundary crossing. If we suggest that the photograph confirms her passionate masculine roleplaying in a straightforward manner, the poem, allegedly inscribed on the back of the photograph, subtly documents the complexity of her psychological experience of viewing her male self. On other occasions, Qiu Jin

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articulates her gendered consciousness in an unambiguous manner. For example, her most quoted lines are: “While my body cannot be male, / my heart is more courageous than any man” (身不得，男兒列; 心卻比，男兒烈).69 Compared to her other poems written in a heroic or masculine voice, “Inscribed on my portrait in male attire” reveals a nuanced inner experience of perplexity, the pull of the traditional knowledge framework, and the constant struggle to redefine the boundaries of gender and the self. In the 1910s, the voice inscribed onto the female self-image remained traditionally feminine, generally articulating the self-pity or lament over the “emaciated shadow” (qiaocui ying 憔悴影), while occasionally breaking away from expressive norms. However, we can discern a shift of the poetic voice in the 1920s from a melancholic tone to a self-confident one. Wang Wentian 王文田, who was a normal school student, describes her self-image as “striking eyebrow and eyes and perfectly real image” (meimu fenming yingbizhen 眉目分 明影逼真),70 encouraging herself to cherish her time as a youth. Xianting’s 獻廷 vernacular poem on a photograph of herself titled “Loving her” (Aiyi 愛伊) unabashedly worships the self, registering a narcissistic tendency. The bluntly expressed self-affection shows the substantial growth of female consciousness within the decade and the openness of self-expression. The photographic image and the poetic form (both classical and vernacular) provided aspiring young women with effective means to articulate their voices, including their gender identity and their ability to self-mold in the voyage to their ideal selves. This vernacular poem in part states: Indeed she is who? Who is she? If I do not love her, who would love her? If I do not love her, who else should I love?71 畢竟伊是誰？誰是伊？ 我不愛伊誰愛伊！ 我不愛伊更愛誰！

In summation, this chapter demonstrates how the medium of photography evoked new states of self-perception, affects, and gendered consciousness that prompted active collaboration with texts. Viewers across locales



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experienced alterity, alienation, and reconceptualization of time and the self in visual self-encounters to different degrees, but Chinese poets applied the Confucian ethical practice of viewing, Buddhist sense of time, and rhetorical conventions to contemplate modern self-images for introspection and self-formation. Voices emerged from these paper mirrors that continued to draw on classical structures of identification and projection to create an ethical vision of the future self. The familiar rhetoric and literary forms proved to be responsive and accommodating toward the possibilities and threats that came with the new visual culture and continued to exercise their ethical and sentimental appeal. This photographically induced articulation of feelings reveals the powerful Confucian ethics of self-molding and subsequent renegotiations of the boundaries of the modern self and its representation in private, communal, and public realms. This chapter focused on the lyrical moment of viewing the self-image, but I have not yet engaged in discussion of the social dimension that comes from giving or exchanging inscribed photographs. Lu Xun and Hu Shi gave their photographs with inscriptions to their close friends via mail or in person, and Shen Zengzhi was solicited to write a poem on his own photograph by a friend who possessed that photograph. These image objects, charged with friendship and intersubjectivity, were sent from the giver to the receiver in daily life as social communications. These itineraries and routes reveal the intricate social networks and human relations in the literary and intellectual circles. The sociality and affective function of the photographs with inscriptions is further explored in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 3

The Social Life of Emotions Photography and the Singularity of the Gift

I

n 1928, an advertisement for Agfa films in Shenbao boasted that the photograph effectively “serves as a keepsake and soothes lovesickness” (liubie jinian zuwei xiangsi 留別紀念, 足慰相思). Written in literary Chinese, the advertisement was published alongside a drawing of a crowd bidding farewell to a departing steamboat (figure 3.1). One excerpt from it reads: The negatives produced by Agfa can not only capture truthful images, but can also be easily developed. When family members, teachers, and friends must separate, they can leave their beautiful images in photographs. Everyone will have a copy to keep for themselves. The face in the mirror is so vivid as to seem enlivened (xuxu yuhuo 栩栩欲活); the lover in the painting is so lovely that it seems as if everyone is with you in the same room, easing lovesickness even though thousands of li apart.1

By emphasizing the power of visual verisimilitude and the reproducibility of images, this advertisement deployed scenes from daily life and poetic vocabulary to elicit readers’ desire for consumption. Like red beans (a traditional token of love) or red roses, which were more recently adopted as a love symbol, photographs came to symbolize the sensuous object as it stands in its familial and social sphere of exchange. Through social exchanges, photographs are endowed with “qualities of permanence (materiality), display potential, memory and personhood (both representing the person and being gifted by the person).” 2 The advertisement stresses the new practice of giving

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FIGURE 3.1  Agfa advertisement in Shenbao,

March 31, 1928.

and receiving photographs as creating pathways for social and intimate relations while downplaying the fact that the photograph is a new commodity. In his well-known article “The Cultural Biography of Things,” the anthropologist Igor Kopytoff developed the notion of “singularization” and elucidated how a commodity, defined as “an item that has use value that also has exchange value,” can become a singularity.3 Although life has been pervasively commodified, not all things are commodities. Kopytoff traces the complex asymmetrical relations between commodities and the cultural significance of persons, explaining that persons and things can simultaneously both be and not be commodities. Commodification has two extremes: on the one hand, that which it should not be possible to commodify can undergo commodification by reducing persons to exchangeable things; on the other hand, that which appears naturally to be of exchange value can be decommodified by endowing the thing with personality and singularity. The gift is an example of a thing that is separated from the general processes of commodity exchange. The gift exchange presupposes a value-based framework of reference: the giver attributes singularity and value to the material



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thing, and the receiver recognizes and confirms this transaction. The range of a commodity’s exchange can be further delimited, effectively narrowing its identity as a commodity and disclosing channels for personal affective relationships with the object.4 This notion of transforming commodities into singularities has been fruitfully employed in the studies of Chinese art to clarify the significance of artistic practices, such as imprinting collectors’ seals on scrolls.5 Kopytoff’s understanding of the singularity of the gift can be explored further in the context of Georg Simmel’s analysis of the gift. In contrast to money or commodity exchange, the gift carries the individual character and personality of the giver and reveals the social bond between giver and receiver. Simmel stresses how social reciprocity and mutual loyalties are sustained by gift exchanges. He affirms its “personal affect” or “lyrical affect” as “a fertile emotional soil” that grows through concrete actions between individuals and serves as “one of the most powerful means of social cohesion.” 6 In light of these two discerning interpretations of the gift, I argue that the process of singularization is at work when owners separate photographs from commodity values and market relations by inscribing a signature and a poem on the photograph and sending it to others as a gift through personal delivery or the postal system. The concept of singularity also can be analyzed in philosophical terms. Although the photograph, hypothetically speaking, is infinitely reproducible, Roland Barthes notes that “the photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.” The photograph, as “a certification of presence,” seizes the instantaneous moment of the subject.7 The signature-event, as interpreted by Jacques Derrida, is the expression of “the absolute singularity” that leaves the trace of the subject who retains a sense of physical connection to the hand or touch as well as consciousness. As a repeatable event, signing is “the pure reproducibility of a pure event.” 8 In the cases studied in this book, friends and family members circulate photographs in a distinctive personalized manner accompanied not only by signatures but also by poems, messages, and seals.9 The act of both taking the photograph and signing the copy rests on their unrepeatable temporality. For Barthes, taking the photograph is an unambiguously singular moment in a temporal sense, and for Derrida, the signature event depends paradoxically on its unrepeatability and its repetition.

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Inscribing a photograph is a “pure event,” and it is reproducible (to a lesser extent if compared to a signature used as a common register). It makes the object unique and brings with it the quality of singularity, and the handwritten words connect the sources to the subject, thus retaining an ephemeral sense of touch. Inscriptions rarify the image object and raise its status beyond its circle of exchange, conferring it with intellectual and affective values. It is under these complex mediated conditions that one can refer to the photograph with its signature and inscriptions as a “singular” thing and as a certification of a past presence of the photographic subject as well as the inscriber. By delineating the cultural “biographies” of the photographs or the sites of signature, I pursue a twofold strategy in this chapter: (1) a description of how these objects become singularized through inscriptions and are infused with feelings, and (2) an analysis of how the subjectivity and sociality of emotions are unfolded through inscriptions and processes of exchange and correspondence. The first two sections examine two primary examples of the internal dynamics of a pair of overlapping literati groups surrounding Su Manshu 蘇曼殊 (1884–1918) and Liu Yazi 柳亞子 (1887–1958) and their respective interactions with the images of courtesans and actors. The final section discusses a handful of pertinent examples of photographic images interconnected with words and presented as gifts. By placing the photographs within the context of the embodied experiences of these literati groups, I explore a range of functions concerning image-text practices and sensuous interactions among the communities, illuminating the role that singular things and language played in fostering sentimental feelings, self-fashioning, and facilitating aesthetic fellowships.

A MEMORY IMAGE In the spring of 1909 in Tokyo, Su Manshu allegedly met Ms. Momosuke 百助, a koto (Japanese zither) player, who allegedly gave Su photographs of herself as gifts. In figure 3.2, a pensive looking lady, formally dressed in a kimono, elegantly poses by a koto with an iconic gesture that defines an entertainment girl. It is difficult to verify whether Su received the cards as



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FIGURE 3.2  “The posthumous writings of Manshu,” Manshu yiji (1928).

a gift from Momosuke herself or whether he purchased Japanese souvenir photographs from the market, given the context that the postcards were circulated as a new, significant visual medium in the Japanese market at the turn of the century.10 Su composed a poem later titled “Inscribed on a Picture of a Gentle Girl Playing Her Koto” (Ti Jingnü tiaozheng tu 題靜女調 箏圖) and wrote the poem on a card about Momosuke, which was mailed to his friend Bao Tianxiao 包天笑 (1876–1973). The postcard was later published in The Grand Magazine (Xiaoshuo daguan) and Half Moon (Banyue).11 These issues proved to be popular, indicating how gendered fantasy was created by readily reproducing and disseminating images in quantity for public consumption. The journalist and politician Zhang Shizhao, who was studying in London around the same time, also received the same card sent from Su via Siberia, and it had inscriptions and a style similar to the one given to Bao Tianxiao. With the exception of the addressee’s name toward the end, the wording on both photographs was almost the same, suggesting that the two cards were written during the same time period. This identical picture on the cards to Bao and Zhang was later known as the Picture of A Gentle Girl Playing Her Koto (Jingnü tiaozheng tu 靜女調箏圖).12

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The well-preserved card to Zhang, shown in figure 3.3, was mounted on a dark green card with a signature in one of Su’s pennames (Xuedie 雪蜨) and the seal of the character Man (曼) in red ink near the lower left corner. In addition to Zhang’s London address and marks of the Siberian route through which the card was transferred, the back of this card also contains a rectangular word picture, in the manner of a seal, listing seven characters: “Momosuke from Japan is my hometown friend” (Pengying Baizhu shi tongxiang 蓬瀛百助是同鄉) (figure 3.4). The address, written in English in classic brush-style calligraphy, is also quite elegant with its dramatic capital letters. Su Manshu inscribed the same poem on the postcards addressed to Bao Tianxiao and Zhang Shizhao, using a pen (instead of a brush) with black ink. The poem reads: Endless spring sorrows, endless grief, all at once reverberate from her fingertips. My robe is already soaked through, how can I continue to listen to this heart-rending zither?13 無限春愁無限恨, 一時都向指間鳴。 我已袈裟全濕透, 那堪更聽割雞箏。

Both inscriptions of the poem were followed immediately by Ni Zan’s 倪瓚 (1301 or 1306–1374) song lyric (ci) “To the tune Liu shao qing” 柳梢青, without spaces or a title to indicate the start of a new poem. Ni Zan’s poem, written to a courtesan, foreshadows the emptiness of the inevitable outcome of such intense romantic feelings. The spatial movement of the two poems from right to left also indicates an emotive shift from an articulation of love in the present to a self-conscious forecast of the ultimate futility of qing. The inscriptions end with short messages to Bao and Zhang, respectively, in the expository style with only minor changes. Placing Su Manshu’s poem within its original context of composition and presentation makes it possible to address the question of why this portrait photo, along with its inscriptions, is so unique. In the photo, the lady dressed

FIGURES 3.3 AND 3.4  Front and back piece of the postcard of Ms. Momosuke with Su

Manshu’s inscriptions, 10 × 15 cm, ca. 1909. Courtesy of Wang Jinsheng.

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in an elegant kimono appears simply to be posing for the camera, but her gesture and graceful style nevertheless reveal that she is proficient at the musical instrument in her hands. She demonstrates her strength and grace by plucking at the strings of the koto while wearing ivory picks (tsume) around three of her fingers. In addressing his personal experience of the image, the speaker lifts this particular image of her fingers to a compelling status in the poem, expressing “All at once reverberate from her fingertips” (line 2). The peculiar detail of her fingertips in the photo may be identified as the punctum (in Barthes’s formulation), arresting Su as a viewer and “pricking” or “bruising” his subjectivity.14 The punctum also opens up a series of imaginative relationships between the viewer and others outside of the image. Lines 3 and 4 capture Su’s identity as a monk-lover and the intensive moment stimulated by the image and (imagined) music. As I have discussed elsewhere, Su Manshu’s most conspicuous lyrical achievement is his powerful handling of the first-person male lover’s voice and the description of lyrical intimacy. True to the elliptical nature of Chinese poetic language, the grammatical subject is generally either omitted or used to represent a universalized, omnipresent subject. The majority of love poems by literati feature a belated expression of love (as is the case of the death or departure of the courtesan-lover or wife), with the lover being spoken of in absentia.15 In the visual space of the postcard, Su Manshu brings the “I” into being as the subject of utterance and as a participant in a dialogue, thereby achieving a dynamic interactive relationship that is both visually economical and emotionally efficacious. It is as if the power of the beautiful image of the koto player and her fingers (by extension, her music) interpellates the direct presence of the lyrical subject. In other words, the potency of the image incites the viewer/ listener/poet into an act of direct speech. The first-person masculine voice of the lover and the confessional style of the poem intimately relate and at the same time respond to the verisimilitude and immediacy of the visual image. The presentation style and form are as important as—if not more important than—the content of the inscriptions and the visual information. Stylistically speaking, the handwritten characters exhibit Su’s mastery in calligraphy, and the inscriptions, surrounding the female subject in the compositional space, mimic the spontaneous overflow of the inscriber’s emotions. The long, extended strokes of his handwriting in the characters shao 少, xia 下, and



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bai 拜 may have helped to express his equally long, lingering feelings. Su’s postcards bear the physical traces of his emotion and contain the qualities of immediacy, directness, and genuineness. Su did not intend to present his cards officially as artwork, but these sentimental keepsakes reflect “the aesthetic charms of his personality.”16 In his famous 1927 essay “Photography,” Siegfried Kracauer contests the common view that photographs offer a window into the life world of the original subject. Rather, he suggests that the photograph offers a disconnected, fragmented image of a moment torn from the fabric of reality. He characterizes photography as a visual abstraction, exhibiting a mass technical reproduction of the spatial configuration of the object in a temporal instant. Inspired by the Proustian model of subjective memory, Kracauer claims that the “memory image” is a contrasting model because the fragmentary memory image involuntarily emerges as personally significant to the individuals who retain the memory through the form of condensation or embellishment.17 By differentiating these two models, Kracauer highlights the abstractness of photographic images, pointing toward the deficiency of the medium’s technical ability to relate history to its truth content. Building on Kracauer’s insight, I propose that by bracketing the “spatial continuum” with diegetic details, Su sutures the temporality and lived consciousness of reality with the photograph through language, calligraphy, and the seal, exposing the life world of the people involved to the austerity of the technological representation. The photographic card, bearing its meaningful relation to the people involved, has been turned into a “memory image” and a “singular thing.” To Derrida, the signature is singular and repeatable. He writes, a signature “must have a repeatable, iterable form, imitable form.”18 These iterable effects also can be discerned in Su’s sending the cards. At least six different photographs of Momosuke bearing inscriptions by Su Manshu exist. In addition to the photographs sent to Bao Tianxiao and Zhang Shizhao, Deng Qiumei 鄧秋枚 (1877–1951) also received a photograph, which consisted of the same image and inscriptions of the two poems in a slightly different layout, as well as a shorter personal note toward the end on the left side of the image. This card to Deng was reprinted in The Eternal (Tianhuang 天荒) together with Su’s painting and his friends’ calligraphies (figure 3.5).

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FIGURE 3.5  “The swan tracks in the snow of karmic connections,” Tianhuang (1917).

This series of the card of Momosuke with somewhat varied messages and signatures shows the repetitions as well as the différance in interactions under individual circumstances, documenting the “swan tracks in the snow of karmic connections” (hongxue yinyuan 鴻雪因緣). Photographic cards sent to Cai Zhefu 蔡哲夫 (1879–1941), Zhu Zongyuan 諸宗元 (1874–1932), and Huang Jie 黃節 (1873–1935) present different images of Momosuke in either standing or sedate poses, but all of these photographs have the same two poems inscribed on them.19 This series of cards provides a record of the fascinating social dynamics of this important artistic group. Writing about the liaisons between literati and courtesans was a favorite topic in literature, but the circulation of qing beyond the confines of a relatively circumscribed realm into a public, masculine space in such a readily reproducible format was indeed very new. These examples suggest that Su quickly understood that the new medium lent itself to being copied, grasping how to take advantage of this speedy communication system through which he and his friends could more easily interact with each other. The photographs being sent through the mail or published in magazines led to the private sphere of life being



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projected into communities, which contributed to the changing dynamic between public and private selves. In the process of sending inscribed photographs of Momosuke to his friends, Su Manshu not only transformed his personal feelings into a social articulation of the self, he also transformed a mechanical form of communication into a handmade one. The card, as decommodified and separated from the market, takes advantage of the new forms of commodification and communication. It is noteworthy that the validation of his emotive experience comes not from Momosuke but from Su’s friends as the recipients of these photographs. Although Su did write at the end of the inscription that the poem was intended to “win a smile from the beauty” (bo meiren yican 博美人一粲), his male friends were his main audience. Toward the end of his inscriptions to Bao Tianxiao and Zhang Shizhao, respectively, Su wrote in an epistolary style, saying that on a wintry day he missed his old friend and was therefore sending this personalized card. Many years later, in Hong Kong in 1962, Bao Tianxiao composed a poem to commemorate Su Manshu. In this poem, Bao evokes Su’s words: “I am missing my friend terribly on this cold day of snow and wind” (fengxue tianhan nian guren 風雪天寒念故人).20 Years later, Zhang Shizhao mentioned the photograph in conjunction with Su numerous times in his poetry, for example, in the line “[the image] has made me miss him for forty years” (leiwo huairen sishinian 累我懷人四十年).21 These postcards are “deep,” authentic, stylistic works that crystallize emotion and helped the people involved retain fond memories of their past lives. With regard to the way these photographs were circulated and transmitted, the issue arises of the relationships between the object, language, and mediated desire. Su Manshu wrote a series of ten “Biographical Poems” (benshi shi 本事詩) that are generally believed to describe his relationship with the koto player. Although this series of poems is well known among literary scholars, the circumstances in which the poems were composed and how they were circulated have mostly been forgotten. Su’s poems were written simultaneously with Chen Duxiu’s 陳獨秀 (1879–1942) ten poems in a hotel in Tokyo.22 Chen Duxiu, who later became a major player in the New Culture Movement, was a close friend and briefly Su’s roommate in Japan. Chen taught Su, who had a sporadic literary education, how to write classical-style poetry.23 After Su completed his ten poems, he sent them to his friends, including

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Cai Zhefu, Deng Qiumei, Liu Jiping 劉季平 (aka Liu San, 1878–1938), Huang Jie, Zhu Zongyuan, and Li Xiaotun 李曉暾 (?–1921), enclosing a photo of Momosuke with each poem to elicit a response. He also received ten corresponding poems from Liu Yazi, Gao Xu 高旭 (1877–1925), and Cai Zhefu.24 Su Manshu’s friends’ poems (forty in all) were written using the poetic device of ciyun 次韻 (matching rhymes). This was tantamount to inviting an audience to comment on Su’s protracted vacillation between romantic emotion and spiritual transcendence. A sympathetic group of friends commiserated with him and inserted empathetic echoes in their writing. The form of ciyun they used also ensured a strong sense of unanimity and resonance. The respondents were able to produce this effect by adopting the same end rhymes Su had used, following the same order, and even relying on a similar range of vocabulary. This novel form of gift-giving, in which people sent photographs through the mail and solicited verse as a response, created a new platform for sympathetic conversation and collaboration among poets. Su’s poems, which were read and responded to in this manner, provided a channel to transmute erotic desire by expressing it to an empathetic audience, while promoting a strong social bond among the members of the group. On the one hand, as I argue elsewhere, his exposure to Western literature (Romanticism in particular), coupled with his unique sensory experience and the influence of erudite literary friends such as Chen Duxiu, enabled Su Manshu to develop an individualized poetic voice, extending his capacity for articulating his emotions as a lover.25 On the other hand, as we can perceive in this context how intertwined self/other relationships helped to construct a social and intertextual subjectivity. A useful example appears in the fifth poem in the series of “Biographical poems” by Su Manshu, followed with poetic responses from four of his friends.

BIOGRAPHICAL POEMS (NO. 5)

Peach-cheeked and red-lipped she sits playing the pipe, Hard to measure old abounding sorrows with springtime waters, The Huayan Temple waterfall is a thousand chi high, But not as high as my sweetheart’s loving feelings.



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本事詩

桃腮檀口坐吹笙, 春水難量舊恨盈。 華嚴瀑布高千尺， 未及卿卿愛我情。

(THE UNTITLED POETIC RESPONSE BY CHEN DUXIU)

Alone in a quiet spot playing the pipe Thinking of the past her tears abound. If only regret were easily mended As she patched the sky I would repay the Goddess’s feeling. (陳獨秀)

少人行處獨吹笙， 思量往事淚盈盈。 缺憾若非容易補， 報答媧皇煉石情。 (BY LIU YAZI)

Treasuring and tuning up the goose-keyed zither In this pair of eyes waves of tears abound. The talented one says carelessly that a Chan escape is good But in this Chan escape one cannot help but still have feeling. (柳亞子)

珍重親調雁柱箏， 淚波雙眼自盈盈。 才人浪說逃禪好， 爭奈逃禪尚有情。

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(BY GAO XU)

Leaning on the jade banisters playing the pipe, In layers of elaborate garments, autumn thoughts abound, A goddess holds a flower, the Buddha smiles, What in the human world is the use for this passionate feeling? (高旭)

碧欄十二倚吹笙， 疊疊霓裳秋思盈。 天女拈花迦葉笑， 人間安用是痴情。 (BY CAI ZHEFU)

Under the lamp, shoulder to shoulder, listening to water piping in the pitcher, A wisp of tea smoke fills up the cramped room. Heads together, reflected in the teacups, Wordless, they set down the cups, overcome by feeling.26 (蔡哲夫)

憑肩燈下聽瓶笙， 一縷茶煙斗室盈。 照見並頭杯茗裡， 停杯無語不勝情。

In this series of poems, the character qing 情 (feeling) is used as the prominent word in the rhyme scheme. The poems are riddled with clichés, but form and familiar diction enable the poets to engage in Su’s emotional life in a compelling way, achieving their goal of vicariously sharing his feelings of pleasure and pain. Evoking such empathy requires rhetorical exchange and communication on a deep emotional level. The formulaic conventions and literary tropes



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that they employ in the poems serve to teach, instigate, and enhance empathetic resonance in social settings.27 As beholders of Momosuke’s image, these poets wrote about the lady in an intimate moment with her musical instrument (in the Chinese rendition, the koto was replaced with a pipe). By writing in this way, the poets became sympathetic spectators of Su’s emotional entanglements. Their responses indicate that they either enjoyed imaginative role-playing or served as a supporting chorus, creating an intersubjective route of emotional transmission. Feeling could be initiated by others or derived from the text or the image, while being further transferred and mediated through literary convention, trope, and empathetic imagination of others’ experience, converting “an intertextual relationship into an interpersonal one.” 28 Understood from the perspective of cognitive psychology, emotions are, as predicated on the bourgeois subject, predominantly interpreted as a physiological reaction or an inner state disconnected from social and political life.29 This privileged view has been contested, however. Significant anthropological literature takes the constructionist approach, arguing for the position that emotion, far from being isolated in the inner state of the subject, has social origins and is, in Catherine Lutz’s words, “preeminently cultural.” In her account, the Ifaluk’s emotion language is the articulation of “the full range of a people’s cultural values, social relations, and economic circumstances.” 30 The cultural life and activities surrounding Su’s circle reveal that emotion is intricately mediated and facilitated by language and the sensuous imagination associated with women playing musical instruments (such as the zither, pipe or flute). Relying on conventions and imagining the emotions of others, these poets, living at the end of the Qing era, not only fashioned their own subjectivity as men of sentiment but also contributed to a bonding experience revolving around the cult of qing. Su Manshu died in 1917 when he was only thirty-five. Huo Jiechen, who was a devoted fan of Su Manshu, assembled a collage in the book Collection of Poems Matching Manshu’s Rhymes (Manshu shiyun chouji), which was published in the 1930s (figure 3.6).31 This collage juxtaposes two portraits, one of the seated young author Huo in the lower left corner and one of Su (wearing monk’s robes) in the upper right corner, which produces the effect that Su is ascending to heaven. This collage achieves what Huo calls an “imaginary encounter” (huanwu 幻晤), that is, a virtual encounter of two kindred spirits. This line is written at the top of the picture: “In a thousand years, there is only one Manshu

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FIGURE 3.6  “In a thousand years, there

is only one Manshu to have as a bosom friend,” Manshu shiyun chouji (1934).

to have as a bosom friend” (qiangu zhiyin du Manshu 千古知音獨曼殊). This is followed by Su’s famous couplet dedicated to Lord Byron: “You, poet, and I are wanderers, fluttering like reeds in the storm / May I beckon to your soul from across a strange land” (詞客飄蓬君與我, 可能異域為招魂). Along the left and right margins and at the bottom of the collage, along with three personal seals, are poems composed by Huo, who quotes lines from Su’s poems as an example of the poetic subgenre called jiju 集句 (verbatim quotations). In this way, Huo Jiechen demonstrates a sense of affinity with his literary antecedent, turning the image-text composition into a kind of echo chamber that resonates with and reverberates Su’s artistic impact for generations of admirers to come.

FASHIONING A SENTIMENTAL SUBJECT The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed drastic changes in opera performance, increased commercialization of the theater, and a new breed of patrons and benefactors. While transforming opera from a private theater



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format to mass entertainment, patrons took advantage of publication venues as well as new public forums and media to promote and redefine the role of actors in society. The circulation and public consumption of actors’ photos became a new fashion in urban culture of the early 1910s. The glamorous photos of Mei Lanfang, a Beijing opera dan performer, offer an exemplary case of this new fashion. In the studio that simulates replicas of the stage, the photographic subject in different theatrical costumes is molded into a cultural commodity and icon through the negotiation of use and exchange values in performance, photography, and associated cultural commodities.32 Situated in the context of flowering consumerism and active literati communities, the circulation of actors’ photos is marked by a set of convoluted meanings. In addition to visual consumption, critical attention is paid to the poems in relation to the actors’ photographs and modern media in the context of which young intellectuals fashioned a new sentimental subject. Members of the Southern Society formally held their first meeting in Suzhou in 1909. This meeting played an important role in pioneering the “new drama” (xinju 新劇). In 1913, Fiction Times (Xiaoshuo shibao) prominently featured Jia Biyun 賈碧雲 (1890–1941), a leading opera performer from Beijing. Deeply involved in patronage culture and factional battles, Liu Yazi, the key figure of the Southern Society, soon posted a note in Minli Newspaper (Minli bao 民立報) urging people to submit photographs of Feng Chunhang and poems about him to the newspaper.33 Sure enough, Liu Yazi responded within a few weeks with a beautifully produced book devoted to Feng Chunhang. The Chunhang Collection (Chunhang ji 春航集) contained twenty-two photographs of Feng and poetry and criticism associated with Feng and his performances. The forty-three essays included in the book came from numerous contemporary newspapers and magazines.34 Following up on the popularity of the collection, in 1914 Liu Yazi made another special effort to edit and publish a book of poetry and criticism titled The Zimei Collection (Zimei ji 子美集) to promote Lu Zimei.35 The Zimei Collection contained twelve photographs, including one of Zimei with Liu Yazi taken in 1913. The collection also contained eighteen prefaces (xu 序) and endorsement verses (tici 題辭) by friends congratulating Liu for having published his book. While compiling The Chunhang Collection, Liu—along with his poet friends Pang Shubai 龐樹柏(1884–1916), Yu Jianhua 俞劍華 (1895–1979),

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Zhu Shaoping 朱少屏 (1881–1942), Chen Feishi 陈匪石 (1884–1959), Wang Yunzhang 王蘊章 (1884–1942), and Jiang Kesheng 姜可生 (1893–1959)— met with Feng Chunhang for the first time. On that occasion, Feng gave Liu more than twenty photographs of himself as gifts.36 In Yao Yuanchu’s 姚鵷雛 (1892–1954) account, Liu Yazi secretly concealed the photographs in his breast pockets and sleeves.37 The description captures the intimate relationship of the portable photo and its possessor, and the collision of the viewer’s space with the photographic space. Liu’s enthrallment with actors became a point of interest for his colleagues, about which Hu Jichen 胡寄塵 (1886–1938) comments, “[His] sincere feeling is heart-wrenching” (zhiqing cece 至情惻惻).38 The two collections devoted to Feng and Lu, respectively, included a significant number of photographs of them in cross-dress. Many of these photos show them wearing fancy attire and using varied gestures, with embroidered furniture and decorations in the studio background. The costumes included an elaborate Western-style wedding gown, a Victorian dress, a princess’s outfit from the late Qing era, chic Chinese clothing, and theater costumes. Belonging to the popular rhetoric of feminine gestures, this kind of gestural acting included either smiling and sniffing at a flower in the hand or holding a book and looking contemplative or self-indulgent. Even though the studio background appears standard, these photographs show more dynamic “female” subjectivity than most of the portraits of the time, which too often portrayed their subjects as austere and emotionless. One shot from this collection presents Feng Chunhang from the waist up, wearing a wedding gown and holding flowers while gazing directly toward the camera with a self-assured demeanor (figure 3.7). Another photograph shows Feng from a slight distance sitting on a floral patterned sofa, wearing a curly wig decorated with flowers, with bouquets of artificial flowers and long panel curtains in the background. Feng affects a contemplative pose with one hand under his cheek, leaning slightly toward the right (figure 3.8). Both Feng’s and Lu’s photographs were also frequently published in magazines.39 The magazine page reproduced here (figure 3.9) is a collage of four photographs showing Lu Zimei in long Western dresses or wearing a chic overcoat and hat. Dynamics of the photographic subject are mainly conveyed through the hand gestures of propping his chin up with both hands or folding

FIGURE 3.7  Feng Chunhang in a Western wedding gown, Chunhang ji (1913).

FIGURE 3.8  Feng Chunhang dressing as a Western lady, Chunhang ji (1913).

FIGURE 3.9  Photographs of Lu Zimei in Western clothing, Xinju zazhi 2 (1914).

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his hands behind his head. Photo 1 (top right) is a close-up portrait of Lu, his head tilted to the side, his index finger pointing to his cheek. All of the postures in the four pictures exude self-indulgence and, by extension, present Lu Zimei as being in the mood for love. The loose hair in these photographs suggests leisure, free will, or even erotic enticement. Being arranged in the pattern of a kaleidoscope, these four photographs explore the dynamics of the photographic subject in a distinctly modern fashion and also invite objectification and the voyeuristic gaze of visual consumption. In some of Lu Zimei’s poses, the impersonated female strays to a limited extent from deportment and the body language of decorum and respectability imposed on proper ladies of the time. For instance, the raised arms folded behind the head in photo 2 (top left) expressively exhibit the figure’s curves, a pose that was unusual at the time of the photograph. The Western-style long dress, a popular costume used in photo shoots, adds another layer of attractiveness and exoticism. The impression contemporary viewers are likely to obtain from these photographs is that Feng and Lu delighting in adopting different personae, and as performers they extended the theatricality to costume photo shoots. They took advantage of the studio to create new kinds of gendered images that combine the distilled essence of traditional femininity with a twist of modern flavor and erotic overtones. Eleven photographs in The Zimei Collection present Zimei posing as a different woman, in varied clothing. The photographs are followed by reprints of verses in calligraphy. The accompanying verses, usually in the genre of zan (encomia), offer complimentary readings regarding the cross-dressing portrayed in the series of photographs: either as the manifestation of multiple bodies (huashen) and the embodiment of spirit through “appearances and forms” (sexiang 色相) in momentary life, or as “a good model” (hao mofan 好模範) and a “goddess of freedom” (ziyou shen 自由神), the projection of new female ideals. At the same time, in contrast to the ambiguity of malleable visuals and the new possibilities of subject positioning evident in photo shoots, the poems, in the form of regulated verses or quatrains, written about these photographs by the members of the Southern Society usually undermine the multiple interpretations of the images. In the majority of the poems on Feng and Lu’s photographs in Nanshe congke 南社叢刻 (the Collection of the Southern Society), the poets deliberately obfuscate the boundary between performance and reality, taking the actors’ “femininity” as a given even though they were well



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aware that the actors were men.40 Liu Yazi and his colleagues participated in the game of make-believe, treating the actors’ images as embodiments of the ideal woman, a newly envisioned combination of a traditional archetype and modernity. Many of the writings surrounding these photographs of Feng and Lu served to reinforce the tendency to foster erotic fantasies centered around female images and to perpetuate the codified image of the beautiful woman in painting. Photographs, which were collectible and portable objects, became the perfect instigation to view women as desirable objects, catering to a voyeuristic gaze in both private and communal settings. The following poem demonstrates how the male imagination articulated itself with regard to the photographic image.

SIX POEMS ABOUT ZIMEI’S PHOTOGRAPHS, QUOTING YISHAN’S [LI SHANGYIN] LINES (NO. 6)

She understands the bitterness of lovesickness, Distraught at the Songs of Midnight. Ripples reflect in vain on her stockings, She receives silken missives in Shanghai. Leaning on a book-box she pretends to sleep, Loosening her blouse as though drunk. A heart broken for so long, She can do nothing about it this time.41 題子美小影六首集義山句

解有相思苦， 心酸子夜歌。 波痕空映襪， 海上得綃多。 假寐憑書簏， 依稀解醉羅。 迴腸九回後， 不奈寸腸何。

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Ye Yusen 葉玉森 (1880–1933) wrote six poems to describe six photographs of Lu Zimei, portraying “her” as a lonely lady in the throes of lovesickness. The note to the sixth poem, “Zimei, dressed up as a Western lady, dreamily reclines on a chaise longue” (子美饰西裝女子倚睡椅上作朦朧態), matches the image in photo 4 (bottom left) of figure 3.9. Ye Yusen’s poem illustrates the tension between the photographic image and the literary image in the poem. In the photo, the slightly angled shot conveys a mild fetishization of the woman. The poem takes the image of the contemplative lady as a point of origin and extends this to a full range of imagined erotic scenes, enhanced and facilitated by poetic convention and allusions. Line 7, “Loosening her blouse as though drunk,” is quoted from Li Shangyin’s 李商隱 well-known poem “Mirror Banister” (jingkan 镜檻), which contains this couplet: “I imagine her spreading fragrant bedding, / her blouse loosening as though she were drunk” (想像鋪芳褥, 依稀解醉羅).42 Li’s long poem recounts a love affair between a literatus and a dancing girl, moving from a description of her dancing to his memories of her and a detailed documentation of their love affair, including sexual encounters. The poetic form of jiju (verbatim quotations) involves quoting lines written by renowned poets to compose a new poem, and the form therefore often suffers from an accumulation of conventional imagery.43 The quotation from Li’s couplet, which describes the tantalizing act of disrobing, is at odds with an image of a modern woman leaning on a Western-style couch. Building on the camera’s initiation of the process of objectification, the quoted lines explicitly recycle desire and take erotic imagination to a different level. By reinterpreting the visual images of a brooding modern lady as a woman who is a lovestruck, enticing literary image, Ye transplants the old feeling that accompanies the conventional image into a new visual context. The poems written by the members of the Southern Society were in compliance with, rather than in revolt against, traditional gendered ideology and eroticism. These poems impose distinctly sensuous or erotic messages about the photographic image that, as I have emphasized, have a lot to do with the sensuous writing tradition, its connections to the cult of qing, and the literati’s reading habits.44 The poets from this group came to rely on these poetic vocabularies as a regulating force to such an extent that they could not manage to break away from it in their response to the new visual medium. Liu Yazi also wrote many lyrics dedicated to Feng Chunhang and



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Lu Zimei that were filled with sensuality and intense sentiment. In these poems, Liu refers to the actors as nüer 女兒, e’mei 蛾眉, meidai 眉黛, nülangshen 女郎身, and meiren 美人, all terms used to refer to a beautiful woman.45 However, in comparison with his colleagues’ more explicit expressions of erotic desire, Liu employs a refined, literary diction that goes beyond the sensuous surface or carnal desire and, more important, imbues the term qing with sublimated meaning. One of Liu Yazi’s poems reads:

VISITING CHUNHANG IN SHANGHAI: COMPOSING A POEM AND INSCRIBING IT ON A PHOTOGRAPH HE KINDLY GAVE ME

How can I express how I’ve missed you these past ten years, unexpectedly meeting you today. Discussing swordplay and flute-playing arouses my emotions, picking orchids to adorn you, I cherish their fragrance. I know it is hard to look at a river having seen the great seas, I fear only that the hearts of the immortal will turn into clouds. Thank you for giving me the scroll of autumn hills, I will worship it with incense after returning to the rivers and lakes.46 海上訪春航奉贈一律即題其見惠小影

相思十載從何說， 今日居然一遇君。 說劍吹簫余感慨， 搴蘭紉蕙惜芳芬。 懸知滄海難為水， 只恐仙心或化雲。 一幅秋山勞汝贈， 江湖歸去定香薰。

The photograph of Chunhang that Liu received from him as a gift is referred to as “a painting of autumn hills” (line 7). Liu distances himself from

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erotic diction and frames his enchantment with Feng Chunhang in terms of lofty romantic sentiment. By evoking the phrase from the Chuci 楚辭 (Songs of Chu) in line 4, Liu’s persona in the poem shows that Liu’s pursuit of the woman is meant to be understood as an allegory. The lover is identified as the ideal ego, projecting his feelings onto the “female” other as an embodiment of his lofty political ambition in the elevated tradition of “the fragrant plant and the beauty” (xiangcao meiren 香草美人).47 The extraordinary passion that Liu Yazi expressed in his poems allowed him to successfully portray himself as a person “full of feeling” (duoqing 多情).48 Liu apparently enjoyed this persona, addressing topics surrounding Feng Chunhang and Lu Zimei that populated his poetry and diaries from 1909 to 1915. Aided by the evocation of conventions and tropes as well as cultural practices in literati consumption of impersonated female images and imaginary love affairs, charged male subjectivity came to embody extraordinary feelings and dynamics. Present-day readers may wonder whether these poems, under the disguise of heterosexuality, actually express homoerotic desire, given that the sexual identity of these two actors—Feng Chunhang and Lu Zimei—was known to the poets. Such a possibility cannot be immediately ruled out. Liu Yazi and his colleagues were young intellectuals who adopted the modern “progressive” view, and they were indeed self-conscious to the point of censoring their own expressions of homoerotic feeling, which was stigmatized at the beginning of the twentieth century.49 In her influential analysis of English literature, Eve Sedgwick coined the word “homosocial” to describe “social bonds between persons of the same sex,” arguing that desire is “the affective or social force, the glue” that shapes socially important relationships, in both positive and negative ways.50 She argues that there is a recurring theme of the “erotic triangle” of male homosocial desire in English literature from the seventeenth century onward. The expression of love between two males is frequently hidden within the traditional frame of heterosexual love for a woman. Although there may be parallels between Sedgwick’s argument for how homosocial relationships between men were mediated by conventional relationships with women and my analysis put forward here,51 my intention is to detail the ramifications of emotions differently from her studies of those that existed in Victorian society. I attempt to go beyond the binary of categorizing sexual orientation in male bonding



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as either hetero- or homosexual and the focus on individualism and psychologism prevalent in masculinity studies. Instead, I underline the social life of emotions and the exchange and consumption of “female” images. In the two cases centering on Su Manshu and Liu Yazi, the collective articulation of heterosexual desire was ultimately a channel for self-fashioning and for the blossoming of literati friendships within communities. Photographic images of public figures (i.e., courtesans or actors) at most served as a catalyst and inspiration. Writing profusely about a photograph that is a supposedly concrete crystallization of such desire had more to do with self-fashioning and with the cult of qing than with the attractiveness, likeness, or even the gendered identity of the photographic image.52 Publicly articulating and sharing romantic or sensual feelings is not only socially acceptable but also helps to shape the dynamics of interpersonal relationships among male-dominated intellectual groups. These impressive collections exhibit the formation of an affective community through the shared goals and tastes of the group members as well as through engagement with group activities (e.g., promoting their favorite actors) and multiple levels of mass media practices.53 This observation can also be applied to Su Manshu’s interaction with Momosuke and his friends as expressed in their poems. These poems were only superficially about a Japanese koto player; they were an evocation and a performance of emotion in the public domain as well as an indication of social networking and sensuous transactions. Feng Chunhang and Lu Zimei’s theatrical performances, the portability of the photograph, and the activity of writing and sharing these poems about photographs and performances worked to create a chain of imaginative engagement between the self and the emotional life of the other, thereby making everyone involved feel emotionally invested and interpersonally connected. In her study of Mandarin and Butterfly literature in the 1910s, Haiyan Lee persuasively argues that sentimentalism “helped create an affective community within the literary public sphere whereby bourgeois individuals exchanged private experiences and fashioned themselves as men and women of sentiment.” 54 In the same vein, taking advantage of modern media, Su Manshu, Liu Yazi, and other figures were presented not only as literati-cum-intellectuals “full of feelings” (duoqing) but also played an instrumental role in the formation of the sentimental community and literary public sphere. The cascading expressions

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of extravagant sentimental feeling in public during the initial years of the Republican era were conducive to, as well as intertwined with, other collective feelings and competing political discourses.55

THE PHOTOGRAPH AS KEEPSAKE Figure 3.10 is the twin-selves image of a young lady in two poses: standing by and sitting on a chair. This is a typical image of a courtesan at the beginning of the twentieth century. She looks to be in her early twenties, posing for the camera in a studio against the background of a painted wall. Smiling mildly, she looks with an easy, direct posture toward the camera. There is no date on this photograph, but from her hairstyle with bangs over her forehead, the floral clothing with three-quarter-length sleeves, and her bound feet, we can infer that this photograph was most likely taken in the 1910s. When viewing a vintage photograph, the burning question reviewers have to face is that of the identity of the subject. The anonymity of the photographic subject deeply bothers us. Kracauer argues that the photograph alone is not sufficient to reconstruct the identity of the content it represents, because it is merely the resemblance of image and object.56 Personal specificities and perspectival contexts surrounding the image are where historical consciousness lies. The desire to know plays an important role in the significance of posthumous viewing, historical memory, and truth. The back of this photograph (figure 3.11) is inscribed with a poem in calligraphy, signed by “flower lover” (Aihua zhuren 愛花主人). The poem reads: Pointing to the charming and lovely lady, who is in the prime of her life. Beautiful flowers are falling down one after another, but you hold the springtime and don’t age. 漫道玲瓏嬌小， 花信華年正好； 好花次第落去， 算儂春光不老。



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FIGURES 3.10 AND 3.11  Front and back piece of the photograph of twin-selves with

inscriptions, 10 × 15 cm; the card, 14 × 22 cm. Courtesy of Tong Bingxue.

It is certain that this “flower lover” is a patron of the courtesan. The reproducibility and easy accessibility of the photograph made it possible and fashionable for a large audience to consume and collectively own an image of the courtesan at the turn of the twentieth century.57 However, the rhetorical exchange and intimate emotional communication may have bound their romantic liaison in a more individualistic way. This photograph was only recently discovered at an auction market, and no other circumstantial information is known. The inscription does not supply us with sufficient historical data, but it breathes life into the photograph and partially compensates for the perpetual anxiety of not knowing the biographical backstory of the image. Although she is anonymous, the charming, smiling young woman is known to us through the inscription (despite its conventionality). The author of the poem mischievously names himself “flower lover,” and through this pseudonym a life, however conjectural, emerges. This hint of romantic love

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or desire, even if it is simply imagined or performative, animates this photo, making it a memento of lived existence. The card, either offered by the lady as a present or purchased by the patron, was pulled out of the commercial market, thereby gaining singularity and style. When photographs are combined in this way with words, the aesthetic unity produces the evidence of affective exchanges and historical uses. To a contemporary researcher, this combination also “illuminate[s] the distinctive texture of social relations in which it is performing its work.” 58 I present two more examples for the purpose of analyzing their singularities and the social and affective entanglements embodied in the unity of photography and poetry. Figure 3.12 is a family portrait presented to Ye Gongchuo 葉恭綽 (1881–1968), a scholar and high official, from Zhu Wonong 朱我農 who briefly served from 1924 to 1927 as the president of Beijing Jiaotong University as the successor to Ye. This iconic “happy family portrait” features Zhu, his Caucasian wife, and their three beautiful children, all welldressed in Western-style clothing, exhibiting an image of a cosmopolitan lifestyle (figure 3.12). The inscriptions on the back of the photograph, written in an epistolary style in the summer of 1925, reveal that the family photo shoot took place to fulfill a request Ye had made three years earlier to his successor to have family photos taken (figure 3.13). The well-conceived piece, written in orderly handwriting, shows propriety and respect for Zhu’s senior friend. The two lucid quatrains, written in smaller characters and included at the end of the inscriptions, relay updated information and express Zhu’s mixed joy and sorrow over his life’s journey. The inscriptions conclude with Zhu’s signature and a seal containing two characters to mark his name “Wonong” (我農). Offering the card or photograph to a senior and asking him to “kindly keep [it]” (huicun 惠存) is a form of symbolic cultural exchange that speaks to underlying values of “faithfulness and gratitude” in social interactions.59 The second example concerns the legendary female poet and painter Zhou Lianxia 周煉霞 (1908–2000), an active member of her artistic literati circle in the Republican and early socialist era in Shanghai. Every year on her birthday, Zhou Lianxia’s friends (mostly poets and painters from the group with which she was associated) gathered together to celebrate. In 1955, Zhou copied her lyric song “To the tune He xinliang” onto a bright red brocade, using a small, proper script. She included a small photograph at the top right

FIGURES 3.12 AND 3.13  Front and back piece of Zhu Wonong’s family portrait, 29 × 18 cm,

1925. Courtesy of Shanghai Municipal Library.

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corner of the brocade, a headshot showing her with a big smile and curly hair. The entire piece is bordered by a string of pearls, a prize from a drinkingpoetry event she participated in with her group. The poem is set against a background of a painted moon, clouds, and chrysanthemums. It is also accompanied by four seals of different sizes. The piece was allegedly presented to the senior scholar and poet Mao Guangsheng 冒廣生 (1873–1959). The assembled objects (including the brocade, the pearl, and the photograph) were photographed again, and smaller sized reprints were distributed to many of Zhou’s poetry friends as a gift to commemorate the gleeful occasion of her birthday. Figure 3.14 bears Zhou’s handwritten words to her younger friend Soong Hsun-leng 宋訓倫 (aka Yuli ciren 玉貍詞人, 1910–2010) on glossy paper with the red seal of two white-characters “Zhounü” (周女) to the left of the image. Zhou also sent Tang Dalang 唐大郎 (1908–1980), a tabloid writer in Shanghai, a print of the photograph, which Tang subsequently published in a newspaper. According to Tang, all of his friends cherished this “shadow of song lyric” (ciying 詞影).60 From the content of the poem, we learn that

FIGURE 3.14  The photograph of Zhou Lianxia to Soong Hsun-leng, 8.1 × 11.5 cm, 1955.

Courtesy of Soong Shu-kung.



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Zhou composed it to express her gratitude and to respond to the poems her friends wrote during her birthday celebrations. One line from her poem reads: “Returning home, I did not know about heavy wind and dew, / realizing with the passage of time, I fill new poems in my sleeves” (歸去不知風露重，知載 新詞滿袖). Despite the small size of Zhou’s photo in the upper right corner, the image reminds us of “what has been” for the living subject. This ornate photo-object, with its lyricism and exquisite presentation style, embodies the lived experience and closeness of this community. Through the reciprocity of giving and taking, this “old-fashioned” group consolidated its collective cultural identity and social cohesion. This memento is especially meaningful considering how it conveys the significance of a disappearing literati culture for this Shanghai-based “affective community,” 61 a group soon forced into disintegration as socialism entered its heyday. A fascinating character in her own right, Zhou Lianxia delighted in posing for glamorous photographs throughout her lifetime. She engaged in a mixture of modern media and traditional artistic forms (classical poetry and painting). An album of Zhou in the prime of her life recently emerged at an auction market and contains many photographs Zhou sent to her poetry friend Soong Hsun-leng in Shanghai and Hong Kong.62 Infatuated with her beauty and talent, Soong made the album by arranging her solo photos into different patterns and carefully mounting them on the pages. Soong then filled the blank spaces between the photos with handwritten poems (by both Zhou and Soong) or with poetic captions. The studiously combined pictures and words, a personalized tribute to Zhou, reveals the photographs’ fetishistic value for visual consumption, artistic alliance, and enduring friendship. As Kopytoff claims, there is a “yearning for singularization in complex societies.” 63 The advent of photography as a mass commodity precipitated the need for and responses to this yearning for singularization. For the three image-objects presented here, inscriptive desire is driven by this longing for singularization and affective values. More important, sentiments, memory, and the historical connections between the sender and receiver were revealed by investing mechanical representations with depth and context through lyrical words, signatures and seals. Ironically, singularity is itself commodified today, and vintage photographs with inscriptions have significantly

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increased in value due to the passage of time. Moreover, the reproducibility of the photograph, the iterable function of the signature and inscriptions, and long-established literary forms enhance the circulation of these photoobjects. The itineraries of these things, associated with the groups of Su Manshu, Liu Yazhi, Zhou Lianxia or others, disclose the subjectivity and a range of feelings (romantic love, self-fashioning, and friendship) that profoundly shaped the culture of the time. Expressions of individual affections through gifts and writings served as a glue to cement social and aesthetic bonding, facilitating interpersonal, affective, and symbolic interactions. The circulation and avid distribution of photographic images also predated the enthusiasm for and ubiquity of the visual in every day life and photo sharing through various social media in the contemporary era.

CHAPTER 4

Summoning Zhenzhen Circulation of the Tropes of the Beauty, the Skull, and the Nude

A

Tang dynasty anecdote relates the story of a literatus named Zhao Yan who is enraptured by the divine beauty of a lady painted on a screen. Given instructions, he repeatedly calls on this inanimate beauty named Zhenzhen 真真 (lit., Truly True) for a hundred days, with the hope that she will step out of the screen. After his persistent efforts, Zhenzhen miraculously comes to life, steps out, and becomes Zhao’s lover. When she is suspected of being a demon by Zhao’s friend, she returns to the screen, accompanied by their son.1 This prototype of fancying an image of a beautiful woman reached the apex of its complexity in the canonical play The Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting 牡丹亭). The male protagonist Liu Mengmei is infatuated with Du Liniang’s self-portrait and keeps calling to the lady in the portrait, wishing for a magical transformation.2 Lady Zhenzhen, who became a codified figure for “a woman in a painting” (huazhong ren 畫中人), was readily adopted in the photographic culture as a convenient reference to the female photographic image. The irony lies in the fact that the gendered fantasy revealed in the anecdote, through the extensive evocation of this trope, was appropriated in modern culture, pointing to the camera’s dual functions to create illusion as well as capture the real. Investigating the circulation of poetic and visual tropes of the female image in the context of photographic practices, this chapter provides an account of female images described in poems and stories, the images of the “skull” (kulou 骷髏), and the nude in late Qing and Republican era newspapers and magazines. Mapping the circuitous paths of the image of Zhenzhen as it became more commercial, seductive, or erotic, I address how these gendered images

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were strategically foregrounded and exploited for their sensuous appeal in mass visual consumption, exposing the underlying conception that fed into that fantasy. I also continue to probe the tensions between the textual and the visual through how poems, titles, captions, or stories persistently served to secure a particular reading of the polysemous image: to rationalize or tame uncomfortable radical visual effects or to sublimate eroticism into spirituality. The gendered photographic body in the forms of attractiveness, monstrosity, and nudity was constantly contested and renegotiated, and the relationship of image and text was also considerably complicated through mutual interpenetration or conflict in mass media. The first two sections address poetry about photography or photo shoots deployed as a focal point to investigate the literary life of photographic images and the challenges the new medium posed to literary writing. The remaining three sections address the visual tropes of the skull and the nude to delineate the circulation of these images, strategies of appropriation and pastiche, as well as Chinese artists’ creative handling of nude images. It is in the course of this voyage, effortlessly circulating across media and genres, that the image of Zhenzhen acquires its transmedial quality.

CALLING TO THE LADY IN A PHOTOGRAPH From its inception in China in the second half of the nineteenth century, photography was inextricably interwoven with the Shanghai entertainment business.3 In 1884, the Illustrated Handbook of Shanghai’s Scenic and Historical Sights (Shenjiang mingsheng tushuo) offered the following comment: “The Western photographic method captures images through reflection that seem vivid and alive, no longer requiring the use of makeup to paint in details of a lady’s grace. . . . All the beautiful courtesans and elegant opera actors have small portraits of themselves printed to give to their sweethearts as gifts.” 4 This guidebook also includes a lithograph illustration that shows  three seated courtesans and a standing maid posing in different attitudes for a photograph. Recent studies tell us that courtesans welcomed photography as an effective means to amplify their fame and that studios printed copies from the negatives for a profit.5 By the late 1890s, photographs of courtesans had become popular objects for display at studios and collectibles for visual consumption. The popularity of courtesan portraiture is predicated on



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this exchange between desire and values through the system of commodity culture from courtesan culture to visual consumption in tabloid news and entertainment magazines.6 Examining the vocabulary used to describe encounters with a courtesan’s photographic image is revealing in terms of how a late Qing literatus’s viewing process is implicated in traditional gender ideology. Bamboo-stalk lyrics (zhuzhi ci 竹枝詞), a genre of folk song, offer us valuable glimpses into the visual culture of that era. Courtesans’ photographs, as a privileged kind of image, became a new theme for these poems, describing contemporary scenes and practices. Written in 1876, this poem by Li Mo’an 李默庵 addressed the new trend of literati using photos as a guide to locate a Zhenzhen.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS OF SHANGHAI

I summon Zhenzhen from the photograph full of details, which reveals her spirit even better than the painting. Customers fight to buy them for their “spring excursions,” relying on the picture to visit the beauty.7 申江雜詠

顯微攝影喚真真， 較勝丹青妙入神。 客為探春爭購取， 要憑圖畫訪佳人。

The poem attests to the indexical nature of the photographic image as a reliable reference to locate the real person in the brothel. The new technology’s capacity to seize the exact visual resemblance of an object and conjure a sense of “the real” ignited fresh belief and excitement. The Daily Pictorial (Tuhua ribao) illustrates the difference between “drawing a portrait” (hua xiaozhao 畫小照) and “shooting a portrait” (pai xiaozhao 拍小照), stressing that photography can capture not only physical likeness but also “spiritual resemblance” (shensi 神似).8 The caption, in a playful tone, reminds the reader that he could take the drawing home and his wife and son would not recognize what it was,

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whereas a photo of him with a courtesan from a brothel must be treated with more care to conceal it from his tiger-wife. Numerous examples of this kind in the Daily Pictorial suggest the general sense of wonder at the greater visual clarity and exact likeness (in the terms kusi 酷似 or bizhen 逼真), which contributed to the growing individuality and sensibility of female beauty in images. A photograph from a courtesan to a patron was regarded as a “common gift” (putong zengpin 普通贈品).9 One commentary in the Daily Pictorial explicitly describes the power of image: “When a male customer receives this gift, he will surely frequently look at it, and in this way his love (aiqing) will grow infinitely.”10 Photographs with inscriptions addressed from the courtesan to the male patron as “a gift” were often mounted on a base to be placed on a study desk, hung on the wall, or carried with him personally for visual consumption. This popular use of allusions to Zhenzhen offers a previously unexamined critical perspective on the issue of the intertwined relationship between portrait photography, the female body, and literary imagination. Two additional revealing examples of this phenomenon follow. They are respectively written by Sun Cigong 孫次公 and Huang Zhunxian 黃遵憲 (1848–1905).

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ON SHANGHAI

The vivid brush conveys the spirit, a magic potion can renew an image. If the beauty E’mei were to understand me, it would be better than calling Zhenzhen down from the wall.11

洋涇雜事詩

添毫栩栩妙傳神， 藥物能靈影亦新。 鏡裡娥眉如解語， 勝從壁上喚真真。



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ON A PHOTOGRAPHIC MIRROR

A graceful shadow in the mirror, traces in jade, using potions to capture a departed spirit. I summon Zhenzhen many times, why isn’t there an answer— blame it on the peach blossoms, silently smiling.12

鏡寫真

鏡影婷婷玉有痕， 竟將靈藥攝離魂。 真真喚遍何曾應， 翻怪桃花笑不言。

The word Zhenzhen, which emphasizes the power of “minute details that can give life to the image” (haosheng 毫生), seems to have aligned with the public’s amazement at how accurately a photograph could capture a lifelike image. However, the conception of magical transformation, which takes place when Zhenzhen emerges from the liminal space, also peculiarly transfers into the technical medium. In these poems, the image of Zhenzhen, merged with that of the goddess Chang’e, reveals that a long-held literati fantasy informed the conceptualization of the photograph as a form of “the shadow of love yearning” (xiangsi zhiying 相思之影).13 The reference to Zhenzhen registers a paradox inherent in the early reception of the new medium, that is, the truth claim of a visual image couched in the form of illusion or fantasy. The paradoxical combination of a truth claim and fantasy is further encapsulated in the name of one studio in colonial Taiwan, called the Zhenzhen xiezhen guan 真真寫真館 [lit., truly true studio of transcribing the true].14 A couplet in the Daily Pictorial describes the photographs in the courtesan context: “It is so cunning that the courtesan and the photograph both reveal their form; / giving the patron a photograph for his obsessive calling to Zhenzhen” (狡哉妓女共現色身，持贈狎客癡喚真真).15 In one scene

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FIGURE 4.1  “The purpose of a

courtesan giving photos to a patron,” Tuhua ribao 138 (1910).

in the Daily Pictorial (figure 4.1), the literatus in the lady’s chamber is holding a photograph in both hands to carefully scrutinize it, as though enraptured. Two women spy on him from behind. The woman who appears to be a courtesan is smiling with one corner of her handkerchief held to her lips. Her comportment seems to suggest, “I know you are looking at me, because I’m looking at you and you are looking at my image.” The maid, however, seems to be more intently looking at the man and the photograph, as though she is eager to learn the reaction of the patron. The courtesan seems to demonstrate the pleasure of being looked at and of looking, with a degree of coyness. The gender politics of spectatorship—of both voyeurs and spectators—are intriguingly inscribed within this field of viewing. In the picture, the woman as image or spectacle to be looked at is built into the vision itself or into the way that looking is organized. What is interesting in this drawing is the active manner in which the woman herself participates in the structures of gaze, voluntarily turning herself into an object of sight.16 Zhenzhen here is a double: both an image being viewed and a real figure actively



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participating in the looking or self-presenting. In this enclosed space of the brothel chamber, the patron, as the focal point of the viewer’s and two women’s gazes, directs his gaze at the image of the Zhenzhen-like figure (a realistic representation of the female). Meanwhile, the real Zhenzhen herself can be interpellated to meet with him immediately, without the effort of calling to her over the course of a hundred days. The photographic image incites and circulates erotic desire in a more convenient and efficient manner, and this object of desire in the brothel is expediently available for consumption, eliding an illusion and a real-life figure. As an expedient and portable object, the photograph is a double-edged sword, establishing a new relationship between owner and viewer. On the one hand, courtesans welcomed this new medium as a way of exhibiting themselves, promoting a sense of agency; on the other hand, gendered power structures and desires for possession were perpetuated by the male patrons (including editors actively hunting for the photographs) who were the ultimate consumers of these affective images and bodies.17 The poetic lines, quoted in figure 4.1, maintain that a photograph of the courtesan, charged with lingering affective feeling, could in a sense count as her “presence in the flesh” (qinshen pei 親身陪). Possessing a photograph of a courtesan near one’s body in one’s private space, functioning as a substitute for intimacy in a form of “sentimental ownership,” is the fulfillment of the fantasy of intimate possession and vicarious consumption of the female body.18 Viewing the painting of Zhenzhen and owning a photographic card differ in terms of both the viewer’s distance from and the portability of the portrait. Possessing a photograph, invested with affection, in some way entails a more intimate relationship with the object of desire than the portrait literally and metaphorically embodies; the photographic card, due to its reproducibility, could also readily be tailored for a greater number of urban consumers. To situate the poems in a cross-cultural context, a comparison with Japanese kanshi 漢詩 sheds light on the different conceptualizations of and responses to early photography. As Matthew Fraleigh’s study shows, in writings about photography in the Chinese-style poetry, an allusion relating to Wang Zhaojun 王昭君 was frequently evoked. The following quatrain written by Sugi Chōka 杉重華 (1835–1920) in Berlin in 1862 is one of the examples he provides.19

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WITH NOTHING TO DO IN MY GUEST LODGINGS, I WHIMSICALLY COMPOSE THIS POEM ON THE CAMERA

In the blink of an eye, it illuminates, captures what is true; vastly superior to paintings, it inscribes something new. If the Han era had had this technique, Zhaojun wouldn’t have had to marry a barbarian.20 客舍無事戲詠寫真鏡

瞬間對照寫其真， 太勝丹青畫得新。 若使漢時有斯術， 昭君未必嫁胡人。

The painted portrait is subject to human manipulation and distortion, as the household story of Wang Zhaojun shows.21 The use of the Wang Zhaojun allusion in poems by Japanese writers playfully idealizes photography’s objectivity. In contrast, the enduring theme of the Zhenzhen story in late Qing China exhibits the persistent draw of gendered fantasy as well as a conception of the image that can be enlived as an extension of life without clear-cut boundaries between image and reality. Photographs of courtesans began to appear in books and pictorial magazines when the necessary technology became available shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. In the 1910s, magazines such as Fiction Times (Xiaoshuo shibao), The Grand Magazine (Xiaoshuo daguan), and Short Stories Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao 小說月報) regularly published photographs of “flower girls” and opera actors. Shanghai Youzheng Book Company published volumes of photo albums, leaving well-documented archives of courtesans’ photographs.22 The visual strategy deployed by journal editors such as Bao Tianxiao and Di Baoxian 狄寶賢 (1873–1941) conveyed mixed messages, presenting erotic alterity along with market interests while promoting fresh images of fashion, new ideas, and popular entertainment. In addition to magazine publications, courtesan photographs were prominently



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presented in book format from the end of the Qing. Thanks to Ellen Widmer’s meticulous research on Zhan Kai 詹塏 (1861?–1911?) and his literary family, we see some of the earliest examples of implanting portrait photographs in biographical sketches of the courtesans.23 The first ranked courtesan launched in the Poetic History of the Realm of Tenderness (Rouxiang yunshi 柔鄉韻史) is named Lanqiao Bieshu 藍橋別墅. Casting her as offering a combination of beauty, talent, and morality, Zhan Kai particularly mentions her patriotic actions and depicts her as bearing the masculine air of an ancient hero. Lanqiao loved to wear male clothes and had fun taking photographs in male attire with her friends.24 In the 1917 edition of the Poetic History, a single-page print layout of nine small photographs in the shape of a moon, stars, and other forms show half or upper-body shots of Lanqiao in different styles of dress (including male clothing and theatrical makeup) (figure 4.2). Among the fourteen pages of images in the book, three huashen (transformation-body) photographs are particularly eye-catching. A circle frames multiplied female bodies in three different exhibitionist poses, above which are inscribed the name of the subject (Ms. Caiqiu 采秋女史), the title “picture of fun transformation-bodies” (youxi huashen tu 遊戲化身圖), the year of Xinchou (1901), and the studio name (Guanghua lou 光華樓) (figure 4.3).25 These well-designed pictures and the stylistic collage of images and calligraphy give us a glimpse of how the courtesan photographs were reproduced in the book to enhance the narratives of courtesans’ lives. Zhan Kai’s practice at the end of his writing career was media-conscious in that he appended an array of photographs to the biographies of the courtesans, supplementing literary texts with visual illustration. The photographic images, the biographical account, and the life of the real person form a mutually referential relationship. The referential relationship between the photograph and the subject, unlike in courtesan paintings or lithographic prints, also poses greater challenges to classical diction on physical beauty, as is seen in the accounts Zhan penned for over a hundred courtesans. Even though Zhan excelled in his sketches of courtesans’ stories and wrote elegantly, his accounts reveal that the vocabulary and stock of idiomatic expressions concerning physical features in many cases do not live up to the individuality of the visual images. Zhan Kai either does not subscribe to the idea that verbal description should faithfully adhere to the visual evidence, of

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FIGURE 4.2  Nine photographs of

FIGURE 4.3  “The picture of fun

Lanqiao bieshu, Rouxiang yunshi (1917).

transformation-bodies,” Rouxiang yunshi (1917).

which we in contemporary times are highly conscious, or he reaches the limitation of the descriptive capacities of classical language and literary forms (poetry in particular) in the technological era.26

FALLING IN LOVE WITH AN IMAGE The examples in the preceding section address the photograph in courtesan culture, whereas the photograph as a key plot device or the focus of description facilitates emotional exchanges and subject formation in literary texts dealing with broader social circumstances. These writings are good examples of intermedial relations, where a photograph triggers emotional responses and serves as the key for romantic bonding in narrative development. Meanwhile, detailed literary descriptions of the objects also indicate the incorporation of photo aesthetics that has taken place at the formal level. Expressing the traditional love-longing theme, “To the tune Jin bieli” (今別離), these pieces (five in total) were written by Huang Zunxian in 1890 in London. They describe new objects such as trains, boats, telegraphs, and



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photographs, along with the geographical phenomenon of the time difference between the East and the West. A love-stricken lady pining away in her boudoir is a tired subject matter for poetry, posing a challenge to the latecomer who tries to put pen to that topic. In the third poem in the series, a lady is reading a letter from her husband and looking at his enclosed photograph. The poem describes in detail a state of reverie in which she returns her husband’s gaze, and the subtle, yet tumultuous mental activities that follow. It partially reads: Ever since our leave-taking I have desired to see you, My love is more potent than heady spring brew. But today when I see my darling’s own face, My heart is still filled with worries. When I hold a mirror to study my face, Its complexion is still pink as a peach tree’s blooms, I open a small case and hold my portrait which will be sent to you, For that’s almost as good as meeting you in person. You gave me the jade pin that’s stuck in my hair; I sent you the robe that presses your breast. Now our pitiful images will both hang; And you and I will always be in each other’s company. But even if we’re always in each other’s company, There will never be an end to our parting sorrow. Face to face, the pictures will not know what to say, As if a thousand mountain ranges still lay between them. If only we could visit each other in our dreams! How else can we communicate our innermost thoughts?27 自別思見君，情如春酒濃。 今日見君面，仍覺心忡忡。 攬鏡妾自照，顏色桃花紅。 開篋持贈君，如與君相逢。 妾有釵插鬢，君有襟當胸。 雙懸可憐影，汝我長相從。 雖則長相從，別恨終無窮。 對面不解語，若隔山萬重。 自非夢來往，密意何由通。

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Visual image and its efficacy seem to partially quench her yearning by answering her wonder over his physical changes. When she juxtaposes her husband’s photograph with hers and looks at the two photographs together, it is as if the two are reunited in the present and are under each other’s gaze. But she soon realizes that looking at an image is not like looking at a real face, and she wishes for a person-to-person, intimate encounter that will be fulfilled only in a dream. That “I see my darling’s own face” (jian jun mian [line 3]) through the photographic medium plays a powerful role in conjuring amorous imagination and intimate feeling, and accordingly the exchange of photographs became the major catalyst and new conduit for emotion and desire to blossom. An exchange of photographs between a couple may seem ordinary today, but in the 1890s, it verged on breaking from Confucian propriety to address conjugal intimacy. An intimate, private moment of viewing and caressing is also prominently featured in the 1912 story Jade Pear Spirit (Yuli hun 玉梨魂), written in parallel prose by Xu Zhenya 徐枕亞 (1889–1937). The male protagonist He Mengxia receives a photograph, which the female protagonist Bai Liying, a widow, purposefully left in his bed, together with a poetic line: “A person lingers then recedes like the tide” (youyou renqu ruchao 悠悠人去如潮). In the description, the woman in the photograph wears Western-style clothing and holds a Western book, a typical fashionable way of posing at the time. Mengxia stares at and amorously touches the photograph. Then, in distress, Mengxia opens the base and removes the photograph to write two poems on the back, one of which reads: What if I keep calling up the Zhenzhen in the painting, the mirror case covers the coldness. One point of sorrow under the eye, two dashes of red in the dimpled cheeks. Deep feeling is as much as a gift of jade, layered emotion covers the brocade quilt. Aside from burning incense to worship you, from now on our meetings will be few.28 真真畫裡喚如何， 鏡架生寒漫費呵。 一點愁心攢眼底，



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二分紅暈透腮渦。 深情邈邈抵瑤贈， 密意重重覆錦窩。 除是焚香朝夕共， 於今見面更無多。

After receiving the poems from Mengxia, Liying writes to him to say: “I am sending you this object as a gift; it shows deep emotions of love in this moment, and it will be a memento after parting in the future.” 29 As a widow, Liying is torn between traditional morals that urge her to repress her romantic desire. Sending a photograph of herself is an audacious declaration of love, transforming her from the viewed object to the desiring subject. To understand her action in context, for an early Republican lady from a proper family to give a man a photograph of herself was nearly equivalent to her offering her body to the man. This is not simply a moral conviction. It echoes the belief that the image is equivalent to the body due to the visual efficacy of ingenious painterly skills that give life to the image.30 Liying’s outlandish wish is to take the realistic power of the photo as an extension of the body, the visual substitute of her non-presence, which is her own way of possessing the man’s love and virtually crossing the social boundaries that she is otherwise unable to cross. In his poem, Mengxia responds to Liying’s desire to be remembered by anticipating his own worship of the image of Zhenzhen as a substitute. Allegedly, there was a photograph of a widow hanging in the writer’s study to commemorate his own love affair with the widow in real life.31 In examples by both Huang Zunxian and Xu Zhenya, the photograph, involving multisensory, affective experience, works to retain intimacy and memory. The power of looking is intensely described and psychologically exploited in the earliest story by Ye Shengtao 葉聖陶 (1894–1988), which was written in classical language in 1914. The story, titled “the picture behind the glass widow” (Boli chuangnei zhi huaxiang 玻璃窗內之畫像), tells of a young, accomplished doctor, Tao Zijin, who passes by a Japanese-owned photography studio on his way to work every day. Like many other pedestrians, he often stops to view the photographs in the window display. One day he joins the crowd and becomes thoroughly infatuated with a half-life-sized photograph of a beautiful lady, fantasizing about her and her accompanying him that night. This

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“Zhenzhen in the painting” (huali Zhenzhen 畫裡真真), displayed in the public space, looks so real that he feels she responds to his smile and gaze with corresponding infatuation. After developing a neurotic obsession and a burning desire to locate the lady in the real world, he feels dejected one day when he finds that the studio has removed the display. He is then shocked to catch a glimpse of the very woman in a carriage racing by his office window. The male gaze’s visual capability thus far might remind us of the effect of a telescope, depicted in Li Yu’s 李漁 (1611–1680) story. Recognizing the real person, Tao concludes that she is even more beautiful than the image of her. A week or so later he is called in as a doctor to see a seriously ill lady. Soon realizing that the sick woman is the one he is obsessed with, Tao is deeply disturbed by the incongruity between the woman’s terrible appearance in her illness and the lasting beauty in the photograph and in his visual memory. The tale reaches its climax when the dying lady whispers broken phrases like “Mother, I love you.” In a trance, Tao only hears “I love you.” The story ends abruptly as the doctor rushes out, unable to bear the pain.32 The story, indebted to the archetype of the original Zhenzhen story, evokes some of its vocabulary; more important, it incorporates a new theme—romance taking place on the street by chance—and features the act of looking as a key plot development. The fantastic element has been translated into modern psychological terms. Ye Shengtao devotes substantial space to the emotional or psychological suffering of the looker and his overinvestment in the image. The story also presents comparisons between the photographic image and the real person in the carriage, the image in memory, and the living image of the ailing body. The beautiful appearance printed on paper, ironically long-lasting, contrasts with the transient mortal body. Using female photographs to stimulate erotic imagination is depicted in a number of urban stories by media-savvy Shanghai writers. Among them, popular urban writer Xu Zhuodai 徐卓呆 (1881–1958) wrote several stories that treat the female photograph as one plot in seeking a lifelong partner.33 “Women’s plaything” (Nüxing de wanwu 女性的玩物) tells a satirical story of female protagonist Qiu Suwen, a widow in her fifties, who uses photographs and newspapers to manipulate male desire. She posts a marriage proposal in the newspaper to enthusiastic response. In her letters to the thousands of suitors who respond to her advertisement, she includes her granddaughter’s photograph (claiming that it is of herself) to schedule a date at the theater,



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thus boosting ticket sales. The story caricatures with carnivalesque derision the power of the beholder’s gaze and his fervent desire for women’s physical beauty. In full alignment with a material world, the social butterfly uses her deceased granddaughter’s image as an empowering tool to manipulate men, reversing the position of spectator and object. In the stories Jade Pear Spirit and “Women’s plaything,” written only ten years apart, female subjects develop from a state of emerging self-consciousness and become adept at using commodity culture for their own stratagems. However, the stories are less concerned with woman’s subject formation and empowerment than with satirizing males’ obsessional neurosis, overvaluation of female physical beauty, and faith in the visual veracity of a new technology.34 Ye Shengtao and Xu Zhuodai’s stories are predicated on optical fidelity and people’s perceptual responses to the power of verisimilitude. Ironic or amusing, this exact likeness, achieved via new ocular devices, further incites deepseated male fantasy to a neurotic degree, causing men to conflate the status of being lifelike with real life itself. In describing the intense moment of looking at a Zhenzhen in a private space or on the street, these authors attempt to convert visual information into literary writing, resembling an ocular lens that assists viewing in an affective or obsessional act. These attempts, however limited, engage in intermedial imitation on the formal level through a descriptive procedure that replicates the technological gaze. At the onset of modern visual culture in the public space, literature (either in classical or vernacular languages) gestured toward the condition of the mass circulation of images.35 Whether describing the strengthening of affective relationships through visuality or a case of falling in love with an image, these stories show the prominence of the visual as opposed to action-generated events, revealing the visual efficacy as well as overinvestment of images with elaborated feelings from the urban subjects living in a thriving consumer society.

THE RED-POWDERED GIRL AND THE SKULL When the obedient Lady Zhenzhen ventured into the Republican era to reach an expanding public audience, she acquired a monstrous face or was stripped of her clothing. This section explores the reimagination and exploitation of

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the “public” female body as portrayed through print media, with a focus on the visual trope of hongfen kulou 紅粉骷髏 (red-powdered girl turning into a skull). Red powder—metonymically referring to a young, beautiful woman in her prime—is dramatically juxtaposed with a skull or skeleton, a figure of mortality and death. How can we understand this troubling fascination with these juxtaposed images, and how did gendered biases and phantasmagoric imaginings continue to infuse modern sensibilities? The rhetoric of hongfen kulou crystallizes the intersection of gendered imagination, anxiety, and visual pleasure, inducing a range of erotic, comic, eerie, or fearful feelings toward the female body. The image of the skull, long familiar to literati, originated with the parable of Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi) encountering a skull by the roadside. Instead of being horrified, he sleeps with it under his head. The skull then appears in his dreams to enlighten him with the joys of death over life. As Wilt Idema explains, in late imperial narratives, the skull, often associated with black magic, is the representative of the power of yin, associated with women and death.36 The phrase hongfen kulou denotes that the beauty and her skeleton are just different, mutually interchangeable forms (se 色), thus urging people to eradicate desire.37 If the skull left by the roadside is genderless in Master Zhuang’s story, in its later variations the skull acquires a gendered identity. The Heart Sutra includes an appended poem that reads: A beautiful lady is indeed a female skull, it does not worry about playing from morning to night. Once she is unexpectedly on the road to death, it is hard to show glamour in the tomb.38 嬌女原是粉骷髏， 暮樂朝歡總不愁。 一旦無常歸冥路， 夜臺難逞舊風流.

The idea of the beauty as the skull also became a recurring literary theme. For instance, Su Shi writes in his “Eulogy of the Skull” (Dulou zan 髑髏贊), “The decayed skull in the yellow sand, / originally was the peach and plum blossom



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[the beautiful woman]” (黃沙枯髑髏，本是桃李面). In one of the episodes in Dream of the Red Chamber, Jia Rui, handed a Bejeweled Mirror of Romance (fengyue baojian) by a mysterious Daoist priest, is seduced by the woman who appears in the mirror. After making love to her, he soon discovers that a horrifying image of a skull has appeared where she once was.39 Therefore, the image of the skull has multiple meanings: it serves as a reminder of the transitory nature of beauty and mortal life; it is also a reminder of female sexual transgression in secularized Buddhist and Daoist terms and of the instant retribution for man’s unbridled lust. Yet the visual representation of the skull or skeleton, if not totally absent, has never been a point of interest in traditional China, in sharp contrast to the prominence of memento mori in the West. The existing paintings of skeletons, such as those by Luo Pin 羅聘 (1733–1799), are believed to have been influenced by Jesuit translations of Western anatomical texts in the seventeenth century.40 The multiple threads of influence (Daoist, Buddhist, and Christian missionary) shape the symbolic meanings of the skull, which was in most cases inscribed with a gendered epidermis. The figural richness of the skull was exploited and perpetuated when this magical metamorphosis was seized upon and visualized through a new medium. The series of four photographs of a pair of courtesans with the same framing design appeared in Fiction Times (figure 4.4).41 The four accompanying

FIGURE 4.4  Multiple encounters, Xiaoshuo shibao 1 no.5 (1910).

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doggerel poems describe the first, second, third, and final dramatic encounter with women who appear to be courtesans, spelling out the collective doom of women. From very early in Chinese narrative, courtesans’ life stories are often told in detail in biographies,42 but it is the visual juxtaposition of a life trajectory that make this series striking. In their prime (featured in the first and second images from the right), the happy fulfilled life, denoted by the phrase huahao yueyuan 花好月圓 (beautiful flowers and the round moon), takes place. In the fourth photo, the female faces are replaced by skulls, and the poems convey the futility of life as well as a deep anxiety by means of colloquial phrases such as kepa ya 可怕呀 (so scary) and aiyo 哎喲 (oh, dear). The visual metamorphosis is used as a shockingly direct illustration to highlight apprehension over death and the fragility of female beauty. If the photographs suggest an acute awareness of mortality, the sense of accelerating and fleeting time seems especially or even exclusively applied to the shared fate of women. The abject horror incited by the fourth photo lies in the marginality of the image, which depicts the transformation from life to death. Photography stepped in to remediate traditional crafts, such as shadow puppet performance, continuing to rely on extremes of beauty and horror to convey a cautionary message.43 Sudden revelations of disfigurations, also a common theme in ghost story narratives, were adopted by other entertaining forms (e.g., the magic show, moshu) in the urban environment.44 A taste for the skull and erotic fantasy reached audiences through shocking visual effects and a mixture of titillation, admonition, and entertainment. If the banal lyrics in figure 4.4 are charged with conventional sentiments and light-hearted humor, the essay titled “Red powder and the skull” (hongfen yu kulou 紅粉與骷髏), appeared in the Violet (Ziluolan 紫羅蘭), is written in a serious tone and describes how the beautiful and sensuous female body in a prosperous, entertaining cityscape can instantly morph into a horrifying image of skeletons and hell. In this formulation, red powder and skulls are nothing but different manifestations (bianxiang) of skulls. The dual vision of life is reflected in this line: “Red powder and white bone—they are the one and the two” (hongfen baigu shiyi shi’er 紅粉白骨，是一是二).45 In conjuring the vision of the skull, the essay offers lessons for lovers living under the glittering streetlights of modern cities, employing a jarring mixture of classical idioms, clichés, and contemporary images. Two photo-essays in



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Truth Post Bimonthly (Shibao banyuekan 實報半月刊) illustrate this translation of the trope into the modern urban environment. “From ‘Red Powder’ to ‘the Skull’ ” (Cong hongfen shuodao kulou 從紅粉說到骷髏), a three-page vernacular essay documents a beauty turning into a skeleton interspersed with two X-ray images of skeletons and seven nude photographs.46 This new-style essay is followed immediately with a classical-style rhapsody (fu) titled “Rhapsody on the beauty and the skeleton” (Meiren kulou fu 美人骷髏賦) (figure 4.5). The rhapsody ends: “Se is empty and the emptiness is se; the flowers are blooming and withered. What is startling is that the gentle woman turns into a pile of bones.”47 The layout uses typography and visual elements of four noncredited Western nude photographs, repeatedly charged with the ambivalence of the urban male’s fascination with the erotic (revealed in the mass circulation of Western nude photographs) and his fear of it (expressed in words). New imaging techniques, such as the X-ray photograph, were also invested with moral imperatives and a gendered bias and were immediately associated

FIGURE 4.5  “Rhapsody on the

beauty and the skeleton,” Shibao banyuekan 5 (1935):21.

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FIGURE 4.6  “Under X-ray,” Liangyou 102

(1935):38.

with the female body upon their popular reception in China. It was as if a beautiful woman were a mask over a skeleton and the X-ray a tool to strip away that mask to reveal the illusion. X-ray images, seen by and as expressions of an intrusive disciplinary gaze, dramatically aroused the fear of corporeal annihilation.48 This mechanical imaging further perpetuated male anxiety about the female as an alien or threatening being. In The Young Companion, a side shot of the upper body of a cheerful modern girl is accompanied by an X-ray image of a skull. The message printed on the top of the X-ray image is illustrative of such appropriation: “Under the X-rays, millions of things cannot escape and must reveal their forms. The red powder is eventually turned into the skeleton. Those who are indulging in the sea of desire should take this as a self-admonition” (figure 4.6).49 In Sigmund Freud’s discussion of “Medusa’s Head,” he links Medusa’s head to the terrifying sight of the mother’s genitals and its shocking effect on male viewers. Laura Mulvey develops Freud’s theory of men’s fear of women to account for the gendered gaze and spectatorship in cinema, arguing that a threatening female sexuality evokes the castration complex in the male spectator.50 The combination of the nude feminine body and the skull, psychologically perceived as a victim of time and as a threat, registers deep-seated anxiety and tension toward the monstrous female body and an aggressive female sexuality. This construct of the female with the skull, a reflection of the entrenched male gaze and anxiety, is also grounded in the



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FIGURE 4.7  “You magnificent skull,”

Jianmei yuekan 3 (1934).

ancient religious idea of emptiness (kong).51 The Republican-era evocations of the skeleton are, without doubt, a vivid visualization of the relationship between lustfulness and emptiness, a theme that informed the practice in the first place and offered legitimacy to the consumption of nudity. The theme of beauty and death, often with religious twists, proved popular in print culture. In the 1930s, talented photographers played with the rich figural meanings to give the skull imagery a refreshingly new interpretation. In these creative works, the skull is no longer horrific but rather a modernist prop, revealing the influence of the prominent use of the skull in Western iconography. The photograph in figure 4.7 is credited to someone named Cilang 次郎 (a pseudonymous male name), who published a series of photographs that explore the graphic possibilities of the nude in Healthy Beauty Monthly (Jianmei yuekan 健美月刊).52 As the nude woman holds the skull high with the side of her curvaceous bare body facing us, she seems to celebrate her alluring sexual power. She takes this figure of death in its positive aspect, establishing a kind of bond of sisterhood by whispering words to the skull. The accompanying poem, written in vernacular style and printed vertically on the left, seems to step in to ventriloquize the voice of the female photographic subject. The poetic voice expresses her wish to whisper secrets to the skull and to celebrate its previous life. The poem, titled “Ni banlan de kulou” 你斑斕的骷髏 (You magnificent skull), is written in the

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intimate voice of an “I” addressing a “you,” namely, the skull. One section of the poem reads: You slept in the underworld for so long, are the ashes of romantic love reigniting? Have the pleasures of life been revived, On this breezy moonlit night, I dig you up, I’ll put you beside my pillow and whisper to you day and night! 53 你長眠地下久了， 有否愛情的死灰在重燃！ 曾否重溫起生之趣味， 我今在月白風清之夜把你掘起， 我要把你擺在我枕邊，朝朝暮暮同你耳語！

Echoing Zhuangzi’s talking with the skull, the “I” in the poem takes the skull as an intimate alter ego. The adoring gesture in the photographic image gives the skull a new meaning, and the poem offers a “voice” to the image, turning it into a subject that articulates desire. The economy of desire and pleasure is radically redefined in this combination of image and text, which not only celebrates its liberated female sexuality in the nude image but also provides a positive spin on the message coded in the skull image, a reminder of the brevity of life.

DOMESTICATING/FETISHIZING THE NUDE Michel Foucault analyzed the inscription of social power on the body, writing: “The body is the inscribed surface of events.” 54 Inscription can be understood as codification in a more palpable sense. In this and the next section, I take the inscription literarily and explore how words are inscribed or appended on representations of the nude body, and how the nude image becomes a site on which regimes of discourse and cultural forces are imprinted. More specifically, I explore how the poems and a variety of paratexts function in accompanying Western and Chinese female nude photographs in the mass media and how



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Chinese art photographers poeticize their nude photo shoots through lyricism. The nude, entering as it did into China as an alien figure that destabilized traditional conceptualization of the body as correlative with cosmology, represents a significantly new way of seeing the body.55 Examining visual representations of the female body in Shanghai pictorials, Yingjin Zhang argues that the reconfiguration of the concept of the body in modern pictorials, in which the female body is now represented as an objective aesthetic or commercial object, significantly differs from the scenario of the absence of the body or the sartorial body within the system of cultural signification in traditional art.56 Focusing on selected examples of textual inscription of nude photographs, in this section I examine the rhetoric of captions of nude photographs in the context of their publications—in Pei-yang Pictorial News (Beiyang huabao 北洋畫 報, 1926–1933) in particular—to show how “the text loads the image, burdening the image with a culture, a moral, an imagination.” 57 The widely adopted practice of naming in pictorial magazines and newspapers seems to suggest that the photographs are limited by their capacity for realistic representation, and therefore the seemingly free-floating images must be accompanied by captions or couplets to counterbalance their openness while further conjuring the literary imagination and lyrical associations to appeal to the mind. The sensuous literary tradition of “fragrance and allure” (xiangyan 香艷)—in Palace-style poetry (Gongti shi 宮體詩) in particular—as well as the Buddhist theme of emptiness were incorporated into the textual practices around nudity.58 This textual strategy exhibits an increasingly complex, incongruous, and bizarre relationship amidst the global flow of nude images and the adoption of modern aesthetics of the body. Instead of treating the texts (title and captions) as mere message, the textual and cultural inscriptions on the naked female body work to police, intensify, proliferate, or clothe it with signification through metaphors and allusions. The commingled image and text in pictorial magazines continues to demonstrate the interpenetrations as well as the battle between “naked” realism and sensuous imagination promised by written words. The Western nude in painting, photographs, and postcards had a limited circulation at the turn of the twentieth century in China. It was not until the 1920s that Western nudes in pictorials such as Pei-yang Pictorial News, Elegance (Linglong 玲瓏, 1931–1937), and The Young Companion began to reach a wider audience. Nudity, the signifier of exoticism and eroticism, had gained

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new meaning by this time, representing Western culture in the guise of the “art of the portrait” (Meishu renxiang 美術人像) and embodying the “beauty of the human body” (renti mei 人體美) or “healthy beauty” (jianmei 健美).59 Tracing the transnational flow of Western nudes into China as manifested in Pei-yang Pictorial News from 1926 to 1933, Liying Sun carefully delineates their domestication in a Chinese pictorial context, as well as the editorial strategies implemented in this process. Publishing nude photography under the claim of the body’s beauty is not just to legitimize its publication but, more important, to visualize or mold the Chinese body through a modern Westernized conception of the perfect body.60 I share Sun’s observation that exotic nude images are framed by captions loaded with cultural significance, but I wish to further explore the role that lyricism played in the process of domestication and the impulses, drives, and slippages of such a pairing at the sites of presentation. Many titles involve a rather free interpretation, probably serving as a cataloging method for the magazine’s printed pictures and increasing the legibility of these alien images to Chinese readers with a humorous or lighthearted touch. As Stuart Hall informs us about the process of encoding and decoding in mass communication,61 the pictorial editors acted to ascribe meaning through the process of encoding a message. The practice often results in discordant pairings and arbitrary associations. For instance, in Pei-yang Pictorial News, numerous Western nude images are titled “after a bath” (yuhou 浴後), “spring sleep” (chunmian 春眠), “carefree” (yiran 怡然), “washing the feet” (zhuozu 濯足),” “butter-like skin” (ningsu 凝酥), or “soft jade like skin” (ruanyu 軟玉). Other titles include quotes from poems of the Tang and Song dynasties: “After combing through her cloud-style hair, she still gazes into the mirror” (雲髻罷梳還對鏡), “Green silk, warm scent, and a jade screen decorated with clouds” (翠綃香暖雲屏), or “a flowing hot spring washing white skin” (溫泉水滑洗凝脂).62 As hackneyed as they might sound, these captions imbue the pictorial surface with a certain emotional depth and persistently point to an iconic figure in history with her thinly veiled clothing, i.e., Consort Yang Yuhuan after taking her bath. The examples show the consistent tendency of the editorial staff to select an element in the pictorial composition, such as feminine accessories, furniture, or a gesture, and then make often capricious associations to it from the repertoire of sensuous poetry. The visual and the verbal establish a farfetched linkage through the linguistic strategy of metonymy. The suggestive, poetic dictions are often



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FIGURE 4.8  “The 15-Beauty-Points of

a Woman,” Beiyang huabao 5, no. 201 (1928):7.

in sharp contrast with the foreign, curvy, bare body. In most cases, given the viewers’ familiarity with the xiangyan tradition, these stale words continue to tickle the erotic imagination within the accustomed cultural realm. The editorial practices thus serve to anchor the flux of hard-to-define meanings of alien nudity within a culturally familiar symbolic world. By overvaluing individual body parts to invest them with erotic desire, the female body has been constantly objectified and fetishized. In this collation of image-text (figure 4.8), the fragmentation of corporeal parts (fifteen in total) of a visibly foreign body—including the breast, arm, feet, knee, lips, nose, and other parts—is supplemented with classical diction or poetic quotes. The text printed vertically above the image of the breasts at the lower left reads: “Indistinct orchid-like breast, bean sprouts beginning to bud, beautiful skin with a faint fragrance” (隱約蘭胸,菽發初勻,凝脂暗香), a line from Zhu Yizun’s 朱彝尊 (1629–1709) erotic poem on the breast.63 The image of the full breasts is ironically complemented by the poetic line that eulogizes “bean sprouts beginning to bud,” showing a cultural difference in appreciating the size of the breast. Connoisseurship of feminine beauty in a private setting and the associated erotic gaze have been appropriated and perpetuated in a new public realm, and the subtle or not-so-subtle differences in premodern and modern views on the female body remain obscure to the editors. The recontextualization of nude images from Edle Nacktheit in China (1928) by German photographer Heinz Perckhammer (1895–1965) serves as another

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good example of how sensuous nude images acquired Buddhist-tinged messages. The beautifully silk-bound book is a collection of nude photographs of courtesans in Macau in the 1920s.64 The soft-focused photographs are aesthetically composed, with naked Chinese female bodies and an array of selected objects (e.g., a vase with flowers, a lantern, mirrors, a mural or shrine) reflecting the author’s erotic gaze on the oriental body and his fascination with Buddhism. A number of his nude photographs, all without titles in the original collection, acquired titles when they were reproduced in Pei-yang Pictorial News in 1928, with an acknowledgment of authorship to Peikehanmu 培克漢姆.65 One photograph of a nude sitting on an altar accompanied by two candles is titled Three illuminators (sanguang 三光). Referring to the sun, moon, and stars in Buddhism, the term used here refers in a mischievous way to the two candles and the naked body (revealed in Chinese as guang 光 in a literal sense). Photos of a naked model holding flowers or standing in front of a Buddhist mural in two different positions are titled Miao lianhua 妙蓮華 (accompanied by the original English title Perfumed lotus, the symbol of the pure wisdom of Buddha), Dharma body (fashen 法身), and Se is empty (se jishi kong 色即是空).66 Kong (emptiness) acquires a double meaning, referring both to the bareness of the body and to enlightenment attained after overcoming sexuality and mundane desire. Whether the textual move is sincere or just a gesture toward more conservative social norms, the nude photographs, filtered through a doubled erotic and religious lens, are enveloped with linguistic messages and spiritually uplifting meanings. In this sense, providing Chinese titles and captions for these nude images of anonymous women in pictorial newspapers is a distinctive practice of translation, or “refraction” (the adaptation of the text to a different audience), a practice that caters to the ideological aesthetic demands of the viewers and readers.67

INSCRIBING INTERIORITY TO THE NUDE Taking inspiration from Western imagistic culture and incorporating classical scenes in their compositions, Chinese photographers embarked on an adventure in nude photography from the late 1920s. For these Shanghai-based photographers, poetic images (e.g., shuangfeng 雙峰 [twin peaks] and yuti 玉體



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[jade body] as euphemisms for breasts and the naked body, respectively) may have infused their preconceived ideas as well as the overall composition and staging of the female bodies. In many of these cases, the photographer himself was also involved in naming the piece and in the layout of the final production. Move & Still, the two-volume collection of photographs by the multitalented artist and film director Dan Duyu 但杜宇 (1896–1972), includes a range of natural scenery, urban landscapes, stills, and studio scenes, incorporating “the pictorial principles” (huali 畫理) formulated in art history to achieve a balance between the urbane mobile gaze and the lyricized images of still objects around 1930 Shanghai.68 It also stages numerous erotic spectacles using Chinese nudes and movie actresses, with fetishized body parts (a highlighted bare leg in particular), the back of the torso, a reclining attitude, naked bodies in a mirror, bodies cast in a net, or a female body in revealing clothing in the city at night. Although female modesty is still present or suggested by gestures such as a lowered head, Dan’s overall handling of the nude image and the female body is surprisingly audacious, revealing a cosmopolitan, even decadent, air. More than a hundred photographs in the collections are presented along with poetic lines or four-character phrases and simplified English titles. Many accompanying poetic lines or phrases, inextricably enmeshed with the xiangyan writing and a distinct ornamentalism, frame the nude photograph and tease with salaciousness and rare playfulness. One close-up shot of a beautiful bosom is titled “beautiful dual peaks in abundant spring with sprouting jade” (chun’ang shuangfeng yuyouya 春盎雙峯 玉有芽), a line quoted from the poem “Beauty’s Breasts” (Meiren ru 美人乳).69 Other captions to the nude photos, such as “gentle, delicate, and sleepy, the jade body exhibiting” (qingqing jiaokun yu hengchen 輕輕嬌困玉橫陳) and “white silk barely covers the bright skin” (bingxiao weiyan xuejiming 冰綃微掩 雪肌明), are the lexical confluence between different lines tailored to fit the new context. In addition to the thematic correlations centering on the female body, the connoisseurship of female beauty and particular attention to physical details in xiangyan writing also seem to match with the visual realism promised by photography. Here, the traditional pairing of Palace-style poetry and paintings of delicate, frail, fully-covered ladies (whose sexuality is only occasionally hinted at with a bared arm) is replaced by the combination of a single poetic line and modern nudity.70

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FIGURE 4.9 A female nude by the pond, Duyu baimeitu xuji (1920).

FIGURE 4.10 Mirror Girl, Move & Still 2 (1931).

Large mirrors or a reflective pond are often employed in Dan Duyu’s compositions containing urban ladies, inscribing interiority to the images. Before acquiring his obsession with the camera, Dan was an accomplished, self-taught painter and cartoonist who drew female images and urban scenes. Figures 4.9 and 4.10 show Dan’s handling of nudity in his drawings and photography. Nude Xiaoqing is appreciating her own reflection by the pond, surrounded by mountains (figure 4.9). The drawing is inscribed with a contemplative mood and a sense of female interiority in Xiaoqing’s attitude, as though she embraces her reflected image in the water.71 The captions read, “Unlike Xiaoqing who uses sorrow as a mirror, / the clear stream and stones are intimate with your body” (不比小青愁照人，清溪白石親儂身).72 Conflating the legendary talented Xiaoqing, who falls in love with her reflection in the water, and the Western Narcissus, Dan sutures two stories together here, replacing the emaciated peasant girl with a curvy nude. In the photograph, there is an interplay between the composed nude with her arms spread wide to hold a large round mirror and her reflection in the mirror (figure 4.10). The mirror offers doubled planes within the picture. The composition is refreshing, using minimal objects and emphasizing geometry, lines, and reflection. However, by naming this particular picture “the shadow in the mirror, fragrant jade” (jingzhong renying yushengxiang 鏡中人影玉生香), Dan displaces



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FIGURE 4.11  Huang Bore and Laosheng, By the Ripples, Liangyou 120 (1926):27.

the concreteness of the modern nude back into the traditional aesthetic realm by describing it as a generic, illusory image in a mirror or a piece of jade with a lingering fragrance. The euphemisms (e.g., fragrant jade), with their suggestive linguistic power, immediately overlay lustfulness onto the nude, catering to the bodily sensations while maintaining the façade of cultural norms. To viewers with a degree of cultural competency, the meanings of a nude are significantly enriched through poetic metaphors. If Dan Duyu’s photographs in Move & Still gravitate around sensuous or erotic content, the following examples, taken in outdoor settings by art photographers, offer more romanticized presentations of nudity, leading to broader artistic experimentation. Their pictorial composition points to an idealized female body in preferred natural scenes (with lotuses, trees, or by a pond), as if re-creating poetic scenery to achieve artistic effects.73 The nude images, printed via zinc lithographic plates and published in a large size in The Young Companion, significantly reshaped the reader’s viewing experience through the graphic design, editorial strategies, and accompanying text.74 Figure 4.11 is a two-page photo spread arranged as a photomontage. The two nude photographs by Huang Bore 黃般若

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(aka Wong Po-yeh, 1901–1968) are printed at the lower right and upper left and are cropped in the same shape. Four smaller photographs of geese on the river by Laosheng 勞生 (i.e., Wang Laosheng [Wang Lao-sun] 王勞生, 1908–1961) are cropped in square or round shapes. The upper, lower left, and right quadrants all seem to correspond harmoniously with each other and are decorated with a background of modern musical scores to achieve a pictorial effect. The conscious design of these pages, typical of The Young Companion at the time, suggests that the message is conveyed not only through individual photographs but also by harmonious montages of images. Huang Bore, who was a distinguished traditional-style painter in the Canton area, presents a beautifully composed image by superimposing the shadows of leaves on a nude’s back. Bare torsos, juxtaposed with white geese, all seem to suggest that the nude body belongs to “natural” scenes of beauty. The delicate play of light and shadow draws attention to the lines of the model’s back and buttocks, giving the image a romantic and sensuous touch. The shadow of leaves is reminiscent of bamboo leaves—a perennially favorite topos—in the works of master painters such as Zheng Banqiao. The fetishistic representation of the unmarked female nude’s back is printed over musical scores and overlaid with symbolism, all of which seem to distantly echo the composition of Man Ray’s masterpiece Ingres’s Violin. This double split-page collage appears with the title Zaishui zhi mei (在水之湄) printed vertically, and with the English title By the ripples printed horizontally on the top. The words in Chinese and English, the different font sizes, and the images of musical scores all fit within the space constraints of the page. Each photograph is accompanied by a citation of a poetic couplet along the side. Huang’s nude photograph with leaves is accompanied by these lines of the Yuan dynasty poet Ma Zhiyuan 馬致遠: “The moon slanting over the tops of plum trees and the loneliness of a human shadow; / Sorrowful and feeling ever mistreated, my youth has been wasted” (梅梢月斜人影孤，恨 薄情四時辜負).75 This modern nude is given the conventional lovelorn voice of a boudoir lady lamenting her fate. Nude photographs in these illustrated magazines that adopt the modern typology of the page, collocated with other images and poetic vocabularies, evoke spectacles and create a lyricized vision of the modern body and scenery. If the previous examples consistently link Chinese nudity with natural scenes, figure 4.12, a photo of a female nude facing a city landscape, registers



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FIGURE 4.12  Ms Lüdi, “Standing by the railing alone facing the sunset,” Jianmei yuekan 2 (1934).

a sense of modernity. Shot from behind, she stands on a balcony with both of her hands on the steel railing, facing the urban jungle. The photograph, credited to a woman named Ms Lüdi 綠滴女士, is accompanied by a stanza from the emperor poet Li Yu 李煜, beginning “Standing by the railing alone facing the sunset” (duzi mu pinglan 獨自暮憑欄).76 This stanza, traditionally understood as addressing the sorrow of losing the nation in a masculine voice, is repurposed as the expression of an exoticized modern woman’s nostalgia for youth and life. The citation seems to attribute a heroic, lamenting voice to the lady. Is this really the voice of the female nude? Her pose by the railing is the single tenuous link with the poetic sentiment. Three nude photographs by Shanghai-based photographers Lang Jingshan 郎靜山 (aka Long Chin-san,1892–1995), whose 1928 photograph of a nude is credited as one of China’s earliest, and Lu Shifu 卢施福 (1898–1983) can be seen below. Published in Healthy Beauty Monthly, figure 4.13 shows three naked young Chinese ladies with fashionable haircuts posing in a small boat that drifts on a lake among water lilies. Two of the women are pretending to play with the oars. None of them appear relaxed. Young, beautiful women on a boat or among lotuses or water lilies is a familiar scene in the literary tradition. However, visual representations of a group of nudes in an outdoor scenic spot are a novelty. Printed below the photograph is a pseudo-classical

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FIGURE 4.13  Lang Jingshan, “Beautiful girls indulging in the homeland of water lilies,” Jianmen yuekan 2 (1934).

Courtesy of Shanghai Municipal Library.

poem after the style of The Book of Songs, using the word xi 兮 and phrases such as “My heart is broken” (woxin youshang 我心憂傷). Thematically, the poem echoes “Reeds” (Jianjia 蒹葭) in The Book of Songs, subscribing to the recurrent association between female sensuality and water. The lines are combined with traditional and strikingly new metaphors to render conflicting messages about the modern woman. In line 6, “That skylark is soaring freely” (bi yunque xi zizai aoxiang 彼雲雀兮自在翱翔), the image of the skylark is borrowed from Shelley’s “To the Skylark,” which was popular at the time; line 11, “My heart is hit by a golden arrow, released from the lady’s heart” (shuxin tuozhi jinjian xi zhong wo xiongduo 漱心脫之金箭兮中我胸垛), obviously refers to Cupid’s arrow. Although the picture sets the erotic gaze on the distant Other to reinforce the typical fantasy of the sensuous female beyond reach, the love-stricken poetic voice inverts the dynamics to express his agony and intense desire. The picture stages a concrete, realistic scene of nudes playing, different from Lang’s late works, which generally give preference to aesthetic suggestiveness and abstraction (explored in chapter 6). The nudity spins eroticism and fantasies of sexual pleasure, but the words attempt to elevate that pleasure to the realm of exalted emotion and interiority. The composition with the female nude in figure 4.14 by Lang Jingshan achieves the overall effect of being classic and simple. The sensuous figure is



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FIGURE 4.14  Lang Jingshan, The Heart Is a Buddha, Lang Jingshan sheying zhuankan 2 (1941).

theatrically arranged with her bare breasts dominating the picture and has a curiously tranquil ambience. She looks down at a small statue of the Buddha that she is holding, and her legs are folded into lotus position, the traditional pose of meditation, which also serves to conceal her pubic area. The sculpture of Buddha in her hand, however, appears phallic. Sitting on soft fabrics, she is backlit, and the irradiating light bathes her body in a halo. The texture of her skin is rendered flawlessly and smoothly. The Buddhist statue and the soft focus stress her spiritualism, but the composition shows Lang’s indebtedness to Western nude work. The Chinese title of this photograph is The heart is a Buddha (xin jishi fo 心即是佛), and the English title is Nirvanasque.77 The titles instantly repress bodily sensation or libidinal energy and sublimate it into spirituality, giving the figure a goddess-like quality and an elevated sense of beauty. The message that “the heart is a Buddha,” presumably expressing an idea of the sitter who is a sensuous nude in the composition, ironically ­exhibits the consistent linking of the female body with Buddhist ideas, with an emphasis on overcoming sexuality to attain transcendence and emptiness. Lang, who had control over the production process of the exhibition devoted

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FIGURE 4.15  Lu Shifu, Illusory

Realm, Feiying 6 (1936): 22.

to his work, achieves a union between the photographer and the photographic subject by connecting the spiritual voice (“the heart is a Buddha”) with the nude body. The nude, initially an alien figure that deeply disturbs the Chinese gaze, becomes a new religious or utopian site for artistic imagination and practices. Another case in point is the composite photograph by Lu Shifu that shows the shining body of a Western nude sculpture, made of metal, against the iconic rocky peaks and pines of the Yellow Mountains (figure 4.15). The nude statue in its dynamic attitude enlivens the composition, which was made from two negatives. This work, titled Illusory realm (Huanjing 幻境), is laden with narrative tension.78 Is this steel model an updated version of a goddess wandering in a misty land? Or do the Yellow Mountains, which represent the Chinese landscape and masculinity, and the exotic nude female made of steel, a symbol of industrial modernity, appear equally alluring to the male viewer? The semantic reading of the title seems to negate the meaning of the mundane objects and appearances, all of which are ultimately illusory. In these creative works by pictorial photographers such as Huang Bore, Lang Jingshan, and



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FIGURE 4.16  “Zhenzhen in the painting,” Qiu haitang 6 (1946): 6.

Lu Sifu, the figure of nudity was lyricized, becoming stimuli for fresh compositions and new sites for the projection of thinly veiled masculine desires. In the Republican era, the figure of the nude, the skull, and Lady Zhenzhen were conjoined literarily and figuratively, perpetuating traditional gendered imaginings and fear of sexuality and completing the circle from the thousand-year-old fantasy to modern eroticism. One illustration of this may be seen in the juxtaposition of a photograph showing a slightly angled frontal view of a Chinese nude with a rare comfortable smile and the accompanying poem “Zhenzhen in the painting” (huali Zhenzhen) above it (figure 4.16). The poetic voice begins with the question, “Is this Zhenzhen in the painting real or not” (huali zhenzhen shiye feiye 畫裏真真，是耶非耶)? It concludes, “In the end everything turns out to be unreal (jia 假).” 79 With her arms folded behind her head, the nude is a picture of health, seemingly proud to show her breasts to the viewer. The modern nude appears to contrast absurdly with the message dictated by the editor, which seems once again to tell the reader that all that is solid, beautiful, or erotic will surely melt into air or turn into a skull. Will the viewer take the cautionary message or take sensuous delight in nudity—or both? The rival voices, contradictory positions, and uncomfortable coordination characteristic of image-text practice in mass media are particularly striking when it comes to handling sensitive or controversial images such as this one.

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To recapitulate, this chapter outlines the metamorphosis of the female as a transmedial figure, moving from the sexually available Lady Zhenzhen in courtesan culture and literature to admonitory vanitas and the erotic nude during the transnational flow of images. The rhetorical strategy of persistently drawing on sensuous writing plays the complex role of embellishing, covering up, or morally justifying erotic consumption. Sensuous literary tradition informed modern tastes and the consumption of female images in the public realm, integrating the iconic gesture of “summoning Zhenzhen” (huan Zhenzhen) into a rapidly developing consumer culture to pamper erotic desire. The intense commingling of realistic image and literary text in print media became a complex field on which erotic imagination, disciplinary efforts, and sensational nakedness combined and competed. Pairing the images with poems or quoting poetic lines to print them in the pictorial space reveals the tenacious influence of the image-text and illustration practices (e.g., shiyi tu) from the past, while being extended to a new level of mass reception. The arrangement and embedment of seemingly incongruous or contingent images nesting within the signifying system of lyric sensibilities and abstraction on the pictorial page compel the modern reader to continuously fuse these disparate elements into a holistic act of reading, viewing, and imagining. This intricate visual and textual interplay helps us to unveil the underlying values, tastes, and conceptions relating to femininity, gender politics, and modernity at that specific time and place.

CHAPTER 5

In Search of Soul Psychical Studies and Spirit Photography

I

n his 1918 letter to Xu Shouchang, Lu Xun wrote: “Considering the books published lately, there isn’t one that isn’t harmful to the youth. Their evil ideas make one shudder. In Shanghai, there is a group of muddleheaded worms who are wreaking further havoc and even shooting spirit photographs (linghun zhaoxiang 靈魂照相) of Xu Banhou 徐班侯 (?–1917), who is shaped like a snuff bottle. Unconcerned with practical affairs, the crowds rush to a ghostly path, and this so-called nation will die taking orders from the gods!”1 Xu Banhou, a member of the gentry who enjoyed a good reputation in Wenzhou, died along with his wife in a boating accident while traveling from Ningbo to Shanghai in 1917. The following year, his relatives presented two photographs allegedly showing their spirits (guiling), which were then published in The Serials of Psychical Research (Lingxue congzhi 靈學叢誌) in Shanghai (figure  5.1).2 In his usual sarcastic tone, Lu Xun—along with progressive thinkers such as Liang Qichao, Hu Shi, and Chen Duxiu—ridiculed the practice of spiritualism and offered unreservedly harsh criticism.3 The “muddleheaded worms” that Lu Xun refers to here include such prominent intellectuals as Yan Fu, the Buddhist scholars Ding Fubao 丁福保 (1874–1952) and Di Baoxian 狄葆賢 (1875–1921), Wu Tingfang 伍廷芳 ([1842–1922] China’s first barrister and acting premier in the early Republic), and a number of literati-cum-intellectuals working in publishing and newspapers. Although a majority of contemporary scholars continue to deride spirit photography or simply dismiss it as fraudulent trickery or superstition, the practice has begun to gain critical attention.4 Joining recent endeavors to

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FIGURE 5.1  Spirit photographs of Xu Banhou and his wife, Xianling zhaoxiang (1921).

reexamine “Psychical Studies” (lingxue 靈學), I attempt in this chapter to go beyond entrenched views constricted by Enlightenment rationality to explore the complexities of these practices and ideas during the process of modernization by addressing the evocation of new mediumship in religious practices and uses of photography as evidential proof, as an affective medium, and as lingmei 靈媒 (lit., spiritual agent or conveyor of spiritual presence). The representation or manipulation of images of the otherworldly, seen at the time as evidence of an afterlife or of supernatural phenomena, offer us a curious way to explore entangled issues of media, affect, and religious belief, as well as the struggles of modern people in the face of crises, death, and vision.

SYNERGY OF RITUALS AND SPIRITUALISM Liang Qichao described the scene involving “superstitious” practices in a 1920 work: “The city is full of altars to spirit writing, and tedious readings of divinatory pictures and books.”5 The numerous religious groups, characterized by various degrees of ritualism that formed in urban environments, deeply troubled reform-minded intellectuals like Liang Qichao. Fuji 扶乩



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(wielding a divination instrument), influenced by Buddhist and Daoist ideas, is a divining activity derived from an old divination cult of the fifth century devoted to Zigu 紫姑, goddess of the latrine, that continued to evolve as a religious devotion of both commoners and literati throughout subsequent centuries. Through a series of ritual practices, including burning incense and kowtowing, deities and immortals would be called to descend to a sacred altar to offer prophecies and moral instruction.6 This flourishing traditional fuji met with the introduction of Western spiritualism that spread in China in the early twentieth century. To paint in broad strokes, the spiritualism practiced in the era can be characterized by the following features: distance vision (tianyan tong 天眼通), which refers to someone possessing the supernatural power of seeing across long distances or through things; emotional telepathy; hypnotism; and the promotion of the idea of “undying souls” (linghun busi 靈魂不死).7 Borrowing the coined word lingxue (psychical studies) from Japan, Chinese practices reveal the dynamics of a combination of Western spiritualism and scientific aspiration with Chinese popular religious traditions.8 Chinese practitioners also endeavored to establish charity work in the wake of local and national crises and to disseminate moral instruction while engaging in a serious search for the meaning of life or the afterlife.9 In the fall of 1917, the Shanghai Society for Psychical Studies (Shanghai Lingxue hui 上海靈學會) was established through the collective efforts of Yang Xuan 楊璿 and his father Yang Guangxi 楊光熙, along with friends in the Shanghai publishing world (Zhonghua Publishing House and Wenming Publishing House, in particular), namely, Yu Fu 俞復 (1856–1943), Lufei Kui 陸費逵 (1886–1941), and Chen Yin 陳寅 (1882–1934). Yang Guangxi, who worked at the Zhonghua Publishing House, was an expert in performing ritual services. In response to disasters and urgent needs in local communities, he established altars in Zhejiang Province to offer clients advisory and therapeutic services for the purpose of helping the poor. In 1917, Yang Guangxi and his two sons formed the Shengde Altar 盛德壇 (lit., the Prosperity of Morality Society) to resume fuji at the site of the Shanghai Book Publishing Association on Jiaotong Road.10 The Shengde Altar was open to the public every evening except Mondays, and Saturday was a day scheduled for medical services and inquiries. The structure of the sacred altar lists Mencius as the principal immortal in charge, together with spirit-teachings by Zhuangzi and

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Mencius.11 Both indigenous gods and foreign gods, along with the spirits of foreign celebrities popular in China (e.g., Leo Tolstoy who died in 1910), paid frequent visits to the altar, leaving their words and poems written in the sand tray there as congratulations or advice. The immortals at the altar allegedly communicated intensely in response to members’ questions, which ranged from national affairs to personal and practical matters, and even included some specialized subjects (such as philology, philosophy, and studies of the Book of Changes). Although the rituals that took place at this altar were in many ways extensions of the traditional rituals, an increasing hybridity in the range of practices and ideas was engaged in by this group, from Buddhism, Daoism, Western spiritualism, and psychology to spirit photography.12 Through constant reference to Western spiritualism, recent scientific concepts, and technology, the practitioners found new sources of inspiration and legitimacy for their practices. The Shanghai Society for Psychical Study, with its list of sixty members in its first year, began to publish the journal The Serials of Psychical Research in January 1918 and it continued until late 1921.13 The advertisement placed in the newspaper outlined the society’s general concerns and purposes. It begins with a rhetorical question: “In life, aren’t the most bewildering questions those between humans and ghosts?” It then goes on at length to describe the origin and practices of the society: “Encountering delicate questions that reach beyond our comprehension, we take full advantage of the fuji practice, and transmit letters between humans and ghosts, so as to penetrate the separation between this world and the underground world. The knowledge that we have gained is always incredible. Between humans and ghosts, between life and death, [our practices] are especially able to go beyond the boundaries and directly get to answers. With the fuji practice that has been passed down, and strengthened by our inquiries into luck, misfortune, and medical advice, and corresponding with each other through poems, we embark on a new world.” 14 As previously mentioned, in addition to religious beliefs and practical concerns, the widespread demand for relief efforts that led to involvement of the socially conscious literati in the aftermath of natural and political crises was an important factor contributing to the prosperity of such altars. One notable association of this type, the Wushan Society 悟善社



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(lit., Society of Awakening to Goodness), was established in Sichuan in 1915 by Tang Huanzhang 唐煥章 and spread to Beijing and elsewhere in 1919 and the 1920s.15 In Beijing in the early 1920s, this eclectic group also briefly engaged with spirit photography, which I discuss later in this chapter. In traditional fuji, spirit-writing (or planchette) is the principal channel and medium to facilitate communication between humans and the divine, offering communications, prophecies, and moral instruction.16 Messages from the gods are captured in words with a divine pen, and the chosen person, who generally holds high moral standards, often falls into a trance. He involuntarily moves the pen to write words, signs, or verses on the sand tray. Even though writing was still the key, spirit-mediumship in popular religions in modern China showed the increasing interplay of different “folk models” and pluralism.17 In the late 1910s and early 1920s, photography became a distinctive new medium of spirit. During this process, however briefly, photography worked as a literal invocation to summon ghosts and immortals into materialization, as an interface for boundary crossing or as a powerful scientific tool to validate the material existence of spiritual phenomena. Wu Tingfang, a well-known politician and diplomat, was exposed to spirit photography in Great Britain and the United States. He played an influential role in publicizing knowledge of spirit photography in China. In 1911, Fiction Times (Xiaoshuo shibao) published two photographs of Wu Tingfang in a column written by Di Baoxian. The two photographs show Wu seemingly in a trance while a ghostly shadow hovers behind him. Wu recognized this ghost figure as the recently deceased British consulate to the United States.18 Shenbao reported that Wu gave a sensational speech about spirit photography, showing three photos of spirits to a full house of more than two hundred audience members.19 Another example shows a large, headless, ghostly shadow looming behind a gentleman wearing a traditional gown in the Zhabei district of Shanghai. The photo, which astounded the general public, was reprinted in several magazines in Shanghai (figure 5.2).20 The extraneous figure of a ghost looming large behind the human figure first appeared in William Mumler’s composition of the widow of President Lincoln with her assassinated husband, and it became iconic in spectral composition.21 This hanging ghostly shadow was recycled in spirit photography and reoccurred throughout the world, haunting modern visual landscapes.

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FIGURE 5.2  Headless ghostly shadow

in Zhabei district of Shanghai, Xianling zhaoxiang.

Recent scholarship on spirit photography in the West has been fruitful in finding a rapprochement between science and religion.22 This rapprochement serves as a framework in which to approach Chinese practices, but my main critical questions rest on how traditional cosmology and iconography are altered or mediated by photography, as well as what other critical possibilities of exploring spectrality exist beyond the Western critical paradigms. I first examine the appropriation of photography to create images of the ghosts of deceased relatives through “capturing ghostly shadows” (shequ guiying 攝取鬼影) and then delineate the practice of “shooting the immortals and spirits” (xianling zhaoxiang 仙靈照相) by two societies, i.e., the Shanghai Society for Psychical Study and the Wushan Society. I also explore the visual motifs of light and “the immortal land” (xianjing 仙境) and critical issues of Chinese intellectuals’ search for “souls” (linghun 靈魂). Instead of dismissing these efforts as “superstitious” or troubling cultural aberrations, I understand the medium of spirit as a consoling channel, religious agent, or modern metaphor rooted in its historical context and manifested by indigenous cultural encounters with new technology.



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CALLING TO THE SOUL “When a person dies, is there a soul that really lives on?” 23 This seemingly naïve question, posed by Xianglin’s wife in Lu Xun’s canonical story “New Year’s Sacrifice,” is in fact not naïve at all. She wishes for the afterlife so she can reunite with her deceased little son; she also fears the afterlife because her body would be split by King Yan to be shared by her two deceased husbands. In their encounter, the first-person narrator, an intellectual recently returned to his hometown, offers a deeply ambiguous answer to her question by saying that maybe the soul lives on, or maybe it does not. By answering ambivalently, the intellectual character shrugs off responsibility by neither dimming Xianglin’s wife’s last hope of relief nor confirming her fear of an afterlife as a condemned woman. Given that throughout his life, Lu Xun persistently castigated ancient superstitions, the moral quandary and contradictory beliefs faced by modern people—explored in this 1924 story and other works—resonate with his equal fascination with calling the soul, spirit, or ghost back in the face of “enlightened” modernity. This unique aspect of Lu Xun’s profound thoughts and literary practices has been astutely characterized by Leo Ou-fan Lee as being part of a “haunted tradition” (you chuantong 幽傳統) that continues to persist in modern society.24 When Xu Banhou and his wife died in the accident, their family was bereft of moral and practical guidance. Xu’s nephew, Chen Jifang, reported that his uncle’s soul was called home. Every day Xu would go to the sacrificial altar and give step-by-step instructions with regard to his unfinished business, lecturing his family on morality. He lamented that the secular world was debilitating and insisted that only religion and the spirit could save the world and the human heart.25 Xu gave instructions that he should be photographed and indicated the time that he would appear. The ghostly voice explained: “I know that my children feel profoundly mournful, so I will leave a spirit photograph (linghun zhaoxiang) to assuage their filial feelings.” Chen Jifang, one of a handful of witnesses, helped a friend who was adept at photography shoot the image when Xu made the scheduled appearance.26 As material evidence, the photograph of Xu’s ghostly shadow is a fulfillment of and testimony to the intense

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moral feelings in the living, to which the heavens responded. The two photographs offered by Chen include a portrait of Xu himself with the contours of a gentleman’s face, a long beard, and an official hat, and one image showing two dark shadows with illegible faces, purportedly Xu and his wife (see figure 5.1). Perhaps referring to the fuzziness of Xu’s images, Lu Xun humorously dismisses Xu’s ghostly shape as resembling that of a smoky snuff bottle. In one section of the Photographs of the Immortals and Spirits (Xianling zhaoxiang 仙靈照相), compiled by the Shanghai Society of Psychical Studies, there are a total of thirteen ghost images.27 Among them, eight are of the departed souls of parents and one is of a tomb. The images are blurred or unfocused, and it is difficult to make out any facial details or expressions in most of them. These “portrait photographs” with obscured faces and empty background are, to a certain degree, reminiscent of the ancestor paintings known as “legacy portraits” (yixiang 遺像 or yiying 遺影) that commonly hung in household living rooms. This series of photographs in the album was requested by relatives of the dead at the Shengde Altar, with the consent and help of the immortal Chang Shengzi 常勝子. In response to their living loved ones, the ghosts chose to appear at the altar, often with moralizing intent, at which time their images were captured. These photos of ghosts serve as a perfect medium for forging a new relationship with the afterlife that caters to a grieving family’s emotional needs and filial piety. Viewing these photographs, Yu Fu commented, “with such utter sincerity, what is sought can be obtained” (nian’er zhicheng keru suoqiu 念爾至誠，可如所求).28 The obtained images seem to affirm the established view of cosmology, i.e., the power of the correspondences between the cosmos and a sincerity of feeling. The manifestation of a ghost reveals a lingering feeling and nostalgia toward life and living relatives, thereby helping the living cope with their losses to achieve consolation. For one man, who did not know where his father was laid to rest, the photograph of the tomb, supposedly his father’s, acts as a reassuring message and offers a sense of closure.29 In his essay on personal experience with spirit photography, politician and scholar Yang Tingdong 楊廷棟 (1879–1950) recorded in detail his search for a photo of his deceased father.30 Chang Shengzi, the immortal in charge, commented regarding Yang’s request that “his sincerity is to be commended” (chengyi kejia 誠意可嘉). Yang and his father, communicating through Chang



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Shengzhi, agreed to make an appointment at a certain time. A white cloth was hung on a wall with fifty-watt lighting above. Yang came to the altar and kowtowed to the spirit. After Yang returned home, the photographer took two shots facing the white cloth. The image of Yang’s father with vivid facial details emerged in the darkroom. Does the image indeed resemble Yang’s deceased father? Yang was thirteen when his father died; his memory was vague after twenty-eight years. Yang depicts his response to the photo as follows: “I suspect it doesn’t resemble much, but after closing my eyes and concentrating my attention, it seems to resemble my father closely.” 31 This story does not simply suggest that visual veracity can be achieved by emotional states or wishful thinking; it indicates that photography, in a certain context, acquires affective power and a “phantomatic effect.” 32 Although the stated purpose of these photos is for deceased parents to offer moral instructions, the spirit photographs, tenuously referring to “real” bodies, cast their magic spell and induce a kind of pleasurable melancholy from the viewers.33 William Mumler, the first person to practice spirit photography, accidentally discovered how to create ghostly shadows by double exposure. The emergence and spread of spirit photography is symptomatic of the era, intersecting with cultural practices of mourning and bereavement marked by the Civil War (1861–1865) in the United States and subsequently during the First World War in Europe.34 Mumler’s controversial success and the subsequent worldwide spread of spirit photography also attests to people’s emotional need to be spiritually connected with deceased loved ones to work through their loss.35 In his canonical essay “Mourning and Melancholia,” Sigmund Freud explains that in mourning people turn away from reality and cling “to the object through the medium of a hallucinatory wishful psychosis.” Framed in modern psychological terms, in the case of individual psychology, the ghost could be read as a “hallucinatory satisfaction” of desires that was symptomatically acted out.36 In collective terms, in the wake of disasters, wars, and momentous social destruction, the ghost serves as a figure of trauma, and spirit photographs provide grieving families with an image through which they can be reconnected with the dead, offering solace and a love object to which they can cling.37 This psychological reading of the function of spirit photography as helping people through the trauma of having lost loved ones, however, should

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not obscure the fact that the literal invocation of the ghost in the Chinese context is premised on abiding ethical prerequisites and religious practices. All of the photographs requested by relatives through the Shengde Altar are, without exception, of deceased parents, as filial piety is the preeminent Confucian moral principle. Furthermore, the mournful soul is understood from traditional medical and philosophical viewpoints as qi (air, energy, or life force) that has congested and is unwilling to be dispersed. A newspaper report recounts a “bizarre” story that took place in Sichuan Province, where a military officer had recently wed a woman who had already been married three times. Multiple frightening ghosts and wounded bodies appeared in the photo prints, shocking the studio. In one example, while the seated bride took a picture with her seven bridesmaids to commemorate the occasion, ghostly male figures appeared in the photograph and reappeared when the photo was reshot. One solemn male apparition, who was identified as one of the bride’s deceased husbands, stood behind the bride, intervening in the visible female world (figure 5.3). The coexistence of two extreme worlds (death and marriage) is apparently intended to admonish the woman who married numerous times, perpetuating the traditional animosity toward women who chose to remarry. The husband is “unwilling to accept death without fulfillment” (sibu ganxin 死不甘心) and thus decides to make a reappearance. In another case, a photograph of a group of soldiers shows

FIGURE 5.3  “A Bizarre, Ghostly Shadow,” Lingxue congzhi 2, no. 4 (1919).



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FIGURE 5.4  “The ghostly image of Lan and Zhao at the funeral,” Xianling zhaoxiang.

the spirits of two military officials who had died, leaving their aged mothers and young children behind. The two translucent shadows (the second and fourth figures on the right side), with illegible faces, appear among the standing soldiers at the funeral (figure 5.4). In such cases, the subjects were “dying with remorse, thus the spirit and essence do not disperse” (baohan jiuquan jingling busan 抱憾九泉, 精靈不散).38 The haunting images are believed to be coagulated qi that did not dissolve as the body decayed, the result of sorrow and repentance. Thus, “the soul of the deceased employs the object to reveal his intentions” (yisi linghun tuowu shiyi 已死靈魂, 托物 示意). These two images are among only a handful of examples of extant spirit photographs that show the intermingling of living beings and ghosts. With spectral effects achieved through darkroom manipulations, these photographs become the congested contact zones between living and dead and present cotemporalities of the past and the present. Introduced into China in the mid-nineteenth century, the camera was a “soul-arresting machine” (shehun ji 攝魂機), as the early Chinese term had it, associated with misfortune and death. Lu Xun mentioned that in “S town” residents did not like to take photographs because photographs snatch away the “refined” spirit (jingshen 精神) or magic light (weiguang 威光).39 Anthropologist Jiang Shaoyuan discusses the popular belief that

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taking photographs would alter the course of one’s personal fate by subtracting the shadow (ying), which is considered integral to human wellbeing.40 These beliefs are rooted in traditional conceptions of the “soul” (hun) and the significance of shadows, and they formed a major reason behind the disturbances, refusals, and obstacles that photography faced in its early stages when taking root in China.41 Ying-Shih Yü explicates the ancient Chinese dualistic conception of soul, namely, the hun 魂 and the po 魄 in the work of pre-Buddhist era Liji 禮記 (Discourse of Rituals), as the hunqi 魂氣 (breath soul) returns to heaven and the xingpo 形魄 (bodily soul) returns to earth.42 This dualistic vision was further united in the concept of shen 神 (spirit) or jingshen (refined spirit) when Buddhism was introduced to China.43 Like a filial son climbing to higher ground to call the deceased parent’s soul back, spirit photography (linghun zhaoxiang 靈魂照相, a neologism for shooting images of the soul) is a novel medium that summons the spirit back, gaining new ground to give material shape to the evanescent and fugitive soul.44 The etymological origin of the modern term linghun (the soul or geist) shows the mixture of the meaning of hunpo 魂 魄 or shen 神 with the Western meaning of xin zhi zhuzai 心之主宰 (controller of the mind) or human spirits.45 Whether one views this photographic medium as able to snatch the spirit away or conjure the spirit back, both are predicated on the same conviction, that is, on the existence of an afterlife and cosmic connectedness. Spirit photography, practiced in the late 1910s and 1920s, also shows the shift from understanding the photographic medium as a threatening, alien machine to appreciating it as wondrous and powerful. The spirit photograph, as an affective medium and an object for wounded individuals or shattering historical experience, relies on this productive structure of “sympathetic cosmology” between this world and the other world,46 thereby achieving consoling effects or ethical responsibilities. In her cogent discussion of Chinese hypnotism and its relationship with other media (photography, film, and drama) in the 1920s, Weihong Bao illuminates the critical conceptions of sympathy and resonance, connecting traditional philosophy and Western ideas to “spectatorial affect,” assisted by new media and technology.47 In the same vein, resonance here entails not only the resonating cosmos and prototypical model of feelings— through which the otherworldly realms and the afterlife were conceived



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as responsive—but also affective media (photography, body, language, and others) and their mediating environment, jointly achieving reverberating effects across affective, ethical, and cultural spectrums.

SPIRIT AND LIGHT One day in 1918, Ding Fubao introduced his friend Wu Puchen 吳樸臣 (a photographer who owned the Luzhen 廬真 Studio) to spirit photography, encouraging Wu to go to the Shengde Altar to take photographs as well. According to Yu Fu’s account, the practice of spirit photography at the altar took place in the fall and winter of 1918. From the total of thirty-nine photographs taken there, fifteen were taken with the electric lights on and twenty-four were shot in the dark. In the first photo session at the altar, the tray of sand that was usually there for fuji was removed, and only candles were displayed. Yu Fu insisted that he focused the camera personally under regular lighting and witnessed illusory shadows and a jade garden emerging on the white paper that hung on the wall. The negative was then developed by the photographer at his studio. One photo revealed a solemn figure with a long white beard and a large halo behind his head, which allegedly resembled a painted portrait of Yuan dynasty immortal Chang Shengzi (figure 5.5). This was the first photograph successfully attained at the altar.48 Chang Shengzi, Moon Lady (Mingyue xianzi 明月仙子), Shi Zhongzi 時中子, the Green-Eyed Immortal (Biyan guixian 碧眼鬼仙), and other immortals all revealed themselves in different forms. One photograph of the Green-Eyed Immortal shows him standing, wearing a sword. The text along the side claims that light emits from the tip of the sword, turning into a butterfly (figure 5.6). This array of different images echoes ancient ideas regarding the transformation of the body (huashen), which is understood as “taking any form at will” (suiyi bianhua zhixiang 隨意變化之相), a subject explored in chapter 1. The photographic images of these immortals frequently resemble their iconographies in paintings. Yu Fu claims that all the photos were shot in the same sacrificial room, yet images of different immortals were captured by the camera. In his words, the result was “wondrous and imponderable” (qimiao bukesiyi 奇妙不可思議). To skeptics, he retorts: “The immortals play with magic techniques to show

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FIGURE 5.5  Portrait of Chang Shengzi,

FIGURE 5.6  Portrait of the Green-Eyed Immortal’s

Xianling zhaoxiang.

Transformed Body, Xianling zhaoxiang.

us transformations. How can we use a common scientific understanding to measure it?” 49 By shifting agency from human intervention to the deities, Yu Fu endows the new media with a mysteriously supernatural power. It is as if it is not the camera that captures the spirit; rather, the spirit imprints itself onto the plate in the visible world as a shadow. Allegedly, Chang Shengzi repeatedly points to sincerity (cheng 誠) and a karmic relationship (yuan 緣) in seizing the evanescent image. As one of the principal immortals who frequently make an appearance, he often acts as an agent to communicate messages and to bring the immortals down into the altar. In one case, Chang Shengzhi even acts as a photographer to capture the images of departed spirits of two recently deceased girls, “snapping the fresh souls to capture the shadows” (sheqi shenghun ruying 攝其生魂入影). The resulting image, appearing to be a shot of a sketch, reveals two girls in plain outfits standing outside a rural house (figure 5.7). In his speech attesting to the truthfulness of spirit photography, Chang Shengzhi states that the plate, the camera, and the cameraman, even the immortal himself, are tools or mediums used to facilitate the manifestation,



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FIGURE 5.7  Portrait of the New Souls

of the Chen Sisters Lanruo and Huiruo, Xianling zhaoxiang.

but permission from the immortal is the precondition of such a revelation. Once the mundane object (e.g., the camera) is used to capture the spirit, the earthly object becomes a spiritual object in the immortal land.50 Ruins and places seen as desolate by the human eye can instantaneously be turned into a fairyland in the vision of the spirit or immortal. The manifestation of the immortals here is a collaborative project between spirit and medium. Many photos produced at the Altar appear to be shots of the drawings, instead of being created through double exposure or other darkroom techniques. Although initially skeptical of the practice, Yan Fu, an intellectual luminary of the era, expressed his genuine interest in spirit photography toward the end of his life. In a letter to his student Hou Yi 侯毅 (1885–1951), Yan comments on the differences between the West and China: “Among those most surprising images published in the magazine is the spirit photograph taken after the death of Xu Banhou. This kind of photograph, in which a strange shadow suddenly appears without origins, was observed in Europe and America, but those were all taken as accidents by the living. . . . As for the deceased soul revealing his intentions through objects, giving out instructions on how to shoot the revealed shadow, and things emerging from nothing—I  truly have never

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seen nor heard of this before.” 51 It is partially true that in many Western cases photographs act as a medium to “accidentally” capture contingent or fleeting images of a spirit, revealing a “realistic” vision of the humanlike ghostly image hanging above or behind the central scene. In these Chinese cases, the spirits allegedly participate in the shooting, working as the photographic subject or the mediator, and the roles of technology and human intervention are downplayed. With its incorporation into traditional ritual practices, Chinese spirit photography acquires its more fanciful and supernatural features. Yu Fu, who is believed to have played a crucial role in this entire process of photographing, refers to spirit photography as “spiritual light” (lingguang 靈 光).52 The politician Li Yuanhong 黎元洪 (1864–1928) described the society’s practices as a “bright lamp in a dark room” (anshi mingdeng 暗室明燈) in his inscription to the inaugural issue of the journal. Light, a chemical process essential to photography and a key concept in modern physics, became a prominent trope in spirit photography. As a light-sensitive process, photography was related to a mysterious light emanating from a divine’s “spiritual body” (lingti 靈體) that was seized with the assistance of a mechanical process and the working of chemicals.53 Shooting a photograph (which required long exposure at that time), according to the immortals’ accounts, first required fixing and stabilizing the evanescent light of the spirit by the medium, then capturing the image with the camera, and eventually transferring the image onto the photograph. Because the spirit’s light was thought to be self-originating, photographing a spirit was believed to be like photographing sunlight, which requires minimal lighting, while shooting a human figure was different in that humans would have to receive light to be illuminated.54 It was believed that “the soul itself is illuminating (the result of magnetic phenomena), and the soul without a spiritual medium easily changes its position.” 55 A kind of light invisible to the human eye, the soul can be attracted, stabilized, and eventually arrested by a lens. Photography thus captures “the shadows of the immortals” (xianying 仙影).56 The light-as-photography analogy is pervasive in the proclamations and writings purportedly penned by immortals in the journal and rendered in the philosophical and scientific terms of the time.57 Shi Zhongzi explains that the shadows are covered with white fog, and light is emitted via magnetism (chishi 磁石), which brings out the brightness.58 In other words, this connects the lighting and shadow-play in photography with a physical magnetic force.



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Spirit photography is thus given rational explanations by associating its light with science and physical nature. Chang Shengzhi asserts that lingguang (spiritual light) is an interconnective medium and a means of contact among humans, ghosts, and immortals, blurring the boundaries of the different realms. The six senses (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and consciousness) create the experience of a sensorium, leading to a higher realm of immortality. Spiritual light can generate spiritual energy (lingneng 靈能) inasmuch as light and energy are mutually interdependent. This all leads to the “light of wisdom” (huiguang 慧光), an indication of transcendence and achieving Buddhahood or immortality.59 Chang Shengzi states: “The human body is indeed materialistic, but is also the center of the spirit. Outside the human body, there are indeed many lights. Its beginning is what is commonly called the ‘three sacred fires.’ . . . These lights can produce photographs, and can be photographed.” 60 This spirit-material dichotomy is revealed and integrated with the Daoist alchemies of the “three sacred fires” (Sanmei zhenhuo 三昧真火). Light is considered to be an expression of human nature and sacred life, conflating Daoist and Buddhist ideas with the recent scientific understanding of the material world.61 It could be the bright moon or light in the physical world, or the inner luminosity of the self-nature (zixing 自性) and wisdom, but it is also perception, relating to psychics, morality, and vision. Ultimately, it is a mysterious life force, associated with fire (the basic element of life creation in the Daoist system) and the magnetic force in the material world, drawing a range of ideas and metaphors from religious discourses, sensory perceptions, and contemporary scientific discourses. The range of ideas presented in the journal, whether or not coherent or logical, not only shows that imagination of the afterlife is influenced by modern physics but that the afterlife has been reenvisioned in accordance with media specificity— as a light-sensitive medium—and the spiritual consciousness of the era. In the visual representation, light as a figure or halo surrounding the central figure is one of the iconographic characteristics in this album of the immortals. This figure of light ties perception and traditional religious thought together, but it also echoes the interplay of the aesthetics of light and shadow in spirit photography.62 Although the circle of light as a halo behind the head is conventional iconography used with religious deities, as a visual vocabulary, light is a relative novelty in religious painting. In Daoist paintings, qi, visualized in the form of vapors, clouds, or mists—and not light—is a

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FIGURE 5.8  Portrait of Xunfeng King,

FIGURE 5.9  Picture of Luo Book and Generating

Xianling zhaoxiang.

Qi through Wuxing, Xianling zhaoxiang.

frequently depicted theme.63 Taking full advantage of black and white photos, images of light in the album range from a solid circle of light in the form of a halo as the background of the deity to a shaft of light emanating from a gourd or pearl. For instance, the pearly light of the gourd, a golden light like bright sunbeams, features in one photograph of “the ritual object of Patriarch Lü.” 64 In another photo, the altar of the Treasured Wizard King (Duobao Mowang 多寶魔王), which is made of lotuses, blossoms into a halo that radiates out in brilliant skeins of light as the King rests on top (figure 5.8). This picture is one of six illusory images (huanxiang) of the King in the album. In the Picture of Luo Book and Generating Qi through Wuxing (Luoshu Wuxing shengqi tu 洛書 及五行生氣圖), five spirits hold banners across the top, and below a small pearl emits a black halo that takes up the center of the picture, revealing hexagrams around its core (figure 5.9). As the captions state, all the light emanates from the pearl at the bottom of both compositions. According to the captions on the sides, figure 5.8 was shot with a fifty-watt lamp, and figure 5.9 was shot in the dark. The representation of celestial beings, or of the gourd, pearl, and hexagrams, bears some resemblance to Daoist paintings, and light, as a new



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visual motif, intriguingly converges with the iconographic representation of qi. Light—an obscure concept in traditional painting—became a recurring and condensed visual trope, deployed in a religious and quasi-scientific manner. The spirits’ supernatural power to emit light is allegedly apprehended by the production of light effects in the technological medium. This new technology, through human intervention, was used in the ritual setting to strengthen the mysterious and enchanting nature of the altar and its discourse.

MEDIATING SPIRITUAL VISION In 1920, the Wushan Society in Beijing initiated a series of efforts in spirit photography to capture an image of Lord Fuyou 孚佑帝君 (or Savior of the Needy, i.e., Lü Dongbin 呂洞賓), a Daoist immortal widely worshiped in the late Qing era.65 The purpose of spirit photography, stated by the society’s journal, Major Writings in Psychical Research (Lingxue yaozhi 靈學要誌), is to “consolidate people’s beliefs and spread the spirit’s good intentions to help people and awaken the world.” 66 The attempt to photograph Lord Fuyou failed numerous times. In the early spring of 1920, a fairy informed the society that Lord Fuyou promised to visit the altar. On the east wall hung a black curtain with a lamp beneath it and incense burning in front of it. People were told to wait quietly with a firm belief in mind and to call upon the god with “emotive summoning” (ganzhao 感召). On this occasion, the lord made an appearance at the altar and stayed for fifteen minutes. He even composed a poem there: After extreme bad luck, good luck returns, peach leaves blowing in the wind, [I] descend from the heavens. [I] make attempts to draw my shadow in the human world, with devoted intention, with a smile, I come into the human world to do it myself. 運極否時泰自回， 風吹桃葉下天台； 癡心欲繪人間影， 笑向人間親寫來。

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FIGURE 5.10  The Solemn Portrait of Lord Fuyou, Lingxue yaozhi 1, no. 1 (1920).

Due to their inexperience, the participants failed to capture Lord Fuyou’s image after witnessing his manifestation. The explanation given was that the spirit’s form is light and small, unlike the human body, so the spirit image must be dealt with expertly using different kinds of lighting and photosensitive chemicals. On the nineteenth of the third month of the lunar year Gengshen (1920), the lord decided to reveal himself in a more professional arena, namely, in the Erwo Studio (lit., Twin-Selves Studio). After careful preparation and an excruciatingly long wait, the lord suddenly manifested himself—the black curtain gradually emitted light, and his beard and eyebrows were revealed.67 The mediator, Immortal Yang, sent a poem with the line “human matters and a heavenly mind have now come into contact” (renshi tianxin liangxiangyu 人事天心兩相遇), suggesting the lord’s willingness to be photographed. An upper body with a long head, dark eyebrows, and a moustache form the focus of the photograph, with a circle of light in the form of a halo behind him (figure 5.10). Delighted that his photograph was eventually taken, the lord left a one-line note: “With a smile, [I] ingeniously leave a true form for the human world” (xiaowei renshi qiaoliuzhen 笑為人世巧留真).68 Throughout the process, the lord wrote a number of verses to mark the occasion or directly comment on his self-image. All of these poems, credited to



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the lord, express his delight in “revealing a true body” (xian zhenshen 現真身) to the human world.69 The Wushan Society’s photographic process once again operates on the model of responsiveness and resonance. Multiple failures at the beginning were partially due to inexperience, but they were also deliberate tests of the people’s commitment and sincerity. Lord Fuyou exhibits his own sincerity by revealing himself in the bright light of noon even though spirits generally prefer darkness. In the process of taking photographs, attention must be directed to wherever the camera lens is facing. It is said that human light and qi can stabilize the spirit’s light. Sincerity and devotion emerge with the technical requirements of stillness. With the same lighting in place, why do perceptions differ? Lord Fuyou answered this inquiry by claiming that the different results are caused by the various “affective responses” (ganying) of different beings.70 A range of media and agents (i.e., the camera, the photographer, the immortal willing to be photographed, and other spirits who act as informants or facilitators) form a sympathetic corresponding world in which things that have affinity in the qi or the mind seek one another. The photograph of Lord Fuyou, as well as the essay describing the process of obtaining the images in detail, was prominently featured in the inaugural issue of Major Writings. Several existing examples, however, show that the religious societies shared and recycled their image stocks,71 which unwittingly undermines the narrative of sincerity and uniqueness. In Photographs of the Immortals and Spirits, the fifteenth photo, titled Painting of a Wonderland Manifested on White Paper (Baizhifu huanxian xianjing tu 白紙幅幻現仙境圖), is a straightforward shot of the sacrificial room and the objects placed on the altar, with a piece of white paper with scenery hung above it (figure 5.11). Yu Fu offers an explanation of his photographic process: a piece of white paper, touched by Moon Lady’s magic hand, is hung on the altar; as people quietly gaze upon it, they witness the emergence of multiple illusory images, such as mountains, houses, and human figures. Capturing them via the camera, Yu Fu once again sighs that this manifestation (xian) is “wondrous and imponderable” (qimiao buke siyi). This photograph of the altar displays the physical media and objects and reveals that the emergence of the spirit landscape is framed in the traditional form of visualization and meditation, i.e., the perception of various objects

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FIGURE 5.11  Picture of a Wonderland

Manifested on White Paper, Xianling zhaoxiang.

and scenes emerging on a plain piece of paper after staring at it. In the process of catching sight of a spirit, or wonderland, the plain paper continues to serve as the master plot and a trope of agency. This other world, miniaturized onto the space of a hanging scroll, is a mirror image as well as an extension of reality. The eleventh-century painter Song Di 宋迪 understood Chinese landscape painting through meditation, in which the artwork emerges from the focus of the vision and the concentration of the mind. By gazing at a piece of white cloth over a dilapidated wall from morning to night, Song Di suggests that landscapes with mountains, rivers, humans, birds, trees, and a sense of living things would emerge on the barren wall.72 Furthermore, an advertisement for the photo album placed in Shenbao also states that there is a scroll of white paper hanging in an exhibition at the altar. Quietly staring at the white paper for five minutes, the viewer would see it move like “electric light and shadow play” (dianguang yingxi 電光影戲).73 This kind of visualization of the “immortal land” (xianjing) and contemplation was further explained by Hou Yi, who gave a detailed account of his experience of “spiritual wandering” (shenyou 神游) in the spring of 1918. As told by Yang Xuan at the Shengde Altar, when people stared at the clean white paper with steady breathing and a calm mind for a period of time, they would witness different scenes,



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involving gods, magic lands, paintings, books, and so on, which took from a few minutes to as much as one or two hours to fully appear. After ten minutes of concentration, Hou Yi claims that he witnessed the following fanciful scene: “Cottony clouds and mist floated over the paper when suddenly a statue of the Guanyin bodhisattva appeared, with dragon ladies attending on either side. ... Ten thousand lotus flowers blossomed around her, surrounding the altar of the Guanyin bodhisattva. In a blink of the eye, as thousands of bodhisattvas circled around Gautama Buddha, Guanyin disappeared.” 74 The idealistic heavenly realm favored by Chinese literati (in their imaginings of the peach blossom paradise, i.e., Taohuayuan, or the immortal land) is clothed in phrases of “electric light and shadow play.” In Hou Yi’s visionary travel, the two characters “jade garden” (qiongyuan 瓊苑) emerge, which are then used to authenticate the place. The medium in this context is the piece of paper that is wetted by a brush dipped in clear water and used in rituals by Moon Lady. Whenever someone gazed at the paper for a while, he would enter a trance through his senses, perceptions, and imagination, feeling its magical power and allowing it to communicate with the spiritual realm (lingjie 靈界) without being obstructed by form and qi in the mundane world.75 Equating visualization in Buddhist practice with Western hypnotism (tongling 通靈), Hou Yi states that “spirit communication derives from the stirring of feeling, and the stirring of feeling comes from devotion, while devotion is derived from sincerity.” 76 The resonances among stimulus, media, imagination, and the cosmos arise in dynamic relationships of the self with the self, the self with others, and the self with heaven, ghosts and spirits, while sincerity and benevolence operate as their moral basis. In addition to portrait photographs of the deities, the wonderland or “immortal land” (xianjing) is another favorite subject in the album. Chang Shengzi and Moon Lady often travel in the moonlight in the Picture of moonlight (Mingyue tu 明月圖), either on a boat or in a different fairyland. In one picture, the lady stands beside the pavilion with luminescent beads in her hand, and Chang Shengzhi stands between two trees. The caption says that “the humans and the painting are both one and two, and are wondrous and imponderable.”77 The Picture of the Immortal Land (Xianjing tu 仙境圖), shot on the eleventh month of 1918, bears a visual resemblance to the iconic landscape in paintings featuring pavilions, towers, water, and trees

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FIGURE 5.13  Picture of the Immortal Garden, Xianling

zhaoxiang.

FIGURE 5.12  Picture of the

Immortal Land, Xianling zhaoxiang.

in a multiple-perspective spatial arrangement (figure 5.12). In the Picture of the Purple Palace (Ziqi gong tu 紫炁宮圖) where immortals reside, a European is shown as the guardian to the palace door. The traditional imagination of xianjing was also occasionally cast in a concrete and realistic manner. For instance, the Picture of the Immortal Garden (Xianyuan tu 仙苑圖), taken on the eighth month of 1918, appears to be a more or less straightforward shot of a corner of the garden featuring a Chinese-style pavilion and lush trees (figure 5.13). Although this picture may resemble part of the landmark Aili Garden (i.e., the Hardoon Garden), the largest private garden in Republican Shanghai, the caption claims that the decorations on the rooftops are slightly different. On the one hand, the new photographic medium allows for the remediation of pictorial subjects and generic Daoist landscapes; on the other hand, the immortal site is reenvisioned in a more realistic, urban way of seeing. The immortals constantly leave rhymed verses in the sand tray during rituals. The journals include columns of “literary writing” (wenyuan 文苑), or “poems and lyrics” (shici 詩詞),78 attributed to these immortals. Among them, Lord Fuyou is the most spirited and poetically prolific.79 Extending



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the long tradition of poems allegedly written by immortals and ghosts and constantly alluding to literary imaginings of “bejeweled towers and jade terraces” (qionglou yuyu 瓊樓玉宇), the immortal poets present a fanciful vision of the otherworldly realm and fashion images of freely roaming immortals. However, the photographs themselves offer only liminal glimpses of it. Additional explanation about the curious image-text relationship presented in these two spirit journals and one album is warranted. The images offer visual evidence, and the texts coherently articulate the “rationality” behind them. The Serials of Psychical Research claims that the immortals appeared at the altar and left words in the sand tray, which were then often copied by Yu Fu. In reprints of the texts, the symbol of the square (referring to missing or illegible words) is deliberately used in a few places, rendering an impression of authenticity. Prints of the divine words in the form of calligraphy as well as the deity’s paintings are conspicuously displayed in the column titled “spirit painting and writing” (jihua jizi 乩畫乩字) in both journals. The lengthy testimonials of the spirits in every issue, all written in an ornamented and sophisticated linguistic style, offer further validation and explications.80 Words in different genres and visual media (calligraphy, painting, and photography) cooperatively construct the narrative of the existence of the “soul.”

APPROACHING THE IMPONDERABLE In a letter responding to a disbelieving challenge from politician and amateur photographer Wu Zhihui 吳稚暉 (1865–1953), Yu Fu writes: “The world values science and everything needs to be verified by actual situations. A general principle is made in order to become a system of knowledge. The signs and experiences gained from today’s fuji assure us of the existence of things  in the heavens, which cannot be denied.” 81 In this statement, Yu Fu claims that ghosts can be verified by photography and then uses the same logic to prove the existence of ghosts as a counter to disbelief. Visual perception plays an important role in truth claims that attempt to establish a positivist framework of knowledge, in which the evidential character of photography is embraced. The spiritualist movement in the West, born in the era of positivism and relying on scientific evidence and investigation, was a “metaphysics

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founded on empirical inquiry,” eventually “leading to a modern synthesis of knowledge and religious belief.” 82 This positivist strand of thought was also revealed in the Chinese understanding of lingxue by the frequent use of the word yanzheng 驗證 (verify). The first chapter of The Study of the Soul (Linghun xue 靈魂學), titled “Spiritual Phenomena: Verification by Ear and Eye” (通靈現象耳目之驗證), lists numerous incidents occurring in the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States that would demonstrate the reality of these spiritual claims.83 In his Synopsis of Buddhism (Foxue cuoyao 佛學撮要), Ding Fubao describes a number of anecdotes about spirit photography in the section titled “definitive proof of the existence of ghosts” (Yougui zhi quezheng 有鬼之確證). Attempts to demonstrate the existence of ghosts have a long history in China occurring in antiquity in the chapters on “Explaining ghosts” (minggui 明鬼) in the Mozi 墨子 that offer testimonial and moral reasons for their existence.84 However, photography is given the most weight in the modern context due to its evidentiary character when compared to other fleeting senses (smell or hearing) or subjective feelings, which often come from an induced hallucination (e.g., hypnotism) or through a specially trained agent. When Yu Fu and others took their spirit photographs, Ding Fubao affirms that he was always on site to check and ensure the genuineness of the process.85 This desire to measure within the terms of empirical science presents something of a paradox insofar as the epistemological belief in the camera’s ability to capture the empirically real is used to create visual shadows or traces. Photography as a causal medium establishes the indexical link between the image and its referent as a way to assert the veracity of that referent. These blurred or superimposed images work as signifying marks, or “traces of spirits” (lingji 靈跡),86 pointing to that referent (characterized by its fleeting nature or tenuousness). These luminous traces, imprinted by the immortal, constitute themselves as a contact zone between two worlds and as a field of meanings. The exegeses or captions inserted alongside the photos provide a further authoritative voice to consolidate the referential link. Moving beyond the understanding of spirit photography as a new practice of popular religion, I continue to explore how concerned Chinese intellectuals used this evidence or “trace” to contemplate the unknown and invisible. Spirit photography conflates the status of spirits and the photographic medium, science and agnosticism (or the unknown), and belief systems and technology. Yu Fu and his colleagues (either wittingly or



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unwittingly) manipulated photographs as empirical devices to demonstrate the existence of spirits, taking the “shadows” as the immortals’ bodily manifestations. During the same period, China’s preeminent thinker Yan Fu was enthralled by these ghostly visual encounters and the stunning experience of these images propelled him to engage in deeper philosophical reflection. His letter to his student Hou Yi discloses that he kept up to date with British psychical studies and spirit photography in the West. Yan Fu had not believed the personal accounts he had heard in the past about spirit encounters, but once he saw the photographs with his own eyes, Yan Fu stated that the visual experience was so shocking that it must be taken seriously.87 Visual verification reflects the combination of an experience based on a methodology (“seeing is believing,” in the idiom yanjian weishi 眼見 為實) and modern empiricism; the visual impact on eyewitnesses and the enduring effect of the image are markedly different from that of a verbal account. More important, the evidence for authenticating spirits touches on certain mysterious dimensions, i.e., buke siyi 不可思議, underpinning Yan’s intellectual considerations. Huang Ko-wu astutely points out the different strands of Yan Fu’s late thoughts, which were a mixture of Thomas Henry Huxley’s agnosticism (a term coined by Huxley in 1889) and the Buddhist idea of buke siyi. Agnosticism, as Peter Bowler argues in connection with Huxley, reflected Huxley’s open-mindedness in his search for the truth, and he remained cautious about a unified materialistic framework for understanding the world.88 In his own quest for the meaning of existence, Yan Fu paralleled the agnosticism he borrowed from Huxley with the Buddhist idea of buke siyi. Yan Fu writes: “The ultimate meanings and the origins of the universe are buke siyi. Buke siyi means that things cannot be verified by names and logic.” 89 Yan Fu points out that buke siyi is a most “subtle and profound” (jingwei 精微) phrase that cannot be fully apprehended by rationality nor grasped by language. On a basic lexical level, buke siyi is an expression of wonder beyond comprehension. Other spiritualists, such as Yu Fu and his colleagues in Shanghai and their counterparts in Japan (who used the same characters fukashigi), constantly employed this phrase to express their amazement at spirit photography’s marvelous, yet imponderable, capabilities, which surpassed the ordinary limits of human sensory perceptions. As a thinker who throughout his life attempted to create lines of communication between evolutionary theory and Buddhism,

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Yan Fu instead uses the term to refer to the realm of Buddhahood and the status of true awakening (niepan 涅槃). Finally, in connection with contemporary physics, Yan Fu writes: “It is like the atoms of all things. Moving and unmoving are different, and are the origin of the force. The origin of magical ideas derives from the sages’ wisdom, but cannot be articulated. This is all true and all imponderable (buke siyi).” 90 Yan Fu understands the material origin of the universe as beginning with the atom but adds a further sense of mystery or transcendence. Yan Fu, whose translation of evolutionary theory had a revolutionary impact in his era, continually conflates Huxley’s and Herbert Spencer’s ideas with the Book of Changes and the Daodejing, achieving a clear realization of the limits of instrumental rationality and the positivist framework. Yan Fu defends science and the senses in his value system and views what is verifiable through science as a genuine reality but states that it is not the only reality in existence. Toward the end of his life, Yan Fu revealed his delicate attempt to believe that the human spirit does not necessarily end with the decay of the physical body. The notion of an “undying soul” remained deeply appealing to Yan.91 In the same letter to Hou Yi, referring to ideas found in the Book of Changes, Buddhism, and Laozi’s thought, which parallel ideas in Western spiritualism, Yan Fu points out that the human spirit and body exist in a relationship of “affective interpenetration” (gantong 感通). He cites the Book of Changes: “the essence of qi becomes the soul, which is interpenetrating after being stirred” (jingqi weihun gan’er suitong 精氣為魂，感而遂通). The medium serves as the contact between the spirit and the material world, and the spirit borrows the medium (traditionally, a human body) to reveal itself.92 Yan Fu accommodates new spiritualism (telepathy, hypnotism, spirit photography, etc.) within a sincerity-based framework of “affective interpenetration,” showing his continuous efforts to reconcile the enlightened scientific worldview with ancient cosmology and philosophy.93 It is in this context of constructing a coherent worldview that Yan Fu, who was shocked upon first viewing the spirit photographs, came to appreciate them as a channel or medium approaching “the imponderable” (buke siyi). Other intellectuals of the time also attempted to grapple with “the imponderable phenomena” (buke siyi xianxiang 不可思議現象) in different media, including yitai 以太, “a mysterious spiritual force or ‘nerven fluidum’ ”



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(shenjing boliu 神經波流).94 Yitai (a transliteration of ether), a hypothetical medium known in ancient times as well as a concept of physics and materialism in the nineteenth century, refers to an invisible substance that pervades the cosmos that can transmit light and energy. A synthesis of Chinese and Western ideas, yitai captured the philosophical imagination of late Qing intellectuals like Tan Sitong and Kang Youwei, who developed the concept in combination with spiritual/moral values, seeing yitai as the primary physical substance of electricity, chemistry, and biology.95 At these crossroads of modern (pseudo)science and ideological belief systems, their search for the realms of “the imponderable,” or the mysterious flowing, were oriented toward a moral and philosophical understanding rather than a scientific and technological vision in modern society.96 In his letter to Lufei Kui, Yu Jue 余覺 (1868–1951) defines lingxue as the “king of hundreds of disciplines,” which can “deepen wisdom, improve morality, cultivate the spirit, and connect humans with heaven.” 97 Continuing in this hyperbolic vein, Yu Jue indicates that lingxue has emerged as an encompassing conception, overlapping both philosophy and religion in the modern era. The Chinese spiritualists revived traditional folk beliefs, incorporated Western psychical research, and issued an invitation to rethink simplistic uses of Darwinian notions of development and scientific determinism. They provided tension-filled, often self-contradictory, expressions incorporating spiritualism and technology in a cosmic value system of sympathetic correspondences. In allegedly capturing ghosts and spirits, photography operated as a catalyst, affective medium, and trace that paradoxically may have helped to reassure and convince many of the new scientific viewpoint and its value for exploring the existential significance of life, supplanting older perspectives that were being eroded by rapid societal transformations. From the early 1920s, spirit photography was integrated into social and artistic practices in different ways: as a form of recreation, magic (moshu), or in creative experiments. Instruction manuals on how to use double exposure and makeup to catch an image of a ghost periodically appeared in magazines.98 As a new form of recreation, spirit photography fulfilled consumers’ enduring fascination with magical illusion. The mesmerizing images and narratives ensured their popularity and fueled further creative endeavors. Cartoonist Wang Dunqing’s 王敦慶 (1899–1990) work shows multiple superimpositions

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FIGURE 5.14  Wang

Dunqing, Photograph of the Spirit of Zhu Taoshan, Shanghai Manhua 8 (1936):14.

of a skull and four translucent images of dancing girls over the dark background of a modern urban landscape (figure 5.14).99 Zhu Taoshan is Wang’s penname as well as a fictional persona through which Wang projected his political satire. Having died from obsessions within his crumbling nation in earlier renditions, in his afterlife ghostly Zhu Taoshan reveals his continued preoccupation with sexuality and a decadent lifestyle. This imaginary tableaux foregrounds spectrality by overlaying images through a skeletal face with exaggerated eyeballs, dancing girls, and cityscapes, while rendering the coordinated unsettling effects of the uncanny, the phantasmal, and the alluring dark side of the modern. In this regard, photography, used to capture the “spirit”, has been tapped as a modernist visual experiment, rendering satirical messages toward the urban society that is haunted by wandering souls. Photography is proclaimed to be quintessentially “a medium of the spirit.” 100 This assertion resonates in terms of photography as a medium based on an interplay of light and shadow, which lends itself to cultural uses of creating optical illusions or arresting the “spirit.” Spirit photography, as practiced in early Republican China, not only fanned lasting beliefs by interconnecting with and corresponding to sympathetic cosmology but also responded to overly determined rational interpretations of the world and the anxieties felt on various levels of modern developments. Deployed at the religious altar, photography, literally as “drawing with light” in its Greek etymological sense, became a novel medium and interface of reenchantment, inscribing “spiritual light” (lingguang) in an increasingly disenchanted modern world.

CHAPTER 6

The Shadows of Poetry Mediating “Interior Landscapes”

I

n August 1924, the poet and scholar Yu Pingbo 俞平伯 (1900–1990) wrote a short inscription to The Great Wind Collection (Dafeng ji 大風集), China’s first photography album by a single photographer, Chen Wanli 陳萬里 (1892–1969). The poem is titled “Reflecting things with the heart-mind” (yixin yingwu 以心映物), and the first two lines read: “Reflecting ten thousand things with the mind, / the heart-mind is not controlled by ten thousand things” (以一心映現萬物, 不以萬物役一心).1 The inscription encapsulates the attitude of resistance and innovation that many amateur Chinese photographers held toward the visual verisimilitude promised by photography. Subscribing to traditional aesthetic rhetoric, the couplet enforces the supremacy of the heart-mind (xin) over things (wu), expressing an attitude that deliberately rectifies the role of technology-based media and mechanical determination in the process of capturing images. This chapter addresses how the mind (xin) and intent or ideas (yi) functioned in image-text relationships of the Republican era. First I provide a brief account of the concept of xieyi 寫意 (lit., sketching ideas) in art photography (meishu sheying 美術攝影, the Chinese equivalent of pictorialism) beginning in the late 1910s.2 I then explore how Chinese lyricism infused photographic practices at the time and how this lyric vision with aesthetic aims was remediated in photography. Engaging in a discussion of the intermedial qualities of selected examples that range from illustrated magazines to the works of distinguished artists, I explore the ramifications of the traditional aesthetics of xieyi in modern image-making. Critical attention is paid

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to how subjective agency intervenes in a technical medium and how heterogeneous configurations of photography, poetry, and calligraphy interact in a specific media environment through which Chinese landscapes are reconstructed and reimagined.

TRANSPLANTING XIEYI In 1927, the May Fourth writer Liu Bannong 劉半農 (1891–1934)—a central figure of the Light Society (Guangshe 光社) in Beijing—famously proposed the idea of xieyi zhaoxiang 寫意照相 (lit., the xieyi mode of photographing) in Bannong on Photography (Bannong tanying 半農談影).3 In this groundbreaking work, Liu not only resorts to traditional terms to legitimize the new medium but also brings traditional aestheticism into the conversation. Liu was typical of his generation of artists exposed to Western culture and established a guiding roadmap for subsequent Chinese art photography.4 Is photography art? From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, the question seems unnecessary. However, according to Qian Xuantong 錢玄同 (1887–1939), the camera, as a recorder of the natural world, is a mere child’s toy. In contrast, Liu Bannong, returning to Beijing after a long sojourn in Europe, engaged in a battle to establish the status of photography as akin to the esteemed position of traditional painting. Launching a defense of the artistic value of photography and attempting to legitimize the birth of a new art, Liu uses pictorial categories, i.e., fuxie 複寫 (copying) and xieyi, to refer to two types of photographic practices. He associates the term fuxie with the earlier term xiezhen 寫真 (lit., transcribing the true). Both terms refer to the camera’s mechanical ability to capture a visual resemblance of the concrete shapes of objects.5 As an antithesis of xiezhen, the second type might be called xiejia 寫假 (lit., sketching the unreal). Liu was reluctant to adopt this phrase, and instead preferred xieyi—a term referring to expressive brushwork in literati painting—to highlight the camera’s new goal of attaining an “artistic vista” (yijing 意境; lit., the realm of meaning). Copy theory stresses that the camera’s mimetic reproduction of objects and scenes is a result of technique, and Liu is not necessarily opposed to this. However, what he enthusiastically promotes is the potential for artistic endeavors, i.e., relying on the medium



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of the  camera to achieve the lyrical expression of feeling. As Liu remarks: “There must be entrusted meaning when the author’s artistic vista (yijing) is revealed via the camera. What is captured was originally dead; but once the author endows it with an artistic vista (yijing), it comes alive (huo).” 6 In this characterization, things (wu) must be endowed with yi (ideas) first, before being captured by the camera, so the resulting image will gain liveliness and lyrical expression. Liu uses an example to illustrate the differences between these two modes. When photographing moving clouds, the xieyi mode depicts a carefree, leisurely scene, such as that captured in this lyric quote from Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107): “Light clouds and gentle breezes close to noon” (yundan fengqing jinwutian 雲淡風輕近午天). In contrast, the xiezhen mode would be closer to this description: “The clouds are gray-white, not dense; the wind speed is 2 meters per second; the time, 10:35 a.m.” The latter’s straightforward documentation of physical features is what Liu calls a “dead account.” 7 In the contemporary study of photography, the seemingly contradictory combination of xieyi and zhaoxiang as xieyi zhaoxiang often remains unexplored or is simply understood as Liu’s clever rhetorical strategy to sidestep the thorny debate of whether or not photography is art. Xieyi, a term that defies a clear-cut definition, refers in its narrow sense to the pictorial style of splashed ink, expressive brushwork, and abbreviated sketches, an antithesis of gongbi 工筆 (the meticulous depiction of scenes and objects) in Tang dynasty painting. Xieyi developed into an essential feature of literati painting from the Yuan dynasty into the modern era, when the painter’s intent (yi) reigned supreme, as represented by painters like Xu Wei 徐渭 (1521–1593), who created art with unrestricted expression and neglected formal likeness (xingsi 形似). In the elastic and evolving use of the term, xieyi encapsulates a subjective approach to the empirical world and creates an artistic vista replete with a profundity of meaning and feeling. The resulting work is intended to be the crystallization of skill, aesthetic taste, a great breath of knowledge, and the moral rectitude of the artist. Although the emphasis on physical likeness fluctuated over the course of the development of literati painting,8 xieyi—“conceptual writing” or “ideographic sketching” in Eugene Wang’s rendition—generally aims “to renounce the plenitude of physical appearance in search of the elusive conceptual overtones beyond representation.” 9

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The dynamic relationship between mind and outer world is critical to understanding xieyi. It is commonly known that the author’s yi (concept, idea, or intent) gained superiority over physical resemblance after the Northern Song dynasty when lyric aesthetics reached its culmination.10 Modern artist Zheng Wuchang 鄭午昌 (1894–1952) characterizes traditional literati painting as the depiction of what is contained in the mind, using the contours of external things to embody the painter’s tastes and cultivation. Zheng cites the Ming painter Du Qiong 杜瓊 (1396–1474): “Painting is the articulation of interior landscapes (xiongzhong zaohua 胸中造化), revealed with the tip of a brush. The transforming images are matching up with the things’ appearances. Painting can arouse people’s ambitions, and generate boundless qi.” 11 The concept of “interior landscapes” refers to a meditative state in which the world is condensed into the inner self in an absolutely simple, plain, and quiet state, highlighting the dynamism between the subjective self and the millions of things in the phenomenological world. When a writer is in the process of conceiving ideas, his mind “encounters” and interacts with objects in the external world, discovering them through a spiritual journey. Liu Xie writes forcefully of just such an interaction between the human mind and external things in the following beautiful passage: “When poets were stirred by physical things, the categorical associates were endless. They remained drifting through all the images (xiang) of the world, even to their limit, and brooded thoughtfully on each small realm of what they saw and heard. They sketched qi (inner force) and delineated outward appearance, as they themselves were rolled round and round in the course of things; they applied coloration and matched sounds, lingering on things with their minds.” 12 By lingering “with things” (yuwu 與物) and via “categorical imagination” (lianlei 聯類), the poet establishes the continuous process of interactions between himself and the things he presents. Certain paradigms of reality came into existence not merely as a matter of “objective” observation but as the ramification of the “interior empiricism” that interacts between the outer world and the poet.13 Therefore, the things manifested in writing, transformed by the internal process of contemplation or “lingering,” are presumably infused with “spirit,” “flavor,” or an animating vitality. This spiritual journey and interior mechanism—outlined by Liu Xie and reiterated in a variety of ways—can be seen in the style of landscape painting in which “interior landscapes” are manifested



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with a self-expressive undertone.14 Numerous post-Song landscape paintings were conceived through the internalized vistas and perspective of “pictorial ideas” (huayi 畫意), which further informed and gave shape to visual representation in late imperial painting.15 Addressing the adoption of realism in Meiji Japan, Dōshin Satō explains “interior landscapes” as a combination of idealism and naturalism (nachurarizumu 自然主義), represented in the large landscape paintings of China’s Northern Song. The truth claim in this discussion has to do with the mind’s eye,16 not simply an accurate likeness promised by the medium. Although referring to “interior landscapes” as a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity is generally valid, I wish to point out that the conceptual formulation of yi (intent or meaning), operating in the formation of interior landscapes, is more complex and fluid than this dualistic structure. The composition of interior landscapes in art photography goes substantially beyond the straightforward, representational mode of artistic creation, ascribing the dynamics and dialogues between the author’s mind and the external world. At the same time, from the late 1910s, the old pictorial term xieyi developed into the antithesis of the returning loanword from Meiji Japan, xieshi (lit., depicting the real, 寫實). Intellectuals such as Kang Youwei and Chen Duxiu promoted the Western painting style of formal likeness to achieve realistic effects and made xieyi the scapegoat for the decline of traditional painting.17 The expressionist approach of xieyi contrasts sharply with a newly introduced model of “drawing from nature” (xiesheng 寫生), a visual principle that emphasized careful observation to obtain realistic effects, as well as an ascending modern cultural ideology associated with “advanced” Western values.18 Realism, as a mode of looking and a modern practice in the hands of Xu Beihong 徐悲鴻 (1895–1953) and Chen Duxiu, meant to faithfully transcribe the real; however, artists’ negotiations with the real often resulted in a tension-filled reformation of reality.19 Conversely, advocates of traditional painting continued to uphold the idea that a higher order of artistic realization exists beyond that which can be achieved by formal resemblance (xingsi). This oppositional camp of intellectuals, including Jin Cheng 金城 (1878–1926), Lin Shu, and Chen Shizeng 陳師曾 (1976–1923), defended traditional aesthetics and sensibilities and charged them with new significance to combat the visual verisimilitude that had begun to take hold in modern soil.20

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Accordingly, in the context of contentious cultural debates, the mode of xieyi was refashioned in a dramatic manner to be representative of newly constructed Chineseness.21 Facing intense competition from realistic Western art of the time, many “conservative” intellectuals and artists felt compelled to reconstitute the meanings of China’s cultural past by selecting and refashioning the past. In so doing, they translated the newly formed antithesis of xieyi versus xieshi to be a rough approximation of the cultural differences in the binary of East versus West. The encompassing, particularly shifty trope of xieyi, characterized by its transmediality as well as its intertextual relationship to the literary past, asserted new significance in early twentieth-century historical conditions and cultural politics. While perceiving the limits and determinism involved in photography, Liu Bannong and his cohort actively explored the new medium’s potential to express yi in an attempt to circumvent the descriptive capacity of the camera, turning a mechanical medium into an expressive one. The camera, with its automation and technical features, functions differently from the ink-laden brush, determining the outcome of the technical image in a comprehensive manner that does not seem to have an analogous aesthetic potential. Photographers thus designed different strategies to deal with this quandary and the limits of the medium. Technical finesse and manual alteration are exercised to explore the media’s expressive capacities and are often used to obscure realistic details and clarity to achieve atmospheric effects. For instance, when shot with a soft focus lens or through the use of tricks (e.g., rubbing Vaseline on the lens), photographers observed that the blurred image could gain ambiguity and the ample lingering “flavor” (yiwei 意味) that they hoped it would have.22 Due in part to their preference for xieyi and in part to the available technology, the pictorial photographers of the 1920s and early 1930s had a pronounced penchant for well-composed, soft-focused, low-toned images with lyrical sensibilities and suggestive aesthetics. This style, dubbed meishu hu 美術糊 (lit., artistic blurring), attracted many imitators.23 With an awareness of the constraints of directly referencing the world, pictorial photographers worldwide at the turn of the twentieth century merged traditional pictorial practices with photographic visions. In his



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discussion of art photography, critic David Bate points out that the pictorial image aims to “render the real as an ideal,” 24 emphasizing that the representation of the real through the camera’s viewfinder is an effect of the artist’s gaze. In practice, Chinese photographers, who charged photographic scenes with lyrical sensibilities and desires for idealization, might also be described in this way. Nevertheless, Chinese pictorial photography does not exclusively aim at establishing a privileged relationship with reality to make it ideal; instead, the projection of altered reality emerges from the cultivated literati mind’s eye and its subjective, lyrical gaze. It is in this sense that Hu Boxiang 胡伯翔 (1896–1989) defines “art photography” as expressing aesthetic feeling with adept skills to complete a structure of aesthetic beauty, which then exists as “an embodiment of the ideal” (lixiang zhi biaoxian 理想之表現).25 Motivated by the desire to create an “artistic vista” and valuing aesthetic resonance, Republican pictorial photographers treated the scenes less as true to the forms of life and more as new opportunities to radically transform reality, to response to the heart-mind (xin) and to capture the ultimate “truth” (zhen) in idealistic terms.26 Xieyi, a convenient label that essentializes traditional characteristics, was constantly evoked and used both for Chinese photographers’ artistic experiments with the new medium and for their reactions against the realistic paradigm. This persistent privileging of yi in artistic creation contributes to the long-lasting fascination with pictorialism in China’s art photography.27

PICTORIAL IDEAS AND LYRICAL MOOD Chinese photographers soon attained the general understanding that poetry can be interpreted in the photographic medium just as in painting. One page from China Photography (Zhongguo sheying 中國攝影, 1946–1949) illustrates this point well (figure 6.1). The photographer Hu Shilian 胡士楝 claimed that he was deeply immersed in Tang poetry while growing up and that his mind was thereby engraved with poetic scenes and sensibilities. Hu shot four photographs and paired them with the first stanza from the following well-known poem.

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FIGURE 6.1  Photographs of a Tang Poem and Sketching Ideas, Zhongguo sheying 7 (1947):29.

INSCRIBED ONTO THE WALL OF THE MEDITATION HALL AT BROKEN MOUNTAIN TEMPLE

In early morning, I entered the ancient temple, The morning sun shone on the tall forest. Down a winding path to a secluded place, a meditation hall amid lush flowers and trees.28 題破山寺廟後禪院

清晨入古寺， 初日照高林。 曲徑通幽處， 禪房花木深。

The poem by Chang Jian 常建 (708–765), in the form of “poetry inscribed on walls” (題壁詩 tibi shi), describes tranquil scenes of the meditation hall in a temple under the morning sunshine. The poetic scenes in the two couplets were translated by Hu Shilian into four visual equivalents. With the involvement of



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different media (either the wall or photography and printing), this example illustrates how poetic diction fed the creative mind in search of lyric scenes for photography. Displaying a pictorial composition that suggests a lyric atmosphere, these photographs fall within the parameters of the genre shiyi zhao (poetry-inspired photography), the formal and stylistic reworking of the ancient pictorial genre of shiyi tu (poetry-inspired picture). Shiyi tu refers to paintings that are painted in rough approximation of what is expressed in a poem (e.g., Du Fu’s work), with the inscriptions of one or a couple lines from that poem, a genre brought to prominence by the late Northern Song literati and popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties.29 As the master painter Guo Xi 郭熙 (ca. 1010–ca. 1090) states, “poetry is a painting without form, and painting is poetry with form” (詩是無形畫，畫是有形詩).30 In Guo’s description of “pictorial ideas” (huayi), he urges people to read Tang and Song poetry in these terms: “These beautiful lines fully express what people hold in their thought, and delineate the scenes which are right before the eyes” (其中佳句有道盡人腹中之事， 有裝出目前之景).31 He goes on to cite fifteen poetic passages whose vivid poetic scenes can readily be painted. Poetic intent serves pictorial intent on at least two levels: (1) lyrical heritage and poetic erudition contribute to the author’s cultural cultivation, vital energy (qi), and sensibilities, which are the major sources of “interior empiricism”; and (2) more concretely, vivid imagery in poetry supplies the inspiration for pictorial ideas while the picture renders approximate scenes. Hu Shilian’s example illustrates the mnemonic value of both poetic images and rhymed words and their ingraining as mental images. An artist, when “conceiving his idea” (liyi 立意), draws his thematic inspiration, motifs, and expressive style from an entire cultural repertoire or one single poetic image, giving birth to the expressed work, in this case, ironically, through the technical medium. The title of Hu’s work Photographs of a Tang poem and Sketching Ideas (Tangshi sheying xieyi 唐詩攝影寫意), highlights the translatability among poetry, painting, and photography. The intimate relationship between poetry and painting was extended to a triad of interactions among all three genres. “Poetry-inspired photography” (shiyi sheying 詩意攝影) was constantly evoked as a collated pair with “art photography” (meishu sheying) to jointly render effects charged with “pictorial ideas and lyrical mood” (huayi shiqing 畫意詩情). Pictorial magazines, such as The Young Companion, The Cosmopolitan (Dazhong

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huabao 大眾畫報, 1933–1935), and Jingwu Pictorial (Jingwu huabao 精武畫報, 1927–1932), all featured photographs with a distinctly lyrical touch.32 One article on the new medium’s pictorial effects in The Chinese Kodakery (Keda zazhi 柯達雜誌, 1930–1937) proclaims: “the photographer, indeed, like the painter, uses the imagination to achieve good work. With rich imagination cultivated daily, you will click the machine spontaneously when chance arrives. You will achieve success in one way or another, and the resulting photographs must be full of pictorial meaning (huayi).” 33 As previously mentioned, in the traditional aesthetic formulation, subjective, lyrical perception goes beyond simply selecting the things, composing the scene, or projecting its own emotion onto the things; it constitutes the marvelous dynamism between the human spirit and the external world.34 This cultivated, subjective gaze encountering the spirit of things is further complicated by the intervention of the photographic eye and its putative objectivity. When the photographer’s mind’s eye actively seeks out lyrical scenes, to what extent are these scenes the realization of the author’s yi? Furthermore, as the traditional understanding of artistic creation gives high agency to the artist, dependent on his moral character and aesthetic sophistication, the persistent question becomes how to reconcile the divide between the camera’s eye and the lyrical eye. How can one reconcile mechanical objectivity with the tenet that “intent precedes the brushwork” (yizai bixian 意在筆先)?35 Landscapes reside first in the mind before a painter even picks up the brush, and his finished work corresponds with those preconceived mental images that appear under concentration.36 The strength of photography lies in its superb ability to capture perfect images analogous to the world, and Chinese photographers who sought the embodiment of their subjective, inner vision had to sort out these contradictions and constraints in practice. This literary-inspired experimentalism can be found at different levels of their processes, from choosing picturesque scenery in different perspectives with a lyric eye, to composing a scene that evokes the illusion of a master painting, to a later stage of retouching to achieve atmospheric effects, to simply naming the work by adopting a poetic line or couplet. The following examples illustrate these approaches. Pictorialism in the 1920s and early 1930s was replete with idyllic scenes and rural subject matter conspicuously attributed to revered paintings. Numerous photographers avidly modeled their work after masterworks of landscape painting in terms of motif, composition, presentational style, and



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even in deliberately created brushwork effects. Misty Rain Among Thousands of Trees (Wangan yanyu 萬竿煙雨), made famous by Wen Zhengming 文徵明 (1470–1559), was a popular subject in ink painting from the late imperial age to the modern era. Zhang Zhenhou’s 張珍侯 photograph with the same Chinese title features a modern-looking woman holding an umbrella in misty rain on a tree-lined lane, making conscious reference to the classical work. Traveling in the mountains in the midst of fall scenery, a familiar motif represented by Guo Xi’s masterpiece Journey in Autumn Mountains (Qiushan xinglü tu 秋山行旅圖), resonates within Hu Bozhou’s 胡伯洲 Journey in Autumn Mountains (Qiushan xinglü 秋山行旅), which depicts a peasant carrying luggage along a mountain road.37 Two members of the Beijing Light Society (Guangshe), Wang Mengshu 汪孟舒 (active in the 1920s) and Chen Wanli, self-consciously modeled their minimalist approach to shooting scenes after the canonical work of the master painter Ni Zan.38 The photograph of layered misty peaks of Yellow Mountains, titled Misty Rains of the Mi Family (Mijia yanyu 米家煙雨), shot by Xu Muru (aka Zee Mok-yu 徐慕如, active in the 1930s), was inspired by and made direct reference to Mi Fu and his son Mi Youren’s iconic, hazy, mist-veiled mountain range.39 Attributed to Mi Fu, Pavilion of Rising Clouds depicts three ranges of mist-filled, rounded hills in swinging curves with two rows of trees in dark foliage below, forming a harmonious interplay (figure 6.2).40 In the photograph, the composition of trees in the foreground and mountains in the distance with hovering clouds is deliberately modeled after Mi’s stylistic composition (figure 6.3). This photograph not only pays homage to the celebrated silhouettes of the Mi father and son’s signature cloud and mist but also reveals a recurrently inspirational longing surrounding the textual history of the Yellow Mountains.41 Taking the paintings as a model and source of inspiration, the young photographers actively searched out scenes, mediated through lyrical imagination and paintings, which would allow them to transfer their preconceived aesthetic ideas and iconography onto the photographic surface to achieve pictorial effects. Through the continuous artistic practices of emulation (fang 仿) of canonical models, the photographs acquire the style of “ancient air” (guyi 古 意), a distinctive synergy of what we may call archaic modernism.42 A practitioner of his own theory, Liu Bannong is distinguished for his pictorialism and effective executions of lyricism and pictorial meaning. Taken on a trip in 1928, Liu’s work titled Gusty Wind in the Tower Foreboding

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∂ FIGURE 6.2  Pavilion of Rising Clouds, attributed to Mi Fu, ink on silk, 150 × 78.8 cm.

Courtesy of Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1908.171. Î FIGURE 6.3  Zee Mok-yu, Huang Shan, Zhonghua (Shanghai) 52 (1937):30.

the Approaching Storm (Shanyu yulai fengmanlou 山雨欲來風滿樓) captures a dramatic scene of trembling trees against clouded, dark mountains with a blurred effect (figure 6.4). The quoted poetic line (inscribed on the upper right-hand corner), Bannong’s signature, and the seal overlapping the photographic surface all serve to replicate the qualities of an ink painting.43 In other works, such as Carp (Li 鯉) and Not Much Drawing (Zhaomo wuduo 著墨無多), Liu takes a minimalist approach to lyrically and impressionistically render the liveliness of the fish and the shadow of bamboo branches. To the eye of Lang Jingshan, Liu Bannong’s use of light to create the effect of ink paintings of bamboo leaves is reminiscent of the acclaimed painter Wu Zhen’s 吳鎮 (1280–1354) work on the same topic.44 In artist Feng Zikai’s 豐子愷 (1898–1975) words, Chinese art photography is a “picturalization of photography” (zhaoxiang de huahua 照相的畫化).45 Themes, motifs, and compositions typical in art photography are creative



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FIGURE 6.4  Liu Bannong, Gusty Wind in the Tower Foreboding the Approaching

Storm, gelatin silver print, Beijing Guangshe nianjian 2 (1929).

renditions of pictorial and lyrical imageries, with its strong preference for nature as a subject. Popular titles of the Republican photographs included “Down a Winding Path to a Secluded Place” (qujing tong youchu 曲徑通幽處); “Chanting on the Boat at Sunset” (yuzhou changwan 渔舟唱晚); “Sparse Shadows Reflecting Horizontally” (shuying hengxie 疏影横斜); “An Empty Boat Sways, With No One Crossing the Waves” (yedu wuren zhouziheng 野渡無 人舟自橫); “Moonlight Shining Through Pine Trees” (mingyue songjianzhao 明 月松間照); “Sailing with the Right Wind” (fengzheng yifanxuan 風正一帆懸); “Distant Mountains in the Sunset” (rimu cangshanyuan 日暮蒼山遠); and “Endlessly Lovely Sunset” (xiyang wuxianhao 夕陽無限好). Among these, the canonical scene of the swaying empty boat, mentioned by Guo Xi as a poetic image having great potential for visualization, draws the fascinated gaze in art photography. Countless recycling of such poetic lines and compositions of photographic scenes can be understood as one example of a “module system,” which Lothar Ledderose describes as an underlying principle in the production of Chinese culture. Instead of seeking the mimetic representation of reality, he argues that traditional Chinese had a deeply ingrained tendency to engage in “modular thought,” i.e., to create work of high quality by using a distinct set of preexisting modular units.46 In light of his ideas, we perceive that the sunset, the empty boat, or the distant mountains functioned as modules,

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enabling the artist to build up cross-media compositions and evoke archaic motifs. Referencing modules and mutations that accrete over a long period of time, Ledderose describes Chinese artistic “creativity” as a combination of conscious recycling, imagination, and intervention rather than valuing novelty or creating things ex nihilo. Two opposite full-page collages comprised of pictorial photographs accompanied by poetic language and published in a pictorial magazine are illustrative examples of lyrical influence. The continuity between the pictures and a mutual responsiveness of image and text help to achieve typographic harmony and an orchestrated vision using decorative patterns. These ornate, unified examples show the reciprocal illumination between photographic image and poetry as well as the resonance of “lyrical mood” and “pictorial ideas.” The three boldfaced characters, “The Shadows of Poetry” (shi zhi ying 詩之影), appearing in modernist lettering, are locked within the confines of a collage of nine rectangular photos with quotations of classical poems placed beneath (figure 6.5). The pictorial imagery in the photographs includes the moored boat, water, clouds, and, of course, beautiful women, two of

FIGURE 6.5  The Shadows of Poetry, Dazhong huabao 11 (1934).



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which were shot by Zhang Yinquan 張印泉 (1900–1971). On the visual surface, the heavily shadowed images and texts are presented harmoniously in the composite design to echo the title of shi zhi ying and its typography. The visual images and their paired poems (written by poets from Su Shi to Zheng Banqiao) are loosely conjoined, with the latter conjuring mental images that may or may not exactly match those in the photographs. The photograph on the top right of figure 6.5, which depicts a lonely boat against the mountain and its reflection in water, is accompanied by Wei Yingwu’s renowned poem containing the line “an empty boat sways, with no one crossing the waves”(yedu wuren zhouziheng).47 Lyrical sentiment is evoked and recycled to awaken familiar associations in the minds of readers/viewers. These photographic images are not simply shadows of nature and the real; they are emphatic tracings of the shadows of poetry. The collage Time Flowing Like Water (Sishui liunian 似水流年) exemplifies a different, newly acquired visual taste (figure 6.6). The four-character title is accompanied with a line of smaller characters “Pictorial Meaning and Lyrical Mood at the Beginning or End of the Year” (Suiwei niantou de huayi shiqing

FIGURE 6.6  Li Shifang, Time Flowing Like Water, Tuwen 1 (1936).

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歲尾年頭的畫意詩情). Eight photographs, presented symmetrically in circular and rectangular formats, are each given a seven-character line, printed within their borders. The photographs symbolically represent introspection and the passage of time through their depiction of modern objects and scenes, including a flower vase, a clock, a calendar, a waterfall, a railway track, and a cosmopolitan young man. A few images show deep shadows and a strong graphic or atmospheric quality through skillful lighting and close-up perspectives. The skill on display in the photographs demonstrates that the photographer, Li Shifang 李世芳 (active in the 1930s), had developed a modernist visual language and sensibility. The seven-character line (made up of poetic diction in an imitation of the classical style) became the preferred formula for the title of many pieces of work, enabling viewers to interpret the visual scenes in familiar and sentimental ways. The stylish page layout is presented against the background of a calendar and large Arabic numerals, registering a new visual hermeneutics and vibrating rhythm. These two collages (figures 6.5 and 6.6) are reframed through graphic design, and the spatial arrangement of the image-texts elevates their interaction to a higher, multivalent level.48 The intersecting texts interrupt the mimetic continuum of the photographs by adding figural richness, and the interweaving of words, images, and typographic space aims to achieve an extended lyrical vision. Intriguingly, figure 6.6 is signed with the words “photographing the ideas by Li Shifang” (Li Shifang sheyi 李世芳攝意) on the top right under the title. Sheyi 攝意 (lit., photographing the idea, or conceptual photographing) declares the photographer’s subjective intention and lyrical approach to the image. The carefully shot images of the objects and human faces (e.g., the still life of the clock, a book, poker cards, and a toy car) and the dreamlike ambiance and mood speak abstractly about the passage of time and its absurdity. The ideas or intent (yi), although they once operated in xie (sketching), shi (poetry), and hua (picture), are now realized in she (shooting) via the technical medium. Communicating with lyrical ideas and concepts, these visual images acquire a refreshingly abstract, modernist look. Transplanting yi into the new media creates multiple routes of signification, turning a mechanistic vision into an interactive synthesis of cognitive and aesthetic elements through which representational forms of photographic expression can be redefined.



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QI AND RHYTHMS IN COMPOSITE PHOTOGRAPHY In 1936, photographer Wang Jiezhi 王結之 in Nanjing continued to embrace the concepts of xieyi and guangdiao (光調, tone of light)—using light as the medium’s crucial property—to characterize photographing a scene. Wang lists a range of “surgical operations” as methods of xieyi, including view-taking (qujing 取景), composition (goutu 構圖), revision of the negative, superimposition, printing a film positive, handcrafting the prints, and adjustments to depth of field. All of these methods achieve a representation different from straightforward shooting, leading to painterly effects Wang calls “the beauty of conceptual expression” (xieyi de mei).49 Numerous amateur photographers used different methods to alter or beautify a result. A more radical version of “the beauty of conceptual expression” reached its full manifestation in Lang Jingshan’s theory and practice of “composite photography” (jijin zhaoxiang 集 錦照相). Composite photography, by which Lang achieved his international fame, refers to photographic combinations produced from more than one negative, resulting in pictures of constructed landscapes with painterly effects.50 Lang, who was also a landscape painter, modeled his ideas after Xie He’s 謝赫 (active 500–ca. 535) six canonical methods of painting (liufa 六法), laying out the salient characteristics of composite photography and attempting to seamlessly suture ancient pictorial principles to a new technology. In the articulation of his tenets of pictorialism, Lang frequently references a defining characteristic of literati painting, qiyun shengdong 氣韻生動 (rhythmic vitality). As Xu Fuguan elaborates, qiyun is a key concept in Chinese landscape painting that originally referred to perfect, vital energy (zhenqi 真 氣) and consonance between the heavens, earth, and artistic spirit (shen 神), a direct result of the artist’s knowledge, moral character, and cultivation; shengdong refers to liveliness that the subject can bring to the natural world and the harmonious fusion of subject and world.51 Lang Jingshan quotes Huang Yue’s 黃鉞 elaboration on qiyun, saying, “Among the six canons in the art, rhythmic vitality is the most difficult for the artist to achieve. While the yi must precede movements of the bush, the lingering flavor may lie beyond the picture.” 52 This idea that yi comes before one picks up the brush is equivalent to forming a conception of a “landscape in the mind” that precedes the

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composition of a photograph. The idea of qiyun shengdong is not simply to value an aesthetics that emphasizes human spirituality and intention over lifelike or realistic rendition but to reach the resemblance (si) and consonance that combines both the form and spirit of the internal and external worlds, through which ultimate truth (zhen) can be obtained. For those familiar with landscape painting theory and aestheticism, Lang may appear to merely recapitulate pervasive ideas concerning “true mountains and waters” (zhen shanshui 真山水) in Guo Xi’s famous account.53 Nevertheless, Lang’s outlandish evocation of qiyun and his designation of photography as a medium that sketches “landscapes in the mind” come into a direct paradigmatic clash with the visual veracity associated with photography. By perceiving the medium’s technological determination and deficiency, Lang attempts to transcend the formal constraints of photography, turning it into a full expression of his aesthetic tastes, ideas, and vital energy (qi). He forcefully points out that his works are collected from memory and that artists paint what they have seen and remember in their minds, thus freeing his compositions from factual reality. The claim of painting from memory is an ancient one, but memory is intriguingly redeployed here as a mental space for a negotiation between the camera’s immediate, realistic capture and the later darkroom operations of the artist. Just like the qiyun (vital energy) in literati painting theory, which can presumably be collected from all four seasons and different locations,54 Lang unshackles himself from the limits of time, space, and the empirical world, attempting to achieve a mixture of an embodied, wandering gaze and a technological gaze. In Wu Hung’s words, Lang commits himself to “a fictional construct of fragmentary images based on the photographer’s visual memories.” 55 Lang defends his method when he writes: Chinese artists of the traditional schools are often accused of painting from imagination. Nothing could be further from the truth. They do not paint from imagination but from memory. What differentiates them from the Western artists is that they paint what they have seen instead of what they are seeing. The World is full of beautiful things as well as ugly things. God has created what he calls art, and art is said to improve nature. A corrected and retouched view of nature is expressed in the artists’ own work. The same is now being done in Composite pictures. . . . With Composite pictures, photographers can now do just the same as Chinese artists: they



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now have their choice among natural objects; they may now make their own compositions in photography. Neither time nor space need hereafter be an obstacle. All the products of Nature are now their materials, which can be utilized freely, to construct their “Land of Heart’s Desire.” 56

Memory thus becomes a powerful and active force for artistic creation. Just as he draws on his creative imagination fueled by scenes he has seen (instead of he is seeing), Lang also engages aesthetical ideas and insights garnered from history.57 The conception of memory that Lang Jingshan relies on is not only a personal one (literally, referring to the many negatives he kept) but a cultural, collective, and textual one. He experimented and systematically developed his alteration methods to create a more ideal scene that emerged through memory. When taking photos in different locations, time, distance, and weather, Lang explains in his instruction manuals that one must keep a number of variables in mind, from the distance (foreground, middle distance, and far distance) of the scene to the actual subject matter. Once these variables have been established, the photographer must then be careful to differentiate the main scene from the auxiliary scenes. The next step is to select negatives from the stock and make an artistic arrangement according to aesthetic ideas, the accurate execution of light, spatial arrangement, a discerning balance between light and shadows, and the like. The different component parts need to be painted smoothly or the edges blended with a pen, so that they may be sutured together to achieve a smooth transformation.58 Lang’s manuals illustrate that his deliberate interventions involve labor-intensive work and virtuoso skills to transfer painterly techniques and his aesthetic ideas to the mechanical medium. Although he takes advantage of natural scenes, patterns of light, and photography’s immediacy and reproductivity, Lang ultimately challenges the notion that photography is the premium realistic medium, converting it instead into a hybrid medium suturing technical finesse with aesthetic ideas. In the hands of artists like Lang and likeminded others from the Republican era, the ontological status of photography as a realistic medium or an art of chance was redefined. This is not to suggest, however, that incorporation of these early exhortations into the new medium was unproblematic. For instance, how does the idea of qiyun, with its advocacy for the fusion of things and self and spiritual freedom, reconcile with the technical demands of the new medium? Lang’s predilection for using clouds (a favorite icon for

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qiyun in a literal sense and the life force in a metaphoric sense) to connect the space between entities or to conceal the joins may indicate his awareness of this problem.59 With reluctance, Lang acknowledged borrowing his method from the Swedish photographer Oscar Gustave Rejlander (1813–1875) and the photomontage (zhantieshi zhaopian 粘貼式照片, in Lang’s rendition) practiced in the West. Lang states with confidence, however, that the composite method in Western combination printing remains merely a technological innovation, whereas his works embody Chinese aesthetic theories.60 Eschewing the intentionally jarring juxtapositions found in many modernist works, Lang evokes the illusory, “as if” qualities of the master painting in his photographs. Lang’s composite picture perfectly illustrate the combination of the brushwork of interior landscapes with the “pencilwork of nature,” an embodied, lyrical eye with a photographic one. To quote Zhang Daqian 張大 千 (1899–1983), a master painter who often appeared in Lang’s photographs as a symbolic figure, Lang Jingshan’s work “collects natural scenes and objects to articulate interior landscapes” (集自然之景物，發胸中之丘壑).61 Lang used photographic materials to construct virtual landscapes, and many of his pieces are atmospheric or imagistic evocations of master paintings and canonical poetry. The photograph Spring Fantasia, with its Chinese title Xiaofeng canyue: Liu Yong ciyi 曉風殘月 柳永詞意 (lit., “The waning moon in the morning breeze, after Liu Yong’s lyric song”), is a felicitous example of Lang’s signature style (figure 6.7).62 The willow tree, sandy bank, and boat scenes are shot at different spots along the Jialing River, whereas the distant mountain is taken from a different location. The explanatory text quotes the entire poem “To the Tune Yu Linling” 雨霖鈴 by Liu Yong, which depicts the heart-wrenching moment of a literatus parting from his courtesan and embarking on a lonely journey. This notable poem, with its vivid imagery and painterly quality, opens different possibilities for visual rendition. As with many other photographers, the empty fishing boat is one of Lang’s favorite subjects, and he frequently returned to this image at various points in his life. Spring Fantasia illustrates Lang’s spatial division and compositional arrangement. The foreground features a single enlarged willow tree with its enhanced branches swaying in the breeze. The central focal point is the lonely boat with no visible human figure, which indicates an impending departure and corresponding emotional drama. The distant mountain in a much lighter tone has been added to the print from another negative. Lang points out that

FIGURE 6.7  Lang Jingshan, Spring Fantasia, 55 × 42.5 cm, gelatin silver print, 1945.

Courtesy of Long Chin-san Art & Cultural Development Association.

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the compositional space is comprised of the foreground (jinjing), the middle distance (zhongjing), and the far distance (yuanjing).63 Lang appropriates the well-established landscape composition of a foreground with trees against a body of water and a mountain range for this distinctively new medium.64 In the English description of this photograph, Lang emphasizes the shared features between ink painting and photography in monochrome. The large willow branches in the foreground are shot in sharp focus, like ink lines drawn with contrasting light or heavy touches, and sway in the wind to create movement and rhythm. White and black gradations and tones are adroitly employed to mimic the effects of multiple colors in ink painting. Eliminating the particularities of time and location, Lang composes a deceptively limpid scene in an abstract, seemingly undramatic visual language. This aesthetics of blandnesss (dan 淡), in François Jullien’s opinion, provides a free, spontaneous path that opens to infinite signification and experience.65 Lang’s poem-inspired composite photograph Spring Fantasia can fruitfully be compared with another famous composite photograph, The Lady of Shalott by Henry Peach Robinson (1830–1901) (figure 6.8). Made from three negatives, Robinson’s photograph, alluding to Tennyson’s poem of the same title, is a

FIGURE 6.8  Henry Peach Robinson, The Lady Shalott, albumen print, 1861.

Royal Photographic Society, Getty Images.



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reenactment of the painting by John Everett Millais and of pre-Raphaelite pictorial composition.66 The dreamlike vignette of the lady lying in a punt and embarking for Camelot is the focal point of the composition. The passages from Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott” (part IV) inscribed on the mat serve not only to acknowledge the poem’s source but also to illustrate “the fable of photography itself” with regard to life and vision seen differently in photography and literature.67 Both Spring Fantasia and The Lady of Shalott are indebted to their respective literary and painting traditions; the former evokes a lyrical atmosphere to render subdued, ambiguous emotions, and the latter reenacts a contrived, “realistic” scene using a model.68 Filled with concrete, visual details, Robinson’s composition photograph transforms a literary scene into a realistic representation, producing “the reality effect” or referential illusion.69 The fictionality of his work should not be seen as a violation of a realist ethic; rather, it is essential to its realism.70 Scholars have observed that Lang Jingshan kept a stockpile of photographic images (e.g., Zhang Daqian as a literati-type figure, the lonely boat, the bamboo tree, the plums, the orchard, and the deer) and recycled them in different finished products.71 He quotes these scenes or objects not as concrete images in and of themselves but as symbols to “decorate” (dianzhui 點綴) the scene and make it come to life. In figure 6.9, the page on the left is

FIGURE 6.9  Lang Jingshan, Fairy Bird, Jingshan jijin zuofa.

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Lang’s work made in the 1950s, Fairy Bird (gumu xianqin 古木仙禽, lit., ancient woods and a magic bird), and the right page shows a variety of possibilities for recycling the same crane image in six different works. This example illustrates both Lang’s recycling of the image of longevity, or using it as a component in several works, and his keen attention to the position of that symbol and the overall spatial arrangements (a key principle that he has elaborated upon). Here “ancient wood” (gumu) and “magic bird” (xianqin) are two evoked images, juxtaposed with emptiness between, waiting to be filled in by imagination.72 These works of the crane, comprised of the same set of negatives, appearing as if a heap of clichés, are like one densely textured Tang verse line, with the juxtaposition of nouns or images through syntactic discontinuity and with little regard for mimetic or propositional logic.73 Primarily using the symbols and allusions as his dictions and defying the illusionistic method, Lang Jingshan fuses the presentational and representational modes of artistic practice to accomplish a new kind of cross-media expressive form that provides a spectacular, modern illustration of xieyi. To recapitulate, this chapter examines the visual re/inventions of idyllic scenes and “interior landscapes” through the combination of photography and lyricism. A lonely, lyrical vision brings photographic eyes to bear on the perceptions of the world and inclinations toward lyricization and emotional symbolism. Combining spatial and temporal forms, pioneering practitioners (both photographers and graphic designers or editors) creatively blended literary themes, motifs, and pictorial imagery with what is “real,” synthesizing Chinese aesthetic ideas and distinctively modern media into a new expression of xieyi. It is the shadow that poetry casts over modern photographers that facilitated creation of a new art that bears traces and rhetorics of the past. Lang Jingshan’s work, in particular, provides a modern embodiment of the aesthetic principle powerfully articulated by Su Shi a thousand years earlier: “Use the shadows on your paper to illuminate my interior landscapes.”74 煩君紙上影， 照我胸中山。

CHAPTER 7

Inscribing Remembrance Lyrical and Technological Envisioning of the Past

I

n chapter 17 of the eighteenth-century masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber, as Jia Zheng completes the Grandeur Garden to welcome the return of his prestigious daughter, the imperial concubine Yuanchun, he weighs the option of decorating the garden with inscriptions. Jia says: “All those prospectus and pavilions—even the rocks and trees and flowers will seem somehow incomplete without that touch of poetry with which only the written word can enliven a scene (shengse 生色).”1 Jia Zheng turns this into an occasion to test the literary talent of his son Baoyu. Baoyu seeks inspiration from the scenes and offers various allusion-laden names to the pavilions and compounds, as well as descriptive couplets of his own composition. The given names of inner chambers in the Grandeur Garden foreshadow the fate of the female characters who are about to move into these spaces. What is fascinating is the act of inscribing and writing that these fictional characters constantly perform, as well as the desire, enjoyment, and significance associated with the practice. Words are not simply descriptive or denotative, they are culturally conditioned through metonymical and metaphorical associations.2 The phrases and lines inscribed on the plates and rocks of the garden freeze themselves in the physical space to insist on their “own irreducible there-ness.”3 More significant, poetic language, with its meaning and function transitioning from concrete locations to abstract feeling and free associations, is constantly spelled out to “enliven” the intricately designed landscape. I use this well-known narrative to exemplify the persistence and enthusiasm of the practice of writing inscriptions on different materials (wall, stone,

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paper, brocade, and so on). Although in this particular moment Baoyu is ordered by his father to write a poem for the occasion, the characters voluntarily write poetry at various times throughout the novel when the picturesque scenery of the garden touches them. Enjoying the elaborate garden and appreciating seasonal changes, shedding tears or lamenting over the ancient ruins under the moon, wandering in the midst of wild verdure, or climbing a mountain peak in autumn are archetypal moments consistently soliciting emotional and poetic responses. Chi Xiao has demonstrated how charged “lyric archi-occasions” entail conventional “postures” and constant emotions (qing) for literati in response to scenes (jing) through the correlative relationships between scenes and engendered emotions.4 It is through the imitation and repetition of this lyrical gesture at various moments of encountering a wide variety of scenes, from the grand to the minute, that Chinese literati establish their textual and affective relationship with history. Among these prototypical lyrical moments, the iconic gesture of huaigu 懷古 (lamenting or mediating the past) over historical ruins is a perennial favorite. A temple, a stele, a tomb of a historical figure, or an ancient ruin—such sites, layered with stories and allusions, are ripe for historical insights and lyrical sentimentality. Generations of literati would pay visits to such sites of remembrance to reflect on the vicissitudes of human life and mortality and to frequently articulate their elegiac sentiments. An esteemed subgenre of poetry known as huaigu insistently exhibits the lyric archi-occasion in writing for historical reflection and lamentation, through which the poet at the present moment can be placed in the historical trajectory.5 Huaigu as a general aesthetic experience, as Wu Hung eloquently puts it, is “stimulated by historical traces and erasure” and “defined by an introspective gaze, a gap of time, effacement and memory.” Engaging in a comparative perspective, he points out that despite its prominent literary presence, visual representations of architectural ruins were nonexistent in premodern Chinese pictorial traditions. Instead, he uncovers other kinds of visual experiences that embody the huaigu sentiment (e.g., reading the steles). Abundant feelings of huaigu in lyrical, psychological, and metaphorical terms have been translated into plentiful visual representation in twentieth-century Chinese art.6 Republican photographers actively cast their gazes on famous mountains (mingshan), temples, and historical scenes in addition to architectural ruins, merging the



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preferred gesture and sentiment of huaigu with the technological one to yield aesthetic experiences of the past. Proclaimed to be “the mirror with a memory,” from its birth photography was perceived to be a medium of memory. The visual image’s copious capacities of storing and retrieving memory seem commonsensically understood, but questions concerning how the processes of mediation occur on the level of the photograph, memory, or their interactions are complex and historically contingent on a constellation of social and cultural functions.7 With the focus on the affective response to the image from the viewers/inscribers, this chapter examines a range of entanglements between photo-texts and memory. The examples relate to the inscribing practices of politician Kang Youwei, photographers Chen Wanli and Luo Bonian 駱伯年 (1911–2002), and female writer and activist Zhang Mojun 張默君 (1884–1965). Without reifying the differences between the visual image and language in their relation to memory, scholars have understood that affective imagery is generally supreme in inciting viewers’ immediate responses from emotional, psychological, and sensorial aspects, whereas language remains primary in narrative memory and thoughts.8 Conjointly, the image-text presence links the affective potential and instantaneity of the visual image with an intellectual process to engage in aesthetic experience and mnemonic projects. Critical concerns pertain to issues of how photography acts as a remembering mirror through which the sceneries or the sites were selected, represented, or enshrined; and the roles language, agency, and institutions played in framing, consolidating, or constructing collective memory. In this encounter between the image-text and the past-present, the backward-turned technological glance—solicited and feathered by the literary gesture of huaigu, and its associated lyrical gaze and sentimentality—creates an abundance of works re/envisioning the past.

MEANING BEYOND THE PICTURE As in the archetypical two-way relationship between a painting and words, the new photographic images arouse perceptions, sensations, and feelings, and language responds to the images and continues to expand in meaning and flavor, articulating “meanings beyond the picture” (huawai zhiyi 畫外之意).9

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In 1923, Kang Youwei, a renowned politician, scholar, and calligrapher, was invited to write a preface and comments for the photo book A Guide to Photography (Sheying zhinan 攝影指南) by Ouyang Huiqiang 歐陽慧鏘 (1895–1946). Ouyang’s father, Ouyang Shizhi 歐陽石芝 (1857–1932), was Kang’s disciple, long-time friend, and the owner of the successful Powkee Studio (Baoji 寶記, 1889–1931) in Shanghai.10 Kang composed fourteen short paragraphs to accompany fourteen of Ouyang’s twenty-eight sample photographs in the guide. His column, titled “Pictorial ideas” (huayi), is typeset in the book (instead of calligraphic reprinting) and acknowledged as “comments from Kang Gengshen” (Kang Gengshen ping 康更甡評). A description of the natural environment (e.g., light) and exposure settings is listed by the author for each photograph and precedes Kang’s commentaries. Kang’s comments, written in classical Chinese and printed along with the descriptions of technical properties, address the aesthetic emotions aroused when appreciating photographs and include his appraisal of Ouyang’s works and their implications. Art historian Long Xizu glosses Kang’s use of huayi in this context by suggesting that hua (the painting) refers to the canonical idea that there is “poetry in painting, painting in poetry,” and yi echoes aesthetic dictums that “the intent precedes the brushwork; the painting is completed while the intent lingers” (yicun bixian huajin yizai 意存筆先，畫盡意在).11 Kang Youwei, as a reviewer, must have felt compelled to elucidate the meanings within and beyond the pictures. Furthermore, the category huayi could be understood as the verb phrase “to paint the ideas,” which is correlated with another phrase, huaxing 畫形 (to paint the external form).12 Kang, who loudly championed Western painting for its realistic effects,13 ironically evinced his urge to articulate the ideas (yi) of the picture as if the camera’s precise capturing of external shape or form (xing) were not sufficient. The photographs in the collection by Ouyang are a series of landscapes, most of which can be categorized as “famous scenic spots” (fengjing mingsheng 風景名勝) and modern cityscapes. Using the term “painting” to describe the photographs, Kang offers his unreserved compliments, saying, for instance, that the photograph Burning Incense in Tianzhu (Tianzhu jinxiang 天竺進香) is “a marvelous work of painting” (huazhong shenpin 畫中神品), and that the photograph Sunset (Xizhao 夕照) “takes a marvelous scene in the painting to its limit” (ji huapian zhi qiguan 極畫片之奇觀). By evoking evaluative critical



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terms reserved for painting (e.g., “marvelous work,” shenpin), Kang Youwei not only places photographic images under the umbrella of painting, a fairly common practice of the era, but also makes a gesture in strong support of the medium and the work of his long-time friend’s son. Kang adopts traditional aesthetic categories to critique a composition as “bland and irregular” (shudan jian cenci 疏淡兼參差), or as being balanced between movement and stillness, as captured in the phrase “a tranquil, sweet scene in the hustle and bustle” (fanmang zhong yu tianjing zhizhuang 繁忙中寓恬靜之狀). In describing the process of photographing a plane just about to land, Kang writes that “it has the appearance of a tired bird returning to the nest” (you juanniao guichao zhishi 有倦鳥歸巢之勢). He adds that the “flavor of the picture” would have been lost if the picture had shown the plane when it was already on the ground.14 This “pregnant moment” captures the crucial immediacy and precision of photography at the intense second.15 As a viewer engaging with these photographs, Kang describes how his emotions are aroused by the viewing experience. The pictorial photograph of the Kuixing Pavilion depicts a person rowing a boat with a pavilion in the background (figure 7.1). Kang comments: “The river is as calm as a mirror, and a small boat suddenly passes through making ripples, and I almost

FIGURE 7.1  Ouyang Huiqiang, Kuixin Pavilion of Jiading, Sheying zhinan (1923).

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believe I am personally in that scene.”16 The phrase shenli qijing 身歷其境 (I am personally in that scene) is employed here to stress the camera’s ability to render the world with clarity and veracity. In describing the modern iron bridge in front of the Russian Embassy in Shanghai, Kang writes: “The foreign scenes mixed with the Chinese style of boating give rise to feelings with regard to history.”17 As John Berger writes, the photographer’s intelligence or his empathy with the subject defines for him “the choice of the instant to be photographed,” “a single constitutive choice.”18 In addition to his careful attention to technical properties, which are included in the descriptions of photographs, Ouyang Huiqiang shows his intelligence and empathy in terms of pertinent choices of the singular moment and operates on realistic principles. The poet, meanwhile, enjoys the aesthetic experience of looking at the photographs as he would paintings, assuming the privilege of articulating the yi by granting them certain aesthetic qualities that echo the fusion of scenes and feelings and lend them past and future. In many ways, Kang’s criticism appears formulaic and employs familiar or even clichéd phrases, and how profound or insightful his comments are may be subject to different opinions. However, it is the juxtaposition of the photographs with printed words (both technical descriptions and Kang’s column of huayi) that matters. Their copresence demonstrates the desire and necessity, perhaps for both Ouyang and Kang, to enrich and legitimize the photographic images by resorting to esteemed pictorial tradition and lyrical feelings. Language invigorates the mute pictures. The second case examined centers around the amateur photographer Luo Bonian, an accountant at a bank in Shanghai who published his photographs in pictorial magazines such as Flying Eagle (Feiying 飛鷹, 1936–1937) and Pictorial Weekly (Sheying huabao 攝影畫報, 1925–1937). In the 1930s, his most productive years when he was in his twenties, Luo invited some of the established cultural and political figures of the time—Yu Dafu 郁達夫 (1896–1945), Chen Lu 陳箓 (1877–1939), Liang Hongzhi 梁鴻志 (1882–1946), Cao Xiyu 曹熙宇 (1904–1975), Yu Shengming 余盛明 (1911–?), and Zhao Zongding 趙宗鼎 (active in the Republican era)—to write inscriptions on his photographs.19 Luo often printed a photograph on a good-sized piece of paper, leaving sufficient space for inscriptions solicited from his acquaintances.



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FIGURE 7.2  Luo Bonian, Huating’s Painting Manual, with Yu Shengming’s inscription,

29.5 × 21 cm, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Luo Bonian Art Foundation.

A dozen of these inscriptions, together with a handful of inscriptions done by Luo himself, survive in his archives. The painter Yu Shengming, a disciple of Zhang Daqian, played an important role in Luo’s group of amateur artists, giving them advice on composition and traditional aesthetic styles. In figure 7.2, Yu names Luo’s photograph Huating’s Painting Manual (Huating huapu 華亭畫譜). Yu affirms that Luo enjoyed exploring landscapes and searching for scenes that would be suitable for the camera, then using “the pictorial principles” (huali 畫理) to capture the images. The silhouette of tree branches and lush foliage, shot at a low angle against distant clouds, resembles the effects of strong ink, which reminded Yu of one part of the long scroll by the late Ming master Dong

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Qichang’s 董其昌(1555–1636). Yu associates the images in yet another shot of sparse tree branches and buds with plums in ink painting, made famous by the signature style of the painter Gao Xiang 高翔 (1688–1752), asserting that Luo Bonian adopts Gao’s “simple yet elegant” (shuxiu 疏秀) style.20 Yu Shengming’s comments reveal how Luo seeks inspiration from traditional painting in terms of theme, composition, and style. Occasionally, Yu did acknowledge the power of the camera if used well. For instance, in another inscription to an image of tree branches, dated 1935, Yu compliments the photograph by saying, “the scene magically captured by the camera is far better than the tip of the brush.”21 Altogether, there are three gelatin silver prints with the eminent writer Yu Dafu’s inscriptions, all done in the spring of 1935.22 Figure 7.3 shows an image of thick woods and moss under a setting sun, with no human subjects in sight and an undistinguished path meandering into the distance. Yu Dafu conjured a familiar mental image and went on to transcribe Wang Wei’s quatrain “Deer Fence” (Luzhai 鹿柴). This inscription is followed with the date and Yu’s signature and seal on the right side outside the photograph edge, together with Luo’s own seal in red on the left side for balance. The whole work is presented in the style of horizontal landscape scrolls, such as the one on which Wang Wei’s poem was originally inscribed.

FIGURE 7.3  Luo Bonian, Deer Fence, with Yu Dafu’s inscription, 60 × 22 cm, gelatin

silver print. Courtesy of Luo Bonian Art Foundation.



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DEER FENCE

Empty hills, no one in sight, only the sound of someone talking; late sunlight enters the deep wood, shining over the green moss again.23 鹿柴

空山不見人， 但聞人語響。 返景入深林， 復照青苔上。

Wang Wei’s poem is well known for the visual appeal of its poetic imagery “beyond language, but with pictorial meaning” (wuyan eryou huayi 無言而有 畫意).24 Its evocative emptiness suits the photograph’s serene scene of sunshine in a deep wood with green moss, and Yu Dafu performatively copies this poem to add linguistic messages to the picture, echoing its mood. Figures 7.4 and 7.5 were inscribed by Yu Dafu in a similar manner. Figure 7.4 is a high-angle shot of a river bank with moored wood waiting to be shipped. The lush tree branches in the foreground frame the picture, while a small figure carrying wood is a focal point. Yu inscribes Building Materials Fill the River (Manjiang doushi dongliangcai 滿江都是棟樑材). While this line appears to be descriptive of the scene, the meaning of dongliangcai (building materials) refers to talented people who play major roles in society. Figure 7.5 is an iconic and picturesque scene of West Lake at sunset. With tiny Baochu Pagoda on the hill, its reflection in the lake in the background and the beautiful silhouettes of two fishermen in the boat in the distance, the large expanse of empty water under the reflections of the sunset occupies the foreground. The artful interplay of light with shadow and the emphatic tonality of the photograph convey a sense of tranquility and a nostalgic mood. Yu Dafu titled the piece with a misnomer, Fisherman’s Song on Lan River (Lanjiang yuchang 蘭江漁唱), associating it with the location of Lanxi (lit., Lan Creek), from which Luo sent the photograph, but the photographic

FIGURE 7.4  Luo Bonian, Building Materials Fill the River, with Yu Dafu’s inscription, 29.5 × 21 cm, gelatin silver print.

Courtesy of Luo Bonian Art Foundation.

FIGURE 7.5  Luo Bonian, Fisherman’s Song on Lan River, with Yu Dafu’s inscription,

29.5 × 21 cm, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Luo Bonian Art Foundation.

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scene represented is in fact West Lake in Hangzhou. Jokingly excusing his conscious misnomer in replacing the lake with the river, Yu demonstrates the strong pull of cultural memory associated with “a fisherman’s song over the river” even though his title does not perfectly fit the photographic image of West Lake. Yu Dafu’s calligraphy delivers fluidity, playfulness, and his carefree literati attitude, but it is also executed with a careful concern for pictorial space. This work is imprinted with three seals of “Bo” 伯, “Nian” 年, and “Yu Dafu yin” 郁達夫印 on the lower left corner that conjointly commemorate personal and cultural memories associated with scenic Hangzhou. Figure 7.6 is inscribed by the politician Chen Lu 陳箓 (1877–1939) with four characters on the left side of the frame, Trees Stripped of Their Leaves (Muye jintuo 木葉盡脫), together with his signature and seal.25 The characters written in a large font with thick brushstrokes and inscribed vertically on one side achieve the formal correspondence with the black-and-white image of vertical trunks and bare branches against the vast open sky. The pictorial quality of the characters and calligraphic art conjoin that of the photographic images, exhibiting multiple interplays of visuality. The phrase, a literal description of the photographic scene, is associated with a range of feelings related to autumn and to desolation. The phrase muye jintuo (trees stripped of their leaves) reminds us of its famous use in Su Shi’s essay, “The Second Ode to Red Cliff” (Hou chibi fu 後赤壁賦), in which the fusion of the human and the natural is accentuated.26 The photograph in figure 7.7 shows a close-up still life of flowers and snails with a well-balanced, clean composition and heightened effects. The inscription in the lower right corner not only serves to balance the picture on the top left and render the overall presentation as a painting but also grants rich metaphorical significance to the image. The couplet reads: Two antennas fight each other, when will it end? Retiring to a snail-like, humble house to escape the worldly dust. 蠻觸相爭何日了， 蝸廬息影避征塵。

The couplet resonates with the pictorial image of snails, while also making a metaphorical association. The first line contains an allusion to Zhuangzi,



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FIGURE 7.6  Luo Bonian, Trees Stripped of Their

FIGURE 7.7  Luo Bonian’s photograph of

Leaves, with Chen Lu’s inscription, gelatin silver print.

still life with inscription, 36 × 27 cm, gelatin silver print.

Courtesy of Luo Bonian Art Foundation.

Courtesy of Luo Bonian Art Foundation.

referring to an allegory of the two antennas of a snail fighting like two countries, ending in disaster.27 Along with the literal reference, this intricate play of words and images forms hermeneutic interconnections, producing a balance between a sense of timelessness through still images of the objects and historicity through the inscriptions (seal, date, and inscriber). The artificial arrangement of the still life of snails and flowers, without other details or background, works as an allegory, the meaning of which is further expressed and expanded through the inscriptions. In these cases, the composition of the photographic images and their impressive size are consciously fashioned after revered paintings. The inscribers take clues from the image content to make fluid associations with poetic culture, supplementing the photographs with contextual information, aesthetic assessment, and lyrical feelings. Critiquing the photographs

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by evoking poetic lines or providing commentaries enlivens or deepens the meaning of the visual field. Bound by the spatial limitations and descriptive details, the significance of the paintings and photographs is enhanced through their inscribed temporality, circumstances, and historical and cultural associations. In the case of Luo Bonian, the inscriptive, calligraphic words, added in the empty area either inside or outside the border of the picture, harness the available space to assert their singularity and “irreducible there-ness.” Furthermore, in the cases of both Ouyang and Luo, inscribers such as the cultural luminaries Kang Youwei and Yu Dafu enjoyed higher reputations than the photographers at the time, and extended their “friendly” gestures to encourage the new artistic medium. Ouyang Huiqiang, Luo Bonian, and their social circle collaborated to create collective memories along this chain of social and cultural networks, facilitating the blossoming of aesthetic friendship.

THE LOOK OF THE PAST In her studies of Victorian photography, Jennifer Green-Lewis asserts that photography conveys the look of the past. Photography’s association with reality was, she argues, “conflated with the backward glance of photography in the record and pursuit of antiquity, with the result that what was real was ultimately identified with what was past—and thus itself as past.” 28 Through this proliferation of photographic images of temples, tombs, ruins, and antiques, what was real is identified with the past. As described in the preceding chapter, pictorial photographers were perpetually searching for lyric occasions and photographed landscapes using particular perspectives and techniques, with or without darkroom manipulations. This suggests that art photographers were poetically fed or culturally “programmed,” registering intended meanings that affected their photographic representations. Visual content of famous sceneries and historical sites, created with the help of new technology and the lyrical gaze in the first place, were further facilitated and fed by writing and the image-text collaboration. The bodily act of participation and the double gaze of the technological



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FIGURE 7.8  Huang Yanpei, Yan Ziling Fishing Terrace, 20 × 16 cm, gelatin silver print.

Courtesy of Shanghai Municipal Library.

and the lyrical embody and shape the ways in which the past was represented and remembered. In the early spring of 1914, accompanied by a secretary and a photographer, Huang Yanpei 黃炎培 (1878–1965), an educator and politician, went on a tour of five provinces while working as a special travel reporter for Shenbao. Officially intended as an inspection of the educational and social situation in these regions, Huang’s trip was also an opportunity for personal sightseeing.29 A significant number of the photographs taken along the journey, especially on Yellow Mountain, Lu Mountain, West Lake, and Tai Mountain, contributed to the widely successful 1910s series Scenic China (Zhongguo mingsheng 中國名勝).30 Quite a few of the prints of photographs from Huang’s 1914 travels are embellished with Huang’s handwritten notes (indicating the locations or circumstances in which they were taken).31 Figure 7.8 is one example of a “fascinating syncretic cultural product.”32 In May of 1914 in Fuyang, Zhejiang province, Huang (or his photographer)

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shot a photograph of the Yan Ziling Fishing Terrace. Huang’s poem, inscribed on the empty space across the top of the photograph, describes the sentiment relating to this historical site.

YAN ZILING FISHING TERRACE

Moving freely in sheepskin clothes, he escapes, with a three-chi fishing rod he also practices statesmanship. This gentleman gives no appearance of poverty, occupying the famous mountain called Fuchun.33 嚴子陵釣臺

跌宕羊裘劫後身， 釣竿三尺亦經綸。 先生不作寒酸態， 自占名山號富春。

The same photograph (without inscriptions), together with another eyelevel shot of the Yan Ziling Terrace, is included in Huang’s published diaries. In the diary, Huang briefly discusses the intricacies of the temple and the  role played by Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 (989–1052), whose article revived the reputation of Yan Ziling as a quintessential recluse in history.34 Despite the controversy surrounding the authenticity of Yan Ziling and various historical interpretations, Huang subscribes to the view that Yan Ziling, a talented politician, lived as a recluse. The panoramic shot captures the grandeur of the landscape in a well-balanced composition, with the mountain and clouds in the distance, a large swath of meandering river with tiny floating boats in the middle, and the slope, with the winding path and the pavilion at the left front. The bird’s-eye view aligns with the aesthetic preference for “far distance vision” (muguang yuanda 目光遠大), reminiscent of the generic composition of the landscape painting, engendering a sense of boundless majesty and openness.35 The calligraphic inscription offers a personal voice to a well-known site to consolidate its historical significance across temporal space and through time.



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FIGURES 7.9  Photograph of the West Lake with Da’an Jushi’s inscription, Sheying huabao 5 (1925).

The pictorial scene “Leifeng Tower in sunlight” (Leifeng xizhao 雷峰夕照) at West Lake was a recurrent favorite and has been visually rendered countless times. The second example is a photograph taken by the owner of the Yiwu photo studio in Shanghai in the 1920s, Zhao Fuchen 趙甫臣 (aka Zhao Yiwu 趙亦吾). It depicts a person standing and rowing a boat in the middle of the scene against the background of the Leifeng Tower with its reflection in the lake at a distance (figure 7.9). Different from that in Luo Bonian’s photograph of West Lake in figure 7.5, this view of the Leifeng Tower (before its collapse in the fall of 1924) is also iconic and readily identifiable. In the foreground, a pair of white geese swim leisurely across the scene. It was reported that the studios themselves raised geese to release on the lake, amusingly, for the purpose of “decorating” (dianzhui) the scene in photo shoots.36 The two geese in the photograph, either deliberately placed on the lake or captured through the camera by chance as signifying elements, immediately add the desirable effect of “enlivening” (huo) the composition.37 A poem dedicated to Zhao Fuchen, from Da’an Jushi 大厂居士 (aka Yi Ru 易孺, 1874–1941), is written in small-font calligraphy in a muscular style underneath the picture. Yi Ru, a  multitalented scholar and painter with a colorful personality, is noted for a wide range of inscriptions on different visual media (paintings, fans, and so on) in Republican Shanghai. The shadowy, tranquil scene evokes the poet’s sentiment, and the poem voices a subdued melancholy. The trained lyrical eye, imbued with poetic

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sensibilities, reenvisions the scene, and it almost appears as if the geese themselves are talking about the “ravages of disaster.” The poem reads: A pair of long-abandoned geese speak of the ravages of disaster, what is left is the sun setting behind Nanping mountain. Recognizing the oar and old man on the lake, six bridges are like a dream, urged on by the tower bell. 長剩雙鵝話劫灰， 留取南屏夕照回。 一槳認他湖上老， 六橋如夢塔鈴催。

The staged human figure and geese are intentionally contrived elements in the visual representation of the natural scene. The lyric commentaries on the pictorial representation penetrate the visual surface to further conjure nostalgic sadness in a much broader spatial and temporal realm and to continue to animate the scene. The third example is a photograph taken by Huang Zhenyu 黃振玉 (a key member of the Light Society) between 1925 and 1926. It is a shot of a street scene under the Arrow Tower at the Xuanwu Gate in Beijing, a crucial entry point to the Inner City (figure 7.10). The photograph depicts a group of camels passing in front of the ancient tower at sunset, with one person riding the lead camel and another following the procession. Shot from a distance, the photo captures the artistic scene of the animals and the ancient tower, engendering a sense of melancholy. In the spring of 1928, Chen Wanli wrote a lengthy inscription in the open space at the top of this photograph. In it, he reminisces about his past experiences in the old capital looking for lyrical scenes to photograph. He particularly mentions that the picturesque street scene reminded him of camels’ bells ringing in the desert.38 Huang’s photograph of the willow trees and camels outside the old capital gate function as a memory trace, triggering eidetic memory images imprinted with poignancy and sensation. Chen’s prosaic inscriptions demonstrate a keen feeling of nostalgia. They read, in part: “I have been away from the capital for a long time. Now I have heard that the magnificent city has been destroyed in the name of municipal renovation. The camel bells ring as before, but the city and its walls are all not as they were.



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FIGURE 7.10  Huang Zhenyu, Returning Home, with Chen Wanli’s inscription, Guangshe jishi.

Viewing this picture, I cannot bear the nostalgic sadness.” 39 His sentimentally charged inscriptions show what Jill Bennett has described about the operation of affect in visual fields: “Images have the capacity to address the ­spectator’s own bodily memory; to touch the viewer who feels rather than simply sees the event, drawn into the image through a process of affective contagion.” 40 The lively cityscape, which no longer existed at that time, spoke to Chen’s memory and subsequently provoked and touched him on the emotional, sensorial, and intellectual levels. This process of affective contagion is articulated and fulfilled through acts of narration that endeavor to suture the exacerbated temporal gaps at the different points of shooting, viewing, and writing. The inscriptions by Huang Yanpei, Yi Ru, and Chen Wanli speak to how they feel the photographs and how the inscribers as the readers of the stimulating visual images were prompted to spell out their affective responses. These instances suggest that photography thrives on its properties of storing and triggering sense memory in the first place; they also reveal a strong preference for poetic language and rhetoric that evokes meanings and thoughts beyond the bounds of the formal resemblance and the singular moment. I would like to briefly comment on the use of the physical space for inscriptions in the photographs in this chapter. In several of Luo Bonian’s photographs (e.g., three works inscribed by Yu Dafu), Luo included sufficient

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space on the paper outside the frame of the photograph. But in figure 7.7, the photographic image was arranged at the top left without a detailed background, leaving a space on the lower right-hand corner for inscriptions. The inscription on the lower right, like those in a flowers-and-birds painting, thus falls into a well-balanced, diagonal spatial arrangement. Huang Yanpei and Chen Wanli wrote inscriptions on the empty space at the top, infringing on the pictorial space. To evoke traditional critical vocabulary, we may understand the placement of these two inscriptions (moving horizontally with vertical lines) on the top edge to effectively enclose the qi within the frame of the picture to achieve a self-contained whole. Inscriptions in these instances are formally executed to strike a visual balance in photographic images with respect to spatial composition, style, and rhythm. Emotionally speaking, writing inscriptions is a conscious, yet fragile attempt to fill in the “void” ripped open by effacement, preventing memory from fading into erasure.

A TOMB, A CYPRESS, AND A FEMALE VOICE Photographs of ruins, antiquities, and relics serve as memory traces that lead back to the past, or to the imagined past. In the Republican era, photography was effectively wielded to showcase an enduring civilization and to construct critical memories of the nation. One prominent case is comprised of two related photobooks, compiled by the collaborations of skillful photographers, politicians/editors, and poets: China’s Northwest, a Pictorial Survey (Xibei lansheng 西北攬勝, hereafter China’s Northwest) and The Traces of Chanting in the Western Borderland (Xichui yinhen 西陲吟痕, hereafter The Traces).41 In the spring of 1935, a prominent figure of the Nationalist Party or Kuomingtang (KMT), Shao Yuanchong 邵元沖 (aka Y. C. Shao, 1890–1936), who had recently stepped down from the directorship of the KMT propaganda committee, initiated an effort to conduct a public memorial service at the mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor in Shaanxi. He proposed that such services become a national annual event on Grave Sweeping Day (Qingming jie). Shao, together with his wife Zhang Mojun, who was teaching poetry at Jinling Women’s College, embarked on an officially sponsored journey to northwestern China on March  31. They traveled through six provinces and returned to Nanjing on August 4. On April 7, Shao Yuanchong, Zhang Mojun, Shao Lizi 邵力子



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(1881–1967), and Zhang Ji 張繼 (1882–1947) performed a public ceremony in which thousands participated, hailing the Yellow Emperor as progenitor of Chinese civilization. In Shao’s words, the service was intended to “pay respect to ancient models and raise the national consciousness” amidst the crisis of an impending Japanese invasion.42 Over the course of history, the Yellow Emperor had been mythologized and transformed into a leading symbol and common ancestor of a Han-based Chinese civilization, and paying a visit to his purported tomb became political theater performed by competing political forces.43 Published in the spring of 1936, China’s Northwest provided documentation of this event and Shao’s extended journey to western China. Featuring 360 professionally shot photographs, China’s Northwest lists Shao Yuanchong as the editor-in-chief, Xu Shishen 許師慎 as the photographer and editor, and the KMT-affiliated Zhengzhong Press as the publisher.44 The beautifully printed and carefully edited book reproduces photographs that document the event commemorating the Yellow Emperor, multiple historical sites (e.g., the Dunhuang Caves), sacred mountains, ancient ruins, and the customs of minorities (including those from Tibet and Inner Mongolia). This officially escorted trip and the corresponding politically sponsored publication was intended to consolidate the myth of the Yellow Emperor and to promote a sense of awe and pride toward the nation. On most of the pages, the image and text provide a coherent narrative about the origins of the enduring civilization, the vast territory, and the marvelous human achievements, connecting space and historical time through a vigilant orchestration of narrative, visual media, and typographic designs. The photographs in part 1 of China’s Northwest include images of the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor along with its cypresses; mausoleums of the emperors and kings of Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties; and rare facsimiles of the imperial stone steles. Mausoleums, hardly a subject in premodern pictorial representations, are prominently present in the book; these places became political and cultural loci where national sentiment has been heavily invested. The documentary-style photographs establish indexical relationships with the objects (tombs, temples, and cypress trees), but they are much less about the reality than about historical memory. In a single-page layout, two black-and-white photos of cypresses are juxtaposed (figure 7.11).45 One photograph is captioned “A cypress planted by the Yellow Emperor” (Huangdi shouzhi bai 黃帝手植柏) in both Chinese and English. Although

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this region has the world’s longest surviving cypress trees, a myth is evoked through the documentary photograph and the gesture of naming. To use Stephen Owen’s words in his conception of huaigu, this transparent image of the cypress is a “master figure,” a synecdoche, an enduring fragment “from which we try to reconstruct the lost totality.” 46 By claiming it was personally planted by the Yellow Emperor, the tree is entwined with the threads of sensorial memories of the progenitor. Through this narrative strategy of emplotment,47 the cypress tree here is fashioned as the constellation linking the past and the present in the nation’s historical progression. A photographic glance cast backward at the past and the accompanying rhetoric cooperatively endow this tree image with historical and symbolic significances. Shao Yuanchong and Xu Shishen engaged in this project, which interweaves its deeply coded texts (local histories, interviews, poems) with wellshot images. China’s Northwest includes seven poems by Shao Yuanchong and four by Zhang Mojun, and it cites thirty-five additional poems, some

FIGURE 7.11  “A cypress planted by Yellow Emperor,” Xibei lansheng (1936), p.4.

FIGURE 7.12  Pictures of Consort Yang’s pool, Xibei lansheng, p.37.



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by canonical figures such as Cen Can 岑參 (715–770) and Fan Zhongyan and some by lesser known poets, mostly written in the huaigu style. The photo book becomes a collocation of history, myths, and collective memories, engaging in intertextual dialogues among the poets across time.48 China’s Northwest is credited to Shao as the mastermind of the project, and to Xu as the photographer; all the poems are typeset in the book. Zhang Mojun’s role seems to be overshadowed by the prominence of her husband, even though she appears together with Shao in several photographs at the sites (e.g., the photograph on the top of figure 7.12). Zhang Mojun occasionally posed as though shooting the ruins with a camera in her hand, with Shao standing behind her.49 To vigorously assert her role as an author, Zhang put together another book, The Traces, credited solely to Zhang herself. A majority of the photographs and some explanatory texts overlap with parts 1 and 2 of China’s Northwest, with different layouts. In The Traces, Zhang juxtaposes the photographs with sixteen pages of calligraphies of her own poems, written for these occassions.50 The poems, all written in a muscular draft-cursive style of calligraphy (zhangcao) for which Zhang is particularly noted, are reproduced in good quality. Draft-cursive calligraphy is historically taken to be  the bridge between the older styles (seal and clerical) and later ones (running, modern-cursive, and regular); thus the characteristics of draft-cursive writing are a combination of the basic brushwork from clerical script (lishu) and the action of the brush-tip produced by abbreviating or linking the strokes.51 In these reproduced calligraphic pages, the characters are plump and solid, with thick curved strokes and pronounced dots; each character is self-contained, without any linking strokes between them. With their archaic air, the heavily built-up, ink-saturated, epigraph-stylized characters speak to the shots of the trees and their solemn atmosphere, attaining stylistic reciprocity between calligraphic words and photographic images (figures 7.13 and 7.14). Zhang Mojun’s and Shao Yuanchong’s occasional poems, written during this journey, share historical themes and sentiments. Zhang and Shao also wrote poems in response to each other with matching rhymes. As Joan Judge perceptively observes, by omitting the official narratives of the public events (e.g., commemorating the Yellow Emperor) in The Traces, Zhang mixes public and private perspectives to engage in her personal dialogues with the past.52 A few of Zhang’s poems offer a gendered viewpoint and differences in what

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FIGURE 7.13  “A cypress planted by Yellow Emperor,” Xichui yinhen (1935), p.4.

is otherwise a highly orchestrated and concerted voice representing imagined communities. One of her poems, shown in figure 7.14, reads:

WRITING AT THE QIAO TOMB, ADOPTING YIRU’S [SHAO YUANCHONG] RHYMES, AND DEDICATED TO FUQUAN [ZHANG JI], LIZI [SHAO LIZI] AND MENGSHUO [DENG MENGSHUO]

The cypress like the dragon, its gesture like flying, distantly connects to the origin of the mind, while the origin of the Dao is obscure. [We] fondly remember Leizu who benefited the world with making cloth, and [Huangdi] conquering the Chiyou and being greeted with flags. The earth is burgeoning in spring and the distant water is bright, the river rises, green mountains grow wild in the brilliant sunlight. Protecting the culture and cultivating accomplishment will rejuvenate the nation, [they are] all the progenitors with cloth-gowns of China.53



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FIGURE 7.14  Zhang Mojun’s poem “Writing at the Qiao Tomb” in calligraphy,

Xichui yinhen, p.5.

橋陵 次翼如均，奉簡溥泉、力子、孟碩

陵柏如龍勢欲飛， 心源遙接道源微。 緬懷嫘祖衣天下， 行馘蚩尤禮斾旂。 動地春光明遠水， 漲空嵐翠亂晴暉。 衛文孤詣終興國， 同是神州大布衣。

This verse, responding to Shao’s by using the same set end-rhyme schemes in the same order, begins with the symbolic cypress tree. In line 3, Leizu 嫘祖 (the Yellow Emperor’s Consort), is eulogized for her alleged achievement of discovering silk and offering clothing to the people, through the phrases yi tianxia 衣天下 (lit., clothing the world). Through the word play, the poem ardently argues for the historical status of Leizu analogous to that of other ancestors, being da buyi 大布衣 (a cloth-gown scholar),

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in contrast to Shao’s attention on the Yellow Emperor and his rongyi 戎衣 (military clothes).54 Zhang and Shao visited the historical site of Consort Yang’s pool (Yangfei chi 楊妃池) in Xi’an, which became a public park in the Republic (see figure 7.12). The text on the preceding page in China’s Northwest cites lines from “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” (Chang hen ge 長恨歌), which recounts the love story of the ill-fated Consort Yang Yuhuan and the emperor with its tragic ending. Articulating deep sympathy for Consort Yang being persistently condemned in history and held responsible for the fall of the empire, Zhang writes in an affective voice: “[I solely] sympathize the jade girl in the hot springs, / simmering in the rise and fall, never turning cold” (獨憐玉女湯泉水，煎盡興亡總不涼).55 By alluding to female figures either for their achievements or misfortunes, Zhang reinterprets women’s roles in the formation of the nation’s history. In these two books, the addition of calligraphy and poems to the photographs offers a personal, stylistic touch to the mechanically reproduced images. The editorial strategy takes advantage of the photographs’ evidentiary character for politically motivated purposes and preconceived perspectives. It surrounds them with text (explanations, captions both in Chinese and English, and poems in print or calligraphy) and forms a strong narrative structure, directing the reader to a particularly meaningful interpretation. A range of institutional forces and agency, facilitating the process of taking, using, and circulating the photographs, shape the effect of photographs and provide them with memorial significance.56 A number of photographs are also snapshots of Shao’s and Zhang’s personal visits to historical sites.57 Their bodily presence at the sites and their double gaze casting into the ruins suggests that cultural memory is mediated not only through symbolic systems but also through embodied practices of lived experience. In his original work on photography, Liu Bannong proposed that photography should “seek emotive resonance” (tongqing zhi zhengqiu 同情之徵求).58 The photographic identification of the real with the past is imbued with literary nostalgia and affective memory of the past to collectively render a synthesized sensory and emotional experience. Photography as a “hot” medium is supreme in its effectiveness for storing information and memory,59 and the immediacy and the evidentiary feature of the photograph further consolidates the authentication of past experiences. When serving the mnemonic function of



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art, photography contains great potential for emotive arousal and resonance from the viewers as well as inciting the viewers’ identification, projection, and imagination. Narration or inscriptions, meanwhile, allow for more coherent and concerted signification, leading to memorial constructions beyond a surfacing of one single image. Interwoven photos-texts facilitate sharing cultural memory, aesthetic experiences, and spiritual affinities in the social networks of the photographers, inscribers, editors, and readers as well as predecessors who visited the same historical site or wrote of the same topic. The artful combination, either in the manner of a painting or in the format of a lavishly illustrated book, once again exposes the mutually supportive or competitive interplay between the realistic visual paradigm and the “inscriptive desire” deeply rooted in Chinese lyrical tradition.

Epilogue

T

his book has examined the signifying field co-constituted by verbal discourse and visual culture that led to various new kinds of representation, creativity, and aesthetic experiences in Republican China. I conclude with a discussion of two works by the artists Ho Fan 何藩 (1931–2016) and Ma Liang 馬良 to convey a sense of the broadening and deepening of pervasive practices of intermediality in the contemporary era. Drawing their inspirations from literary and artistic tradition, both Ho Fan and Ma Liang are known for their photographic creations of surrealist poetic scenes, urban allegories, and dreamscapes. The copresence of and dialogue between past and present, realistic representation and artistic imagination, led to their ingenious explorations of the tensions between these categories. An esteemed Hong Kong photographer, film director, and actor, Ho Fan has left an impressive oeuvre of mesmerizing images of Hong Kong in the fifties and sixties, many of which are ramifications of “interior landscapes.” Shooting black-and-white street photographs using his Rolleiflex, Ho is noted for his distinct preference for an interplay of light and shadow, long-focus lenses, and postshooting modifications such as recropping, overlapping, and double exposure, as well as for recycling negatives from different points in his life, all of which he equated with film editing and montage. He considered the printing and enlarging process as “the second composition,” whereas the first composition was the taking of multiple shots at “decisive moments.” 1 Figure E.1, a black and white work completed near the end of his life, shows calligraphy in four vertical lines, interweaving the images of three tiny floating

FIGURE E.1  Ho Fan, Defeated (poem by Li Bai), 1965/2014.

Courtesy of Ho Fan’s family, fanho-forgetmenot.com.

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boats shot in 1965 in Hong Kong. The calligraphic words, handwritten by Ho himself, are predominantly foregrounded, and the image of the fishing boats becomes a symbol floating along in the flow created by the poetic lines. A professed lover of classical Chinese poetry, Ho gives the calligraphic piece (four lines from a seven-character ancient-style verse of Li Bai 李白) the central position, but he deliberately removes the usual framing of the scroll, foregrounding the words as images. As an intriguing play of image, word, and media, the work also renders the balance between richness and blandness (dan) in inklike color, with calligraphy in diluted gray and the boats in shaper black. One of the poetic images—the fishing boat in the line “tomorrow I will loosen my hair and wander in a fishing boat” (mingzhao sanfa nongpianzhou 明朝散 髮弄扁舟)2—is realized as three visual images of the boat dispersed between the lines, achieving a balance of harmony and unity between image and word. However, the poetic image of the recluse who loosens his hair and withdraws from officialdom is replaced with images of three hard-working men standing in various positions with their poles to move the tiny boats (a pedestrian scene for the bustling port city of Hong Kong). Unlike his predecessors in pictorial photography who preferred to construct large-scale landscapes or natural scenery, Ho often extends his capacity and enthusiasm for reimagining poetic scenery to the busy streets and everyday life of this metropolitan city. The hovering boat, an enduringly preferred image, is symbolic of the experience and lingering sorrow of this Shanghai-born artist and his generation of Chinese, who were displaced from their homeland and lived in the colonial port city as immigrants.3 Subverting the framework of realistic representation, Ho Fan carefully constructs innerscapes by putting his lyrical vision, poetry, and calligraphy at the forefront of his compositions. The goal is not simply to render a painterly effect but to achieve the subjective truth of the artistic mind, offering a space for imagination beyond what is pictured. As Ho asserted, “subjective truth is the impressions of all the sensory forms perceived by the inner mind’s eye (xinyan 心眼) of the photographer.” 4 His privileging of the mind’s eye, instilled by aesthetic ideas, once again captures the resourceful persistence of lyricism and subjectivity into the new millennium. The second example is the series of Secondhand Tang poems (Er’shou Tangshi 二手唐詩), created by the Shanghai artist Ma Liang in 2007. Rocks, dirt,

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glass, and human figurines are employed and refashioned to correspond with or resemble traditional landscapes or simulacra of poetic scenes. A smoke machine is used to achieve a hazy and mysterious effect, creating the illusion of iconic haze and mists.5 Ma then shot many digital images to compare the results of different configurations before shooting a final work using a film camera. Viewed from a distance, these photographs are filled with elaborate sets of signs (such as a fisherman, boat, pagoda, or peach blossoms) or pastiches that symbolically evoke familiar poetic scenes. Upon closer examination, the pictorial spaces are overstuffed with toys, dirt, plastic goods, or strange objects. Cheap materials and the artificiality of the images revolt against the sacredness of Tang poetry and its aesthetic ideas (such as the emphasis on emptiness in pictorial composition). Nine Tang poems, cited either in full or in excerpts and written in immature calligraphy (with modern romanization on the side), are integral to the photographic spaces of the series. Ma Liang later stated that he wrote the texts from memory, making four mistakes in diction in the finished work. He had no intention of correcting them.6 In no. 6 of the series, the composition is comprised of the typological “landscapes” (with a tree, pond, leaves, and mountains) (figure E.2). The central drama that immediately catches our attention is a tiny fisherman figurine in a miniaturized boat facing a much larger skeleton wearing straw clothing who pretends to be fishing as well. The two matching arcs of the fake fishing rods create echoes in the composition, as if the fisherman is facing his own desolate past or future. The four lines of the canonical quatrain “River Snow” (Jiangxue 江雪) by the eminent poet Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 are handwritten in an unsophisticated style in traditional characters along with the pinyin and appear as if on banners that hang from the top edge. He uses the actual fishing rod that served as a prop to hang the four written pieces in the physical set of the scene, referencing the revered art of calligraphy in a mischievous manner. The poetic image of “an old man in straw cape and hat” (suoli weng 蓑笠翁) is transfigured into a disproportionately tiny fisherman figurine on the right side of the photograph and an enlarged skull figure on the left side.7 The poetic loneliness and tranquility in the face of a wintry environment and universe is replaced with anxiety and fear, encapsulated in the striking skeleton. The photograph—making use of digital media, landscape painting, calligraphy, classical poetry, and a range of everyday goods—imitates,

FIGURE E.2  Ma Liang, Secondhand Tang poems, no. 6, 90 × 75 cm, ink jet on archival

paper, 2007. Courtesy of Ma Liang.

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satirizes, and repurposes them for this new mixed-media work. The self-referential gesture of copying, recycling, and interpreting tradition through errors in transcription and the artificial arrangement of symbols forcefully offers ironic critiques of that very tradition. Does every tradition become secondhand through cultural memory and recycling? Is there any authenticity that can be reclaimed in the tradition? Or is the question itself subject to question? Is the relationship that we have with tradition foreseeable, like this miniature fisherman encountering its own skeleton? Instead of being idyllic, overburdened tradition is figuratively overstuffed and suffused with a bleak, mysterious, illusory ambience. Torn between nostalgia for the cultural past and playfully interrogating that very tradition, the artist hopes to express his fraught relationship with cultural heritage and its displacement as well as his anxious self-redemption through art. The image of the skeleton is thus a metaphor of resurrecting the dead to reclaim its soul, jieshi huanhun 借屍 還魂 (lit., borrowing a corpse to call back the soul) in Ma’s own words. This effort to redeem tradition is, nevertheless, doomed.8 The extensive use of painting as a background, the sumptuous costumes, and the staged scenes overwhelmed with strange props all lend an impression of theatricality and artificiality to Ma’s work, which contemporary critic Gu Zheng characterizes as “photographic fictionalizing” (sheying xugou 攝影虛構).9 The previsualization of picturesque scenes, the reusing of identical props or tropes, and the rigorous staging, all of which evince influence from the artists such as Czech photographer Jan Saudek, testify to favoring the yi over mimetic reality. Furthermore, the practices of these two artists exemplify contemporary intensified “media convergence,” 10 in which the newer media collide with or revolt against a range of earlier media by appropriation, recycling, or transformation. Through the deliberate reenactment and performance of such intermediality and convergence, Ho Fan and Ma Liang also tactfully ascribe to “a sensibility for tensional differences” of media within that practice.11 The  historical and variable permutations of particular intermedial configurations in the first half of the twentieth century have been explored in this book. As transferring lyricism in contemporary media practices has become more radical or tension-ridden, authenticity is constantly renegotiated and irrecoverably lost as it is appropriated and mediated in new contexts.

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The image of the fisherman facing his own skeleton can be understood as an allegory, representing the shadow or anxiety that lyrical tradition has cast over contemporary artistic practices. Since the brush first met the shutter in the mid-nineteenth century, the supposed unity of image and text has been significantly destabilized, enriched, and transformed. Whether mutually enhancing or heatedly contested, this fusion of brush and camera, image and word, signifies both the enduring allure of Chinese lyricism in an era of escalating technology and a complex, defiant gesture of revolt against that very tradition. To conceptualize photography as a new form of writing with light, Ma Liang asserts: “Photography is my magic brush.” 12

Notes

INTRODUCTION: FROM MUTE POETRY TO INTERMEDIALITY 1. Xu Ning 徐凝, “Guan Diaotai huatu” 觀釣臺畫圖 [On viewing a painting of a fishing terrace], in Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 [Complete Tang Poems], 15 vols., ed. Peng Dingqiu 彭定求 et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 7: 5414. 2. Su Shi’s complimentary statement about Wang Wei, the Tang dynasty poet and painter, has become a maxim: “Savoring Mojie’s [Wang Wei] poetry, there is painting in his poetry; viewing Mojie’s paintings, there is poetry in his painting” (味摩詰之詩，詩中有畫；觀 摩詰之畫，畫中有詩). Su Shi 蘇軾, “Shu Mojie Lantian yanyu tu” 書摩詰藍田煙雨圖 [Mojie’s painting on the misty rain in Lantian], in Su Shi wenji 蘇軾文集 [The Collected Essays of Su Shi], 6 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 5: 2209. 3. Qian Zhongshu, “On Reading Laokoön” (Du La’aokong 讀拉奧孔), in Patchwork: Seven Essays on Art and Literature, trans. Duncan M. Campbell (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 79–138, esp. 85. 4. W. J. T. Mitchell, Blake’s Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 16–17. See also Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); Rui Carvalho Homem and Maria de Fátima Lambert, introduction to Writing and Seeing: Essays on Word and Image, ed. Rui Carvalho Homem and Maria de Fátima Lambert (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 11–22, esp. 12–13. 5. W.  J.  T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 48. 6. Li Qi 李頎, “Gujin shihua” 古今詩話 [Poetry talks], in Song Shihua jiyi 宋詩話輯佚 [Collections of Lost Poetry Talks of the Song], 2 vols., ed. Guo Shaoyu 郭紹虞 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 1:113. See Qian Zhongshu’s canonical essay, “Chinese Poetry and Chinese Painting” (Zhongguo shi yu Zhongguo hua 中國詩與中國畫), in Patchwork, 29–78. This claim distantly echoes an ancient statement attributed to Simonides of Ceos (ca. 556–467 BCE): “painting is mute poetry and poetry a speaking picture.” See Hagstrum, The Sister Arts, 10. 7. Li Gonglin’s 李公麟 “Yangguan tu” 陽關圖 [Painting of Yang Pass] paints the scenes described in Wang Wei’s poems “Weicheng qu” 渭城曲 [The song of Wei City], in Quan

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Tang shi, 2: 1306. See Stuart H. Sargent, “Colophons in Countermotion: Poems by Su Shih and Huang T’ing-chien on Paintings,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 52, no. 1 (June 1992): 263–302, esp. 284; I Lo-fen 衣若芬, Guankan xushu shenmei: Tang Song tihua wenxue lunji 觀看、敘述、審美：唐宋題畫文學論集 [Observation, Description, Appreciation: Studies of Tang-Song Writings on Painting] (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2004), 308–22. Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅, “Ti Yangguan tu ershou” 題陽關圖二首 [Two poems on the painting of Yang Pass], in Shangu shi jizhu 山谷詩集注 [Annoted Poems of Shangu], 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2003), 2: 994. See Qian Zhongshu, “Synaesthesia” (tonggan 通感), in Patchwork, 114–38. James A. W. Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 3. See also W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 151–82. Hagstrum points out that both painting and poetry in Western culture demonstrate a mimetic effort to resemble nature, but they are “distinguished from each other by the means of imitation employed.” Hagstrum, The Sister Arts, 6 (italics in the original). Rippl redefines ekphrasis as a “more general term that denotes any kind of intermedial and self-reflexive relationships between two different media which constantly ponder their own material characteristics” (48). Gabriele Rippl, “English Literature and Its Other: Toward a Poetics of Intermediality,” in ImageScapes: Studies in Intermediality, ed. Christian J. Emden and Gabriele Rippl (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010), 39–66. For pioneering explorations of the relationship between painting and poetry, see Alfreda Murck and Wen C. Fong, eds., Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991). See also Ronald C. Egan, “Poems on Paintings: Su Shih and Huang T’ing-chien,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43, no. 2 (December 1983): 413–51; Daan Pan, The Lyrical Resonance Between Chinese Poets and Painters: The Tradition and Poetics of Tihuashi (New York: Cambria, 2010). Tihua shi emerged before the Tang dynasty, but reached its sophistication in the high Tang era. Jonathan Chaves, The Chinese Painter as Poet (New York: China Institute Gallery and Art Media Resources, 2000). Chaves gives a succinct, insightful overview of the “integral poem-painting” in conjunction with the exhibition “The Chinese Painter as Poet” at China Institute Gallery in 2000. The relationship between poet and painter can be expressed in a variety of ways. A painter may be inspired by an existing poem, the poet may inscribe a poem onto the pictorial space after viewing the painting, or the poet may write it down elsewhere. The painter and the poet can collaborate on the single work, or the painting could be inscribed with poems by many latecomers who admire the work (42). The pictograph is one of the original devices for encoding Chinese characters. See François Bottéro, “Writing on Shell and Bone in Shang China,” in The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process, ed. Stephen D. Houston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 250–61. Wen C. Fong points out that Chinese scholar-amateur artists began to write about a “visual poetics” that integrated painting with poetry and calligraphy by the late thirteenth century. Wen C. Fong, Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 8th–14th Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), 302–20. See also Wen C. Fong and Alfred

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Introduction   275 Murck, “The Three Perfections: Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting,” in Murck and Fong, Words and Images, xv–xxii; Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037–1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555–1636) (1978, repr. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 22–28; Mingfei Shi, “  ‘The Three Perfections’: Isomorphic Structures in Works of Late Chinese Poet-Calligrapher-Painters,” in The Pictured Word: Word & Image Interactions II, ed. Martin Heusser et al. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 257–72; Michael Sullivan, The Three Perfections: Chinese Painting, Poetry and Calligraphy, 2nd ed. (New York: George Raziller, 1999). Sargent argues that tensions are embodied in Su Shih’s poems on painting and in the source paintings themselves. Sargent, “Colophons in Countermotion,” 269–82. 15. This coinage is indebted to the expressions “photo-textualities,” “ekphrastic poetics,” and “new media poetics,” but it differs from them in terms of conceptualization. See Marsha Bryant, ed., Photo-Textualities: Reading Photographs and Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996); Jefferson Hunter, Image and Word: The Interaction of Twentieth-Century Photographs and Texts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); Mitchell, Picture Theory; Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss, eds., New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006). I also wish to acknowledge that an exhibition titled “Photo-Poetics: An Anthology” was held at the Guggenheim Museum in 2015. In that limited context, “photo-poetics” referred to the approach a group of studio photographers took to still life photography and to their artistic manipulations of the resulting images. See Jennifer Blessing, Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, exhibition catalog (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2015). 16. In the age of the proliferation of images, the relationships between word and image have constituted one of the central theoretical and historical inquiries in contemporary art, photography, and literary history. To mention only a few works, see Roland Barthes, ImageMusic-Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977); Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981); Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and many works by W. J. T. Mitchell. For the relationship between photography and literature in English-language scholarship, see Carol Shloss, In Visible Light: Photography and the American Writer, 1840–1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1987); Linda Harverty Rugg, Picturing Ourselves: Photography & Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Nancy Armstrong, Fiction in the Age of Photography: The Legacy of British Realism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). 17. Charles Bernstein, A Poetics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 160. 18. Citing Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1991), Marie-Laure Ryan succinctly defines “medium” in transmissive and semiotic terms as “a channel or system of communication, information or entertainment,” such as television, radio, or photography, all distinctive types of technologies, and as “material or technical means of artistic expression,” such as language, sound, image, or body, etc. Marie-Laure Ryan, “Media and Narrative,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, ed. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and MarieLaure Ryan (London: Routledge, 2005), 288–92. In this study, media is first used as the plural of a concrete medium, but it also refers to mass media, which emerged in the late nineteenth century and was accompanied by new ways of thinking, perceiving, sensing,

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and feeling. For more discussion of the terms medium and media, see W.  J.  T. Mitchell and Mark B.  N. Hansen, eds., introduction to Critical Terms for Media Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), x–xi. 19. Werner Wolf, The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 1–2, 35–50; Irina O. Rajewsky, “Intermediality, Intertexuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality,” Intermédialitiés, no. 6 (2005): 43–64, esp. 54. Rajewsky differentiates intermedial and intramedial, with the latter not involving crossing between media. Understanding intermediality as “the concrete analysis of specific individual media products or configurations,” Rajewsky proposes three subcategories: media combination, medial transposition, and intermedial references. For a brief account of the history of the term intermedial or intermedia, which was used by Coleridge at the beginning of the nineteenth century, see Henk Oosterling, “Intermediality: Art Between Images, Words, and Actions,” in Thinking Art: Theory and Practice in the Art of Today, ed. Jean-Marie Schaeffer et al. (Rotterdam: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, 1998), 89–100, esp. 97–98. 20. For recent explorations of intermediality in Chinese and Sinophone contexts, see Yomi Braester, ed., special issue on “Intermediality in Global and Sinophone Contexts,” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 43, no. 2 (2017); Claire Roberts, “Chinese Ideas of Likeness: Photography, Painting, and Intermediality,” in Portraiture and Early Studio Photography in China and Japan, ed. Luke Gartlan and Roberta Wue (London: Routledge, 2017), 97–116; Weihong Bao, “Diary of a Homecoming: (Dis)Inhabiting the Theatrical in Postwar Shanghai Cinema,” in A Companion to Chinese Cinema, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Hoboken, N.J.: Blackwell, 2012), 377–99. 21. Werner Wolf, “Intermediality,” in Herman et al., Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, 252–56; Werner Wolf, “Literature and Music: Theory,” in Handbook of Intermediality: Literature-Image-Sound-Music, ed. Gabriele Rippl (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 459–74. 22. Wolf, “Intermediality,” 253. 23. Wolf, 254. 24. See James Cahill, The Lyric Journey: Poetic Painting in China and Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996). The series of Du Fu shiyi tu (the paintings of Du Fu’s poetic ideas) by the Ming and Qing painters is an illustrious example. 25. Wolf, “Intermediality,” 254. 26. Wolf, 254. 27. Heffernan, Museum of Words, 146–52. 28. Rajewsky, “Intermediality, Intertexuality, and Remediation,” 54–55. 29. See Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Painting and Photography, 1839–1914, trans. David Radzinowicz (Paris: Flammarion, 2012); Carol Jacobi and Hope Kingsley, Painting with Light: Art Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Modern Age (London: Tate, 2016). 30. W. J. T. Mitchell, Pictorial Theory, 94–95. 31. Li Hongzhang, “Dinghai chunri Chundi zhaoyou Shiyuan mancheng wuyanshi liushiyun” 丁亥春日醇邸召游適園漫成五言詩六十韻 [Composing the poem after enjoying the Shi Garden upon the invitation from Prince in spring, 1887], in Li Hongzhang quanji 李鴻章全集 [The Complete Works of Li Hongzhang] (Changchun: Shidai wenyi chubanshe,

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Introduction   277 1998), 7418–19. It includes a note saying that “last year I was granted the gift of a pictorial album of scenes of the Shi Garden, reflected shadows created by Western methods” (上年 蒙賜洋法照影適園分景畫冊). The Library of Congress holds one well-preserved copy of this photo album in its Wharton Berker papers. Figure 1.13 is one of the photographs of Yi Xuan that is included in this album. 32. For the invention of photography, see Michel Frizot, ed., A New History of Photography (Paris: Könemann, 1998), 15–31. The first photographic image of China was taken by British envoys, who sailed down the Yangtze River on a British warship in 1842. Harry Parkes’s journal of July 16, 1842, recorded that Major Malcom and Dr. Woosnam took a daguerreotype on the British warship HMS Cornwallis and sailed down the Yangtze River. Cited in Terry Bennett, History of Photography in China, 1842–1860 (London: Bernard Quaritch, 2009), 1. A new wave of scholarship has explored the history of Chinese photography in its formal, historical, and cultural aspects. To name a few, see Tong Bingxue 仝冰雪, Zhongguo zhaoxiangguan shi 中國照相館史 (1859–1956) [The History of Chinese Photography Studios] (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2017); Gartlan and Wue, Portraiture and Early Studio Photography in China and Japan; Wu Hung, Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (London: Reaktion Books, 2016); Claire Roberts, Photography and China (London: Reaktion Books, 2013); Chen Shen 陳申 and Xu Xijing 徐希景, Zhongguo sheying yishu shi 中國攝影藝術史 [A History of the Art of Chinese Photography] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2011); Jeffrey W. Cody and Frances Terpak, eds., Brush and Shutter: Early Photography in China (Los Angeles, Calif.: Getty, 2011). 33. See Oliver Moore, “Zou Boqi on Vision and Photography in Nineteenth-Century China,” in The Human Tradition in Modern China, ed. Kenneth J. Hammond and Kristin Stapleton (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 33–53; Roberts, Photography and China, 15–16. 34. Cited in Ma Yunzeng 馬運增 et al., Zhongguo sheying shi, 1840–1937 中國攝影史 [The History of Chinese Photography, 1840–1937] (Beijing: Zhongguo sheying chubanshe, 1987), 24. 35. For discussion of shen in philosophical and aesthetic discourses, see Zong-qi Cai, “The Conceptual Origins and Aesthetic Significance of ‘Shen’ in Six Dynasties Texts on Literature and Painting,” in Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties, ed. Zong-qi Cai (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), 310–42. 36. Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 16–20, esp. 17. 37. Barthes, 20–25. 38. Wu Qun 吳群, Zhongguo sheying fazhan licheng 中國攝影發展歷程 [The Historical Development of Chinese Photography] (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1986), 107–8. This work is also reprinted in Liu Beisi 劉北汜 and Xu Qixian 徐啟憲, Gugong zhencang renwu zhaopian huicui 故宮珍藏人物照片薈萃 [Collection of Portrait Photos in the Forbidden Palace] (Beijing: Zijincheng chubanshe, 1995), 53. 39. Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 27. 40. Yi Xuan, Jiusitang shigao 九思堂詩稿 [Poetry Collection from the Hall of Nine Reflections] (first published 1874), vol. 4: 48; reprinted in Qingdai shiwenji huibian 清代詩文集彙編 [The Comprehensive Edition of Qing Dynasty Writing], 800 vols (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2010), vol. 742. The poem is titled “Nanyuan he’an deju” 南苑河岸得句 [Inspired on the River Bank of South Garden].

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41. Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 31. 42. In an October 25, 1858, diary entry, Wang Tao records his observations of commercial photo shoots. Wang Tao, Wang Tao riji 王韜日記 [Wang Tao’s Diaries] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987), 23. See Zhang Wei 張偉, Xifeng dongjian: Wanqing minchu de Shanghai yiwenjie 西風東漸：晚清民初的上海藝文界 [Eastbound Wind from the West: The Shanghai Literary and Artistic World in the Late Qing and Early Republican Era] (Taipei: Yao you guang, 2013), 300–304. Zhang Wei estimates the number of studios based on the List of Shanghai Businesses (Shanghai shangye minglu 上海商業名錄) as well as other sources of data. For the list of photo studios in Shanghai from 1912 to the 1930s, see Ge Tao 葛濤 and Shi Dongxu 石冬旭, Juxiang de lishi: Zhaoxiang yu Qingmo Minchu Shanghai shehui shenghuo 具象的歷史：照相與清末民初上海社會生活 [A Concrete History: Photography and Social Life in Late Qing and Early Republican Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2011), 218–29. 43. Cheng Zhanlu 程瞻盧, “Maxiang zhuanjia” 罵像專家 [A specialist in cursing portraits], Hong meigui 紅玫瑰 [Red Rose] 4, no. 34 (1928): 1–3. 44. “這些‘圖’曬出之後，總須題些詩，或者詞如‘調寄滿庭芳’‘摸魚兒’之類，然後在書 房裡掛起。” Lu Xun 魯迅, “Lun zhaoxiang zhilei” 論照相之類 [On photography], in Fen 墳 [Tomb] (Shanghai: Beixin shuju, 1929); Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 [The Complete Works of Lu Xun], 16 vols. (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1981), 1: 184. 45. Lao She 老舍, “Xiangpian 像片” [The photograph], Yijing 逸經 [Heterodox Canonical Writings] 13 (1936): 32–33. In the past, only portraits of the ancestors and deceased parents were prominently displayed. The essays by Lu Xun, Lao She as well as other historical records give the impression that hanging portrait photographs of the self or the family in the household became a new fashion during the Republican era. 46. Shanghai tushuguan, ed., Shanghai tushuguan cang lishi yuanzhao 上海圖書館藏歷史原照 [Original Photographs at the Shanghai Library], 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2007), 1: 96–125, 2: 311–23. The album comprises fifty such photographs with inscriptions, many of which include only the name of the person to whom it is dedicated and a personal signature. For more examples of inscriptions, see Xinhai geming Wuchang qiyi jinianguan 辛亥革命武昌起義紀念館, ed., Xinhai geming da xiezhen 辛亥革命大寫真 [Photographs of the Xinhai Revolution] (Hankou: Hubei meishu chubanshe, 2001), 2 vols. 47. Although writing inscriptions in verse onto images is much less frequently practiced in other cultures, active collaboration of the image and poetic text in the early history of photography was a global phenomenon. See some examples in the online collection of “Early photographically illustrated books” at the British Library, accessed June 10, 2016, http:// www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/earlyphotos/. 48. “回首前塵，感慨系之矣.” For another photograph, inscribed by Qu Hongji 瞿鴻機 (1850–1918) right after the event, see Shanghai tushuguan cang lishi yuanzhao, 1: 98. For a detailed account of this set of inscribed photographs, see Zhang Wei, Xifeng dongjian, 338–39. My book limits itself to inscriptions mainly in the form of verse. Because one of the goals of this study is to delineate the continued practice of poetry writing, inscriptions written in epistolary or essay style, although having great historical value, will not be dealt with here. 49. John Berger, Another Way of Telling (1982; repr. New York: Vintage, 1995), 87.

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Introduction   279 50. The term is Barthes’s. Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 44. 51. In this study, I use the term inscription to refer to a range of writings that accompany photographs, especially handwritten poems and prose placed directly onto the object or photographic image. This study also examines image-inspired poems that were often printed together with the photographs in the journals or included in poetry anthologies. According to Aoki Masaru, Chinese inscription on paintings can generally be cataloged into four types: huazan 畫贊 (pictorial encomium, which usually praises the subject of the portrait), huashi 畫詩 (poems written on painting), huaji 畫記 (a painter’s colophon), and huaba 畫跋 (pictorial postscript). The first two of these types are verse forms, whereas the last two take the form of unrhymed prose. Aoki Masaru 青木正兒, “Tihua wenxue jiqi fazhan” 題畫文學及其發展 [Inscriptions and its development], trans. Wei Zhongyou 魏仲佑, Zhongguo wenhua yuekan 中國文化月刊 [Chinese Culture Monthly] 9 (1970): 76–92. For a comprehensive treatment of Chinese literature on portraiture, see Ogawa Yōichi 小川陽一, Chūgoku no shōzōga bungaku 中国の肖像画文学 [Literature on Chinese Portraits] (Tokyo: Kenbun shuppan, 2005). For the differences among Chinese compounds tiba 題跋 (colophons), tikuan 題款 (writing signatures or inscriptions), and tihua 題畫 (writing on handscroll paintings, screens, fans, and others), see De-nin D. Lee, “Colophons, Reception, and Chinese Painting,” Word & Image 28, no. 1 (2012): 84–99, esp. 84–88. 52. Translating the Chinese poetry (shi) and painting (hua) relationship into the Western polarity of image and text can be problematic, but image and text can work as a template to accommodate a range of photographic images and texts (including captions, titles, citations, and essays). For a discussion of the problematic classification of the word-image opposition, see James Elkins, The Domains of Images (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, 1999), 82–91. Bryson proposes a model of the painterly sign between “a pole of domination by the signified (‘discursivity’) and a pole dominated by the signifier (‘figurality’),” along with a useful chart (255). See Bryson, Word and Image, 1–28, 255. For recent studies on the word-image relationship in modern China and media crossing, see William Schaefer, Shadow Modernism: Photography, Writing, and Space in Shanghai, 1925–1937 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017); John A. Crespi, “China’s Modern Sketch: The Golden Era of Cartoon Art, 1934–1937,” MIT.edu, “Visualizing Cultures,” accessed June 8 2017, https:// visualizingcultures.mit.edu/modern_sketch/ms_essay01.html; Richard K. Kent, “Inscribed Photographic Portrait: Commemoration and Self-Fashioning in Republican-Period China,” in Portraiture and Early Studio Photography in China and Japan, ed. Gartlan and Wue, 117–39. 53. See Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, “Introduction: Photographs as Objects,” in Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images, ed. Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1–15. Walter Benjamin famously laments that the aura of traditional painting has been lost due to the rise of mass media and mechanical reproduction of art, but he also points out that early portrait photographs contain vestiges of the cult value of remembrance. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), 219–53. Engaging in the discussion from the aspect of the materiality of photography, Edwards and Hart argue that photographs of all sorts have “their own

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56. 57.

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‘aura’ of thingness existing in the world” (9). See also the discussions of “secular aura” in Mary Price, The Photograph: A Strange Confined Space (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 173–77. For instance, Bin Chun 斌春 (1804-?) took and exchanged photographs as well as gifts with royal families and aristocrats in his state-sponsored tour of Europe in 1866. Bin Chun, Chengcha biji 乘槎筆記 [Jottings of a Journey to the West] (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1981), 23, 35, 43. Wang Tao who went on a tour of Europe from 1867 to 1870 received a number of photographs from Western ladies who became his fans on this tour. See Wang Tao, Manyou suilu tuji 漫游隨錄圖記 [Pictorial Records of My Travel] (Shandong: Shandong huabao chubanshe, 2004), 148. For further discussion of the use of photographs in diplomacy and politics, see Tong Bingxue, Zhongguo zhaoxiangguan shi, 14–16, 131–35. Weihong Bao coined the phrase “affective medium” in the context of China’s early cinema. See Weihong Bao, Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915–1945 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 7–17. See Jacob Edmond, “Copy,” in A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism, ed. Eric Hayot and Rebecca L. Walkowitz (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 96–109. Cynthia J. Brokaw and Kai-wing Chow, eds., Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). For discussion of folding albums in late Ming, see Anne Burkus-Chasson, “Visual Hermeneutics and the Act of Turning the Leaf: A Genealogy of Liu Yuan’s Lingyan ge,” in Brokaw and Kai-wing Chow, Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, 371–416. She argues that instead of merely understanding the images as subsidiary illustrations in the books, the images also “constitute a form of visual hermeneutics, whose communicative power matches that of the abundant verbal commentary that characterizes books in general from this historical period” (376). Poetry-painting pairing in the pictorial manuals (e.g., Tangshi huapu 唐詩畫譜 [Painting Manual of the Tang Poetry]) in late Ming also may have informed the image-text printing practices in the modern era. See also Robert E. Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998); Li-Ling Hsiao, The Eternal Present of the Past: Illustration, Theater, and Reading in the Wanli Period, 1573–1619 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); J. P. Park, Art by the Book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012); Chaves, The Chinese Painter as Poet, 98–114. Images were also extensively used in Buddhist and Daoist practices. Adopting W. J. T. Mitchell’s coinage “imagetext,” Huang examines the interactions of text and image in Daoist culture. See Shih-Shan Susan Huang, Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012), 21; Mitchell, Picture Theory, 9. Su Jing 蘇精, Zhuyi daike: Chuanjiaoshi yu zhongwen yinshua bianju 鑄以代刻：傳教士與 中文印刷變局 [Missionaries and the Transformation of Chinese Printing] (Taipei: Taiwan daxue chuban zhongxin, 2014). The long existing printing practice of image and text collaboration is called “pictures on the left, and historical writings on the right” (zuotu youshi). See Chen Pingyuan 陳平原, Zuotu youshi: Wanqing huabao yanjiu 左圖右史: 晚清 畫報研究 [Pictures on the Left, Historical Writings on the Right: Studies on late Qing Pictorials] (Hong Kong: Sanlian, 2008); Rudolf G. Wagner, ed., Word, Image, and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870–1910 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007).

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Introduction   281 59. For an overview of Shanghai print culture, see Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), esp. 43–81; Christopher A. Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876–1937 (Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia, 2004), esp. 59–87. In her study The Serial of National Glories (Shenzhou guoguang ji 神州國光集), Yu-jen Liu shows that attempts at reproducing Chinese art objects in the 1910s did not merely target the faithful reproduction of images but also incorporated traditional cultural practices into modern art. Yu-jen Liu, “Second Only to the Original: Rhetoric and Practice in the Photographic Reproduction of Art in Early Twentieth-Century China,” Art History 37, no. 1 (2014): 68–95. 60. From 1913 to 1915, more than thirty literary magazines emerged in Shanghai, with a target sales figure of three thousand copies. In the 1920s, the market significantly expanded and circulation of popular stories reached well above one hundred thousand. See Perry Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Cities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 11–12; Fan Boqun 范伯群, Zhongguo xiandai tongsu wenxue shi 中國現代通俗文學史 [The History of Chinese Modern Popular Literature] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2007), 150–82; 238–68. 61. The distribution figure for Shanghai huabao is estimated as up to ten thousand. See Fan Boqun, Zhongguo xiandai tongsu wenxue shi, 412. The estimated sales figure for Liangyou in the 1930s was thirty-five thousand to forty thousand. See Wang Chunchun, “Distributing Liangyou,” in Paul G. Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen, and Yingjin Zhang, eds., Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926–1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 248–58, esp. 248. For recent scholarship on Shanghai huabao and Liangyou, see Julia F. Andrews, “Pictorial Shanghai (Shanghai huabao, 1925–1933) and Creation of Shanghai’s Modern Visual Culture,” Yishu xue yanjiu 藝術學研究 [Journal of Art Studies] 12 (September 2013): 43–128; Pickowicz, Shen, and Zhang, Liangyou. 62. For more on new media, the literary market, and readership during that time, see Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies, 10–17. For a discussion on the magazine’s design style, see Scott Minick and Jiao Ping, Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990). 63. Hockx calls for an approach of “horizontal reading” to engage in the content in the same issue or page simultaneously in literary journals. Michel Hockx, Questions of Style: Literary Societies and Literary Journals in Modern China, 1911–1937 (2004; repr. Leiden: Brill, 2017), 118–19. For a helpful study of the photographically illustrated magazine and new social and perceptual experiences, see Gerry Beegan, The Mass Image: A Social History of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 64. Sarah J. Paulson and Anders Skare Malvik, introduction to Literature in Contemporary Media Culture: Technology-Subjectivity-Aesthetics (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016), 1–18, esp.4–5. 65. See Wu Hung, “Patterns of Returning to the Ancients in Chinese Art and Visual Culture,” and Martin J. Powers, “Imitation and Reference in China’s Pictorial Tradition,” in Reinventing the Past: Archaism and Antiquarianism in Chinese Art and Visual Culture, ed. Wu Hung (Chicago: Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, 2010), 9–46; 103–126. 66. The phrase “technologized visuality” is Chow’s. Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 5.

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67. See Chung-Ying Cheng, “Phenomenology and Onto-Generative Hermeneutics: Convergences,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 42, nos. 1–2 (2015): 221–41, esp. 234. 68. Isabelle Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, trans. Phyllis Brooks (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 122–24. 69. Roger T. Ames, “Meaning as Imaging: Prolegomena to a Confucian Epistemology,” in Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophic Perspectives, ed. Eliot Deutsch (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1991), 227–44, esp. 230. Glossing xiang as “figure,” Peterson writes: “A figure is an image or likeness, but it is also a form or shape, a design or configuration or pattern, and a written symbol; ‘to figure’ is to represent as a symbol or image, but also to give or bring into shape.” Xing 形 (form) refers to tangible, concrete objects, and xiang is used for objects and events. Willard J. Peterson, “Making Connections: ‘Commentary on the Attached Verbalizations’ of The Book of Change,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42, no. 1 (1982): 67–116, esp. 80–81. See Wang Bi 王弼, “Elucidations of Images” (Mingxiang 明象), in Wang Bi ji jiaoshi 王弼集校釋 [The Annotated Edition of Wang Bi’s Work], annotated and ed. Lou Yulie 樓宇烈 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 609. Clunas points out that xiang had gained a precise meaning with regard to the representation of the human form or visage in the Ming. For insightful discussions of the terms hua 畫, xiang 象, and guan 觀 as used in Chinese paintings, and for images and ways of seeing in the Ming dynasty, see chap. 4 in Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (London: Reaktion Books, 1997). 70. See Shen Kuo’s discussion of chongchong xijian重重悉見 [seeing them through layer after layer], in Shen Kuo 沈括, Mengxi bitan jiaozheng 夢溪筆談校證 [The Annotated Edition of Brush Talks from the Dream Brook], 2 vols., annotated by Hu Daojing 胡道靜 (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957), 1: 547. In light of Chung-Ying Cheng’s ideas on guan in the Book of Changes, Liu Jichao explicates the relationship between guan and the wandering gaze in Chinese aesthetic theory. Liu Jichao 劉繼潮, Youguan: Zhongguo gudian huihua kongjian benti quanshi 游觀: 中國古典繪畫空間本體詮釋 [Wandering Viewing: An Ontological Interpretation of Chinese Traditional Pictorial Space] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2011), 64–69. See also Xiaofei Tian, Visionary Journeys: Travel Writings from Early Medieval and Nineteen-Century China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center, 2011), 21–67. 71. Wen C. Fong, “Riverbank: From Connoisseurship to Art History,” in Issues of Authenticity in Chinese Painting, ed. Judith G. Smith and Wen C. Fong (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), 259–92, esp. 274. 72. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. Fred Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), 35. 73. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (1962; repr. New York: Routledge, 2002); Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor, eds., The Merleau-Ponty Reader (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2007). 74. Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Merleau-Ponty Reader, 351–78, esp. 358, 364. 75. Merleau-Ponty, “The Intertwining—The Chiasm,” in The Merleau-Ponty Reader, 393–414, esp. 398. 76. Merleau-Ponty, “Cezanne’s Doubt,” in The Merleau-Ponty Reader, 69–84.

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Introduction   283 77. For a succinct discussion of skeptical discourses on modern vision, see Karen Jacobs, The Eye’s Mind: Literary Modernism and Visual Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), 1–26. As Martin Jay points out, “Cartesian perspectivism,” the principles of linear perspectives from fixed viewpoints and their disembodied visions, is a simplified way to characterize the modern dominant “scopic regime” (69–70). For more reflections on Descartes and Merleau-Ponty, see Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 69–82; 298–328. 78. For an exploration of dialogues between Chinese philosophy and phenomenology, see David Chai, ed., Daoist Encounters with Phenomenology: Thinking Interculturally About Human Existence (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). 79. André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” trans. Hugh Gray, Film Quarterly 13, no. 4. (Summer 1960): 4–9. For helpful surveys of media analyses of photography, see Norman Peterson, Photographic Art: Media and Disclosure (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984), 1–39; Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), 4–21. 80. See Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 17. 81. Kendall L. Walton, “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism,” in Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008), 14–49. 82. As Daston and Galison’s historicized account of objectivity informs us, scientific objectivity emerged as a new concept and a set of practices in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, accompanied by the rise of the willful self. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007), 1–251. 83. For a summary of different positions, see Jane Tormey, Photographic Realism: Late Twentieth-Century Aesthetics (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2013), 1–31. 84. Bernd Stiegler, “Photography as the Medium of Reflection,” in The Meaning of Photography, ed. Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson (Williamstown, Mass.: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2008), 194–97. 85. In his discussion of “the mind’s eye” at the beginning of the twentieth century, psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote: “The eye may be compared to a photographic camera, with its eyelid cap, its iris shutter, its lens, and its sensitive plate—the retina.” At the same time, “true seeing” involves a double process of being “partly objective or outward” and “partly subjective and inward.” Joseph Jastrow, Fact and Fable in Psychology (London: Macmillan, 1901), 275–76. 86. Nelson Goodman, Language of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1968), 7–8. 87. See Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), 15–16. 88. Merleau-Ponty, “The Intertwining—The Chiasm.” For neuroscientific studies of perception, see Nicholas Mirzoeff, How to See the World (London: Pelican Books, 2015), 80–94. 89. Yi Gu, “What’s in a Name? Photography and the Reinvention of Visual Truth in China, 1840–1911,” The Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (2013): 120–38, esp. 120–21. Gu points out that in the early stages of the reception of photography, both sheying 攝影 and zhaoxiang 照相 were used,

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but that around 1911 sheying surpassed zhaoxiang to become the most common designation for photography, and Zhaoxiang (lit., reflecting a portrait with a mirror) is a more colloquial expression limited to studio photography (121, 128). 90. Laikwan Pang, The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), 54. 91. Schaefer, Shadow Modernism. 92. For explications of the changing conception of “things” (wu 物), see Wang Hui 汪暉, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi 現代中國思想的興起 [The Origins of Modern Chinese Thought], 4 vols. (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2004), 1: 260–344, 4: 1107–1205. 93. For more reflections on the camera obscura’s mechanical eyes in Descartes’s thoughts and the emergence of a modern observer with his subjective vision in the nineteenth century West, see Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 46–66. 94. This refers to conceptual changes that occurred in the Chinese reception of photography. On a practical level, many late Qing Chinese were in awe of visual verisimilitude and began to welcome the camera’s evidentiary character for social uses involving various aspects of everyday life, journalism, and science. For a discussion of how photography was used in criminal investigations at the turn of the twentieth century, see Ge Tao and Shi Dongxu, Juxiang de lishi, 124–50. 95. Pictorial terms were adopted to refer to photographs, such as “little portrait” (xiaoxiang 小像), “little picture” (xiaozhao 小照), “little shadow” (xiaoying 小影), “portrait” (huaxiang 畫像), “portrait of a person” (xiezhen 寫真), “portrait of the deceased” (yingxiang 影像), “drawing a shadow” (huaying 畫影), “mirrored shadow” (jingying 鏡影), “portrait shadow” (xiaoying 肖影), “reflected shadow” (zhaoying 照影), “portrait of the deceased” (yizhao 遺照), “iconography” (zaoxiang 造像) and so on. For the use of cuoying, see the column of “cuoying yanjiu” 撮影研究 (Studies of Photography) in Beiping huabao 北平畫報 [Beiping Pictorial] (1929). 96. The term is Merleau-Ponty’s. Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” 356. 97. See Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), 30–31. 98. Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Garland, 1977), 3–35. 99. “Phenomenological seeing” is Husserl’s term. Edmund Husserl, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, Winter Semester, 1910–1911, trans. Ingo Farin and James G. Hart (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2006), 40. 100. Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Garland, 1977), 115–36, esp.129. 101. See Bai Ji’an 白吉庵, Zhang Shizhao zhuan 章士釗傳 [The Biography of Zhang Shizhao] (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 2004), 197–98. The photograph with the inscriptions emerged in the auction market in 2013. Throughout his lifetime, Zhang Shizhao maintained his antivernacular language position. However, Zhang and Hu Shi were on good terms personally. The line quoted by Hu Shi is Gong Zizhen’s 龔自珍, see Gong’s “Miscellaneous Poems in the Year of Jihai” (Jihai zashi 己亥雜詩), in Gong Zizhen quanji 龔自珍全集 [The Complete Works of Gong Zizhen] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1975), 519.



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102. Initially formulated by Shih-Hsiang Chen, “Chinese lyricism” as a critical discourse accounts for a range of aesthetic and formal attributes within China’s esteemed poetic tradition. Shih-Hsiang Chen, “On Chinese Lyrical Tradition,” Tamkang Review 2, no.2 and 3, no.1 (1971–1972): 17–24. 103. See Zong-Qi Cai and Shengqing Wu, “Introduction: Emotion, Patterning, and Visuality in Chinese Literary Thought and Beyond,” special issue on “Emotion and Visuality in Chinese Literature and Culture,” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 6, no. 1 (2019): 1–14; esp. 4–6. For more discussions and translations of aesthetic theories, see Stephen Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1992), 183–298. Nelson writes of how language (yan 言) exceeds the pictorial conceptualization of reality, involving “a hermeneutics tracing and articulating the mediations of sound, image, materiality, and energy,” thus affectively responding to and participating in the world in its becoming. See Eric S. Nelson, “Generativities: Western Philosophy, Chinese Painting, and the Yijing,” Orbis Idearum 1, no.1 (2013): 97–104, esp. 104. 104. E. H. Gombrich, “The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication,” in The Essential Gombrich, ed. Richard Woodfield (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 42. 105. David Der-wei Wang, The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists Through the 1949 Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 2. Wang defines Chinese lyricism not only as a mode of poetry but also as “a spectrum of articulations” that move across genres and media. Tracing the lyrical discourse in the age of revolution and societal changes through comparative perspectives, Wang delves into the complexity of lyricism in the formation of Chinese literary and cultural modernities. 106. See Shengqing Wu, Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the Chinese Lyric Tradition, 1900–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013), 4–14. For recent scholarship on classical poetry and modern media, see Frederik H. Green, “Painted in Oil, Composed in Ink: Late-Qing Ekphrastic Poetry and the Encounter with Western Style Painting,” special issue on “Modern Chinese Lyric Classicism,” ed. Zhiyi Yang, Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 9, no. 4 (2015): 525–51. 107. Průšek defines the “lyrical” as subjective feelings and evocations of poetic mood and imageries that are transplanted across literary genres into modern eras. Jaroslav Průšek, The Lyric and the Epic: Studies of Modern Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), esp. 1–28. 108. Kao Yu-kung 高友工, “Shilun Zhongguo yishu jingshen” 試論中國藝術精神 [On Chinese artistic spirit], Jiuzhou xuekan 九州學刊 [Chinese Culture Quarterly] 2, no. 2 (1988): 1–12 and 2, no. 3 (1988): 1–12. For the theme of lyricism in Chinese painting, see, for instance, Fong, Beyond Representation, 247–323.

1. MULTIPLYING THE SELF: STAGING FANTASIES AND CULTURAL PERSONAS 1. “然而名士風流，又何代蔑有呢？雅人早不滿於這樣千篇一律的呆鳥了，於是也 有赤身露體裝作晉人的，也有斜領絲絛裝作X人的，但不多。較為通行的是先 將自己照下兩張，服飾態度各不同，然后合照為一張，兩個自己即或如賓主，

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或如主仆，名曰 ‘二我圖’。但設若一個自己傲然地坐著，一個自己卑劣可憐地， 向了坐著的那一個自己跪著的時候，名色便又兩樣了：‘求己圖’。” Lu Xun, “Lun zhaoxiang zhilei” 論照相之類 [On photography], in Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 [Complete Works of Lu Xun], 16 vols. (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1981), 1: 184. 2. Topics concerning the manipulation of portrait photos have been addressed both in Chinese and English. See Wu Qun 吳群, “Zaoqi liuxing de ‘huashen xiang’ he ‘huazhuang xiang” 早期 流行的’化身相’和化裝相 [The popular ‘photos of a transformed body’ and ‘costume photos’ in the early years], Dazhong sheying 大眾攝影 [Popular Photography] 3 (1960): 20. I wish to acknowledge that my initial interest in manipulated photography was inspired by Wu Qun’s pioneering work on the history of Chinese photography. See also Gu Zheng 顧錚, “ ‘Linglei’ de Minguo xiaoxiang sheying xiaoshi ‘另類’ 的民國肖像攝影小史” [‘Alternative’ Short History of Republican Portrait Photography], in Gu Zheng, Gu Zheng sheying wenlun ji 顧錚攝影文 論集 [Articles on Photography by Gu Zheng] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2012), 81–89; Tong Bingxue 仝冰雪, Zhongguo zhaoxiangguan shi 中國照相館史 (1859–1956) [The History of Chinese Photography Studios] (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2017), 218–25; Yang Yu-cheng 楊玉成, “Shen wai shen: Shijue wenhua yu ‘wo’ de meiying shi” 身外身： 視覺文化與‘我’的魅影史 [Body beyond body: Visual culture and the enchanting history of the self], in Dongya guannianshi jikan 東亞觀念史集刊 [Journal of the History of Ideas in East Asia] 13 (2017): 251–332; in English, Oliver Moore, “Visualizing Change: the Negative, Positive and Double Images of Photography’s Subjects in Early Modern China,” in Zhongguo wenxue lishi yu sixiangzhong de guannian bianqian: guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji 中國文學歷 史與思想中的觀念變遷：國際學術研討會論文集 [Papers from the Transformation in Chinese Literary History and Thought Conference] (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue wenxueyuan, 2005), 291–309; Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 161–69; Chia-Ling Yang, “The Crisis of the Real: Portraiture and Photography in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai,” in Looking Modern: East Asian Visual Culture from Treaty Ports to World War II, ed. Jennifer Purtle and Hans Bjarne Thomsen (Chicago: Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, 2009), 20–27; Christopher Rea, The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 67–77; H. Tiffany Lee, “One, and the Same: The Photographic Double in Republican China,” in Portraiture and Early Studio Photography in China and Japan, ed. Luke Gartlan and Roberta Wue (London: Routledge, 2017), 140–55. 3. Allan Sekula, “The Traffic in Photographs,” in Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973–1983 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984), 77–101, esp. 81. 4. Mia Fineman, Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2012), 117. The chapter on “Politics and Persuasion” briefly discusses the alteration of photographs for political reasons in Maoist China (91–94). Albert A. Hopkins, compiled and ed., Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions including Trick Photography (London: Sampson Low, 1897), 423–61. This fascinating 1897 book offers detailed instructions on how to do “trick photography,” “duplex photography” (which uses a special frame with two shutters that operate like two halves of a sliding door), “illusive photography,” and the “multiple portrait.”



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5. Exactly when and under what circumstances this type of “trick photography” was introduced into China remain unknown. According to Lee, the earliest dated example produced in China is a double self-portrait by the photographer Ueno Hikoma (1838–1904), who owed photo studios in Shanghai and Hong Kong in 1891. Lee, “One, and the Same,” 143. For examples of costume photographs in Meiji Japan, see Naomi Izakura 井桜直美, Sepiairo no shōzō: Bakumatsu Meiji meishiban shashin korekushon セピア色の肖像: 幕末明治名刺判写 真コレクション [Portraits in sepia: from the Japanese carte de visite collection of Torin Boyd and Naomi Izakura] (Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 2000). For the works of Kajima Seibei 鹿島清兵衛 (1866–1924), who was substantially involved in manipulated photographs, see “The Story of Seibei Kajima, the ‘Millionaire Photographer’ in the Meiji Period” at the Fujifilm Square Photo History Museum Exhibition, 2019, http://fujifilmsquare.jp/en /detail/19060104.html. 6. “Hu Feiyun shuangying” 胡斐雲雙影 (fig. 1.1), Haishang jinghongying 海上驚鴻影 [Beautiful Images of Courtesans in Shanghai] (Shanghai: Youzheng shuju, 1913); “Nanjing jinü xiao Guifen huazhuang xiaoying” 南京妓女小桂芬化裝小影 (fig. 1.2), Xiaoshuo xinbao 小說新報 [New Journal for Fiction] 2, no. 9 (1916). More examples of courtesans’ qiuji tu are included in Haishang jinghongying. 7. For instance, this 1925 book offers career advice. Xu Baiyi 徐百益, ed., Qiuji ji 求己集 [Collection of Entreating the Self] (Shanghai: Lianhe bianyi chubanshe, 1925). 8. Su Shi 蘇軾 and Foyin Chanshi 佛印禪師, Dongpo jushi Foyin Chanshi yulu wenda 東坡 居士佛印禪師語錄問答 [Dialogues Between Dongpo and Foyin Chanshi] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990), 11. 9. “何謂求己？反求諸其身，不依賴於人也。何謂獨立？求所以自立，不屑以身從 人也。能事事求己，則其人之品格已高。能知所以自立，則能發奮為雄，以自 拔於流俗。” Huang Shouyu 黃守愚, “Kongxue xuyan” 孔學緒言 [On Confucius’s teaching], Tianduo 天鐸 [Heavenly Order] 3 (1910): 15. The captions qiuji or qiuren buru qiuji repeatedly used for pictures in the Republican era validate this reading of the meaning of qiuji. See also Rea, The Age of Irreverence, 70–72. 10. Anonymous and untitled poem, cited by Shuiyue 水月, in Kuaihuo 快活 [The Merry Magazine] 32, (1922): 7. 11. See Jin Nong’s Qiuji tu, accessed June 25, 2015, https://auction.artron.net/paimai -art56102015/. The authorship of Jin Nong’s painting remains contested. Hu Xigui, “Yunfeng qiuji tu” 雲峰求己圖 [The portrait of Yunfeng’s entreating the self] (1879) (fig. 1.4), reprinted in Haishang mingjia huihua 海上名家繪畫 [Paintings by the Famous Artists in Shanghai Region], ed. Pan Shenliang 潘深亮 (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1997), 256. See also Lee’s discussion of Hu Xigui’s painting in the context of the photographic culture, Lee, “One, and the Same,” 148. 12. For the allusion to Dongpo [Su Shi] in line 3, see Su Shi, “Over the Lake of Ying” (fanying 泛穎), in Su Shi 蘇軾, Su Dongpo quanji 蘇東坡全集 [The Complete Works of Su Dongpo], 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 1986), 1: 466. 13. For this point I am indebted to Yang Yu-cheng, “Shen wai shen.” For the image, Tuhua ribao (no. 205), see Tuhua ribao 圖畫日報 [Daily Pictorial], ed. Huanqiu she 環球社, in Qingmo minchu baokan tuhua jicheng xubian 清末民初報刊圖畫集成續編 [The Sequel to

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the Collection of Illustrated Newspapers and Magazines in Late Qing and Early Republic], 20 vols.(Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan wenxian weisuo fuzhi zhongxin, 2003), 9: 4599. Lu Xun’s article suggests that the entreating-the-self portraits had already been out of fashion by the time he wrote the article in 1925. Etymologically speaking, the term erwo can either mean double selves or a second self. The ancient Chinese also called a close friend a “second self.” The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (Limadou 利瑪竇, 1552–1610) called a portrait a “second self,” something the Chinese found interesting. Liu Jian 劉堅, Xiujiezhai xianbi 修潔齋閒筆 [Leisure Writing from Xiujie Studio](1741). The term erwo tu is interchangeable with “double bodies picture” (shuangshen tu 雙身圖) and “double shadows picture” (shuangying tu 雙影圖). One well-known twin-selves portrait is of a young Puyi 溥儀 (1906–1967, China’s last emperor who stepped down in 1912) who appears to be consorting with his own double. The photograph of two young Puyis in matching attire in different poses was made through double exposure. For the two photographs titled Portrait of the divided bodies of Puyi sitting in front of a screen wall (Yingbiqian Puyi fenshen zuoxiang 影壁前溥儀分身坐像), see Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan 國立故宮博 物院 ed., Bainian huimou: Gugong Zijincheng ji wenwu boqian yingxiang tezhan 百年回眸: 故 宮紫禁城及文物播遷影像特展 [The Forbidden City and the Odyssey of Its Treasures: A Photographic Retrospective] (Taipei: Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, 2016), 55. “Shanghai minghua Luofei huashen xiaoying” 上海名花洛妃化身小影 (fig. 1.5), Xiaoshuo xinbao 5, no. 2 (1919). More examples of twin-selves pictures of the courtesans appeared in Funü zazhi, Xiaoshuo daguan, Xiaoshuo xinbao, Youxi zazhi, Fengyue huabao, and the photo album Yanlian huaying 艷籢花影 [Album of Beautiful Girls] (Shanghai: Youzheng shuju, 1911). Hu Juewen took two photographs (one with a mustache, and one without) and combined them into one photo of double selves as a way to celebrate the victory of the Sino-Japanese War, dramatically presenting today’s self and a past self together. Cai Zhixin 蔡志新, “Hu Juewen de erwo tu” 胡厥文的二我圖 [The twin-selves portrait of Hu Juewen], Minguo chunqiu 民國春秋 [The Spring and Autumn of the Republic] 6 (1999): 37, 45. “Wu Chanqing nüshi shijiusui zhi xiaoying” 吳懺情女士十九歲之小影 (fig.1.6), Xiangyan zazhi 香艷雜誌 [Glamour Magazine] 8 (1915). This form of one sitting and the other standing is also called the “host and guest” portrait (zhubin tu 主賓圖). In 1915, Wu Chanqing took a twin-selves photo in which she dressed in a Western-style wedding gown and a male suit to form a modern couple. The visual quality of the photograph has been compromised. See “Wu Chanqing nüshi zhi huashen fufu” 吳懺情女士之化身夫婦 [The transformation of Ms. Wu Chanqing into a couple], Youxi zazhi 19 (1915). Wen Fong points out that arhats (Luohan) in popular Buddhist imagery are shown in one of two positions, either walking or seated, representing two paths to enlightenment. Wen C. Fong, Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 8th–14th Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), 267. “Chanqing nüshi zhi sanhuashen” 懺情女士之三化身 (fig.1.7), Youxi zazhi 17 (1915); “Wu Letian huazhuang xiaoying” 吳樂天化裝肖影 (fig.1.8), Huaji zazhi 滑稽雜誌 [The Comical Journal] 3 (1914). The photo of Wu Letian is accompanied by his friend’s lyric song, which depicts imaginary romance. Wu was active in the 1910s in Shanghai. Another entertaining photograph shows him with a piece of a lotus leaf holding up his head. See “Wu Letian zhi tou” 吳樂天之頭 [The Head of Wu Letian], Youxi zazhi 7 (1914).



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20. “Fan Caixia” (fig.1.9), Haishang huaying lu 海上花影錄 [Photo Records of Shanghai Courtesans], ed. Qixia 栖霞and Danru 澹如 (Shanghai: Xin Zhonghua tushuguan, 1917), vol. 1; “Yu Caisheng jun fenshen xiaoying” 俞綵生君分身小影 (fig. 1.10), Youxi zazhi 遊戲雜誌 [The Pastime] 13 (1915). For a quintupled portrait photo of a courtesan, see “Meimei laoqi fenshen youshu” 妹妹 老七分身有術 [The seventh sister can magically replicate her body], Fengyue huabao 風月畫報 [Wind and Moon Pictorial Magazine] 10, no. 8 (1937). Film director Li Minwei 黎民偉 shot one such photograph of himself. See Fengqun 鳳群, Li Minwei pingzhuan 黎民偉評傳 [A Critical Biography of Li Minwei] (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2009), 11. In 1939, Lang Jingshan made a famous self-portrait with his profile appearing three times facing right. See “Zishe xiang” 自攝相 [My self-portrait photograph], in Lang Jingshan [Long Chin-san], Jingshan jijin 靜山集錦 [Symphony in Black and White] (Shanghai: Tongyun shuwu, 1948). 21. There are multiple ways of shooting the transformed body. When two large mirrors are inclined at different degrees, a different number of images of the same subject can be produced in one exposure. The difficulty lies in proper lighting. For a detailed explanation and illustration, see Hopkins, Magic, 451–53. It is likely that figure 1.11 was created using two large mirrors. She sits with her back to the camera with the two mirrors facing her inclined toward each other at an angle of sixty degrees, which allows five different images to be produced in one exposure. 22. Two photographs of Wu appear in Nüzi shijie 4 and 6, published in Shanghai in 1915. Chanqing nüshi 懺情女史 [Wu Chanqing], “Xiaoyu quyi” 小玉去矣 [Xiaoyu is gone], Libai liu 禮拜六 [Saturday] 99 (1916): 15–21. She is the author of Maichoushi congyan 埋愁室 叢言 [Words of Maichou Studio] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, year unknown). Active in 1915 and 1916, Wu disappeared from public view in subsequent years. 23. This is how the techniques involved in divided-body photographs (fenshen sheying 分身攝 影) are explained in the magazine: “If you want to shoot an image like someone playing chess with himself, there are two steps. One is to shoot the person on the left wearing light clothing, with black as the background color. After this shot, there is only one body and no others on the plate. Then the person moves his position to the right and the second exposure is made. Thus one person can have two images, facing each other at a distance. It is as if the person has acquired the magical ability to be replicated into two (fenshen zhishu 分身之術).” Anonymous, “Kexue youxi shu: Fenshen sheying” 科學遊戲術：分身 攝影 [Scientific Games: Photographing the Divided Bodies], Jinbu 進步 [Progress] 6, no. 6 (1914): 19. The instructions appeared in numerous magazines. For instance, Xilin 錫麟, “Jianyi de huashen sheying” 簡易的化身攝影 [A simple way to make transformed body photographs], Keda zazhi 柯達雜誌 [The Chinese Kodakery] 6, no. 6 (1935):14; Jingming 景明, “Yizhong huashen sheying de fangfa” 一種化身攝影的方法 [A method for creating transformation-body photographs], Sheying huabao 攝影畫報 [Pictorial Weekly] 11, no. 39 (1935): 31. The different methods of cutting and pasting during production in the darkroom are explained by Guzhi, who calls them “photographic methods to produce a transformed body” (huashen xiang zhaofa 化身相照法). Guzhi 古直, “Sheyingshu 攝影術” [Photographic Methods] 5, Shenbao, July 16, 1917, 14. 24. Kuang Baihui, “Yige bian liangge” 一個變兩個 [One transforming into two], Liangyou 90 (1934). Other related articles by Kuang were published in Wenhua 文華 [Wen Hwa], Keda zazhi, and Sheying huabao.

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25. “Huashen sheying zhi juli zhaopian” 化身攝影之舉例照片 (fig.1.12), Liangyou 90 (1934). See also Kuang Baihui, “Yige bian liangge.” The effect can be achieved by using zheguang qi 遮光器 [tool for blocking the light]. See Xilin, “Jianyi de huashen sheying,” Keda zazhi 6, no. 6 (1935):14. 26. The fascination with doubleness and mirroring is also found in early Chinese art history. According to Wu Hung, the “binary” composition, the reversing and balancing of images, and the use of mirrors represent a new mode of representation in the art of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Wu Hung, “The Transparent Stone: Inverted Vision and Binary Imagery in Medieval Chinese Art,” Representations 46 (Spring 1994): 58–86. 27. Yang Zhishui 揚之水, “Erwo tu yu wenren yaqu” 二我圖與文人雅趣 [Twin-selves photos and the refined tastes of the literati], Shoucang jia 收藏家 [Collectors] 7 (2000): 44–47, esp. 44. 28. See Wu Hung’s and Lachman’s discussion of this series of paintings. Wu Hung, The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 231–36; Charles Lachman, “Blindness and Oversight: Some Comments on a Double Portrait of Qianlong and the New Sinology,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, no. 4 (October–December 1996): 736–44. 29. Yang Yu-cheng, “Shen wai shen.” 30. Shen Taimou 沈太侔 [aka, Shen Zongji], Donghua Suolu 東華瑣錄 [Records of Trivial Matters in Eastern China] (Tianjin: Beiyang guanggao gongsi, 1928). 31. See, for instance, an advertisement for the “Yuelairong Studio” 悅來容 that appeared in Shenbao on December 6, 1887. 32. Mao Wen-fang 毛文芳, Tucheng xingle: Mingqing wenren huaxiang tiyong xilun 圖成行樂: 明 清文人畫像題詠析論 [Painting and Entertainment: On Poetic Inscriptions on Portrait Paintings in the Ming and Qing] (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 2008), 47–48. 33. See Ding Gao, “On Clothing and Background Scenes” (Yiguan bujing lun 衣冠補景論) in Ding Gao丁皋, Xiezhen mijue 寫真秘訣 [The Secrets of Portrait Painting], in Zhongguo hualun leibian 中國畫論類編 [Collection of Discourses on Chinese Painting], ed. Yu Jianhua 俞劍華, 2 vols. (1957; repr. Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1986), 1: 544–68, esp. 563–64. 34. This analysis of the visual linkage of the two figures is indebted to Gu’s article. Gu further observes the heavy-handed retouching of the dots of ink in the pine branch in the print, Yi Xuan’s eyebrow, eyes, and hairline, as well as the deer’s eyes and the two seals that were also retouched in the print. Yi Gu, “What’s in a Name? Photography and the Reinvention of Visual Truth in China, 1840–1911,” The Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (2013): 123. Prince Chun, due to his privileged status, was obviously fond of photography (see also figure 0.1). The photo album, beautifully made in Tianjin in 1888 by the studio owned by See Tay, features sixty photographs of Yi Xuan and the Shi Garden. A few photographs were inscribed with calligraphic words to indicate their locations. See Portraits of I-huan, call no. LOT 9969 (G), the Library of Congress. See also note 31 in the Introduction. 35. Empress Dowager Cixi’s costume photography has been extensively discussed over the last decade. See Laikwan Pang, The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), 81–87; Carlos Rojas, The Naked Gaze: Reflections on Chinese Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), 1–30. For a discussion of the Qing court’s fascination with photography, see Cheng-hua Wang, “ ‘Going Public’:



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Portraits of the Empress Dowager Cixi, Circa 1904,” in Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in Early and Imperial China 14, no. 1 (2012): 119–76. For online photo images and discussion, see David Hogge, “Empress Dowager and the Camera: Photographing Cixi 1903–1904,” accessed October 20, 2015, http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/empress_dowager/. 36. The photos are captioned “Yangke zhong zhi Yuan Weiting shangshu” (養疴中之袁慰亭 尚書), Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌 [The Eastern Miscellany] 8, no. 4, (1911). The journal editor misidentifies the figure holding the fishing rod as Yuan Shikai, but Yuan Kewen, Yuan’s son, writes that the figure standing on the boat is his father. For more discussion of Yuan Shikai posing as a fisherman and the poems, see Shengqing Wu, “Nostalgic Fragments in the Thick of Things: Yuan Kewen (1890–1931) and the Act of Remembering,” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 6, no. 1 (2019): 239–71, esp. 241–52. 37. Yuan Shikai, “Ziti yuzhou xiezhen ershou” 自題漁舟寫真二首 [Two Poems on my photos of the fishing boat], in Yuan Kewen 袁克文, ed., Guitang changheshi 圭塘唱和詩 [Correspondence Poems of Guitang] (privately printed, 1913). For more discussions of the poetic figure of the fisherman, see Grace S. Fong, “Persona and Mask in the Song Lyric (Ci),” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50, no. 2 (1990): 459-84, esp. 473-80. 38. “彼美人兮，西方之人兮。西方之人兮，無此美麗兮。我識其爲名士化身兮，錢 香如兮，名士美人兩千古兮” (see no. 8 in fig. 1.15). “幻相真奇絕，竟似巍巍洋大人.” “Bianzhe youxi xiaoying” 編者遊戲小影 (fig.1.15), Youxi kexue 遊戲科學 [Entertainment Science], no. 3 (1914). 39. The idea of a portrait as an event, borrowed from Vinograd, is used here to refer to viewing of and writing about portraits as active social and cultural activities in the public realm. Richard Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600–1900 (New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1992), 66. 40. “Qian Huafo zhi zhongzhong bianxiang” 錢化佛之種種變相 (fig.1.16), Youxi zazhi 4 (1914). For more examples of such collages of costume photos, see Youxi zazhi 6 and 10–12. For more examples of male intellectuals in Buddhist and Daoist robes, together with poems, see Xishe congbian 希社叢編 [The Xishe Series] 1–2, no. 1(1913). Instructions on how to conduct “costume photo shoots” stress that the emulations and disguises must follow certain rules. The term huazhuang 化裝 is used in three aspects: costuming for photo shoots (zhaoxiang huazhuang 照相化裝), theatrical costuming (xiju huazhuang 戲劇化裝), and costuming for detectives (zhentan huazhuang 偵探化裝). Peng Zhaoliang 彭兆良, “Huazhuang sheying” 化裝攝影 [Costume photography], Sheying huabao 11, no. 6 (1935): 2–3. See also Zhou Yiheng 周以恆, “Huazhuang sheying” 化裝攝影 [Costume photography], Sheying huabao 12, no. 7 (1936): 11–12. 41. As scholars point out, the costume photo of the Manchu prince posing as a Daoist is analogous to a xingle tu. As an important genre of traditional figure painting, xingle tu often depicts a man alone or a man posing together with his friends while writing poetry, drinking wine, playing the zither, or with children at his feet. Ma Yunzeng 馬運增 et al., eds., Zhongguo sheying shi, 1840–1937 中國攝影史 [The History of Chinese Photography, 1840–1937] (Beijing: Zhongguo sheying chubanshe, 1987), 50. A range of subgenres with different themes can be found in traditional figure painting: an elderly man posing as the “face of longevity” (shouxiang 壽相), a woman as a “form of blessings” (fuxiang 福相), one big family in a “family

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celebration photo” (jiaqing tu 家慶圖), or the “complete happy family” (quanjia fu 全家福). Wang Bomin 王伯敏, Zhongguo huihua tongshi 中國繪畫通史 [The Complete History of Chinese Painting], 2 vols. (Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 1997), 1: 1062. Xingle tu originated as early as the Tang dynasty and gained popularity in the Ming and Qing courts. In one series of outlandish paintings by Lang Shining 郎世寧 (Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688–1766), the Manchu emperor Yongzheng was disguised as a Persian warrior, a Turkish prince, a Daoist magician, a Tibetan monk, a Mongolian nobleman, as well as a fisherman and a Chinese literatus. These paintings have been explored by Wu Hung, who compared them with the English tradition of the masquerade. Wu Hung, “Emperor’s Masquerade—‘Costume Portraits’ of Yongzheng and Qianlong,” Orientations 26, no. 7 (1995): 25–41. 42. For the visual continuity in casting literati as fishermen or beggars, see Chia-Ling Yang, “The Crisis of the Real,” 26–28. 43. Youxi zazhi 遊戲雜誌 [The Pastime] (1913–1915) was edited by Wang Dungen 王鈍根 and Chen Diexian 陳蝶仙 and was published by Zhonghua tushuguan 中華圖書館 in Shanghai. English title original. The magazine published quite a number of manipulated photos by the editors, contributors, and readers, many of whom are conventionally classified as affiliated with the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School. 44. For instance, the aforementioned Qian Xiangru started a column on magic shows in Fanhua zazhi 繁華雜誌 [Prosperity Magazine], wrote a book Kexue youxi 科學遊戲 [Scientific Entertainment], and Moshu jiangyi 魔術講義 [Lectures on Magic], combining a magic show with an introduction of basic scientific ideas. 45. See for instance, Wu Xiechen 吳燮臣, “Funü yu Yule” 婦女與娛樂 [Women and Entertainment], Funü zazhi [The Ladies’ Journal] 1 (1924): 77; Anonymous, “Youxi yule” 遊戲娛樂, Lequn 樂群 [Happy Communities] 2, no. 8 (1933): 17. For the discussions of youxi or yule, see Rea, The Age of Irreverence, esp. 40–44; Sun Liying 孫麗瑩, “Gaoshang ‘yule’? Linglong zhong de luoti tuxiang, shijue zaixian yu bianji duice” 高尚 ‘娛樂’？玲瓏中的裸體圖像，視 覺再現與編輯對策 [Highbrow ‘entertainment’: Nude images, visual representation and editorial strategies in Linglong], in Xingbie yu shijue: Bainian Zhongguo yingxiang yanjiu 性別 與視覺：百年中國影像研究 [Gender and the World: One Hundred Years of Chinese Images], ed. Wang Zheng 王政 and Lü Xinyu 呂新雨 (Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2016), 45–67. 46. Zhu Tianshi’s short essay also describes the popular practice of men dressing up as women for photo shoots and vice versa. Zhu Tianshi 朱天石, “Zhaoxiang hua” 照相話 [On photography], Shenbao, December 7, 1921, 18. 47. Zhou Shoujian, “Ji huazhuang xiaoying” 記化裝小影 [On costume photos], in Ziluolan 紫羅蘭 [The Violet] (Shanghai: Dadong shuju, 1922). “Yuan tian subianzuo nüertu” 願天速 變作女兒圖 (fig. 1.17), Xiangyan conghua 香艷叢話 [Collections of Grivoiseries] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1916), vol.1; “Xiaoshuojia Zhou Shoujuan” 小說家周瘦鵑 (fig. 1.18), Youxi zazhi 4 (1914). Other examples of Zhou’s cross-dressing photographs include two photographs of Zhou dressed in Chinese women’s attire and named “Hangui siyuan tu” 寒閨思遠圖 [Picture of longing in a cold boudoir], Libailiu 禮拜六 [Saturday] 41 (1915). Zhou Shoujuan’s cross-dressed photographs, together with his and his friends’ poems, were sold



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as “erotic photographs” (xiangyan zhaopian 香艷照片) by Zhonghua tushuguan. See the advertisement on Nüzi shijie (Shanghai), 6 (1915). Chen Jianhua 陳建華, Ziluolan de meiying: Zhou Shoujuan yu Shanghai wenxue wenhua, 1911–1949 紫羅蘭的魅影：周瘦鵑與上海文學文化 [The Enchanting Image of the Violet: Zhou Shoujuan and Shanghai Literary Culture, 1911–1949] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2019), esp. 213–24. “Pushuo mili tu” 撲朔迷離圖 (fig.1.19), Meiyu 1, no. 9.(1915). For more on Meiyu 眉語 (1914–1916), edited by Gao Jianhua 高劍華, see Liying Sun and Michel Hockx, “Dangerous Fiction and Obscene Images: Textual-Visual Interplay in the Banned Magazine Meiyu and Lu Xun’s Role as Censor,” Prism 16, no. 1 (2019): 33–61. Zhu Tianshi also points out that for the huashen zhao the state of “being ambiguous and mysterious” (pushuo mili) is most intricate. Zhu Tianshi, “Zhaoxiang hua,” Shenbao, December 7, 1921, 18. Pushuo mili alludes to a cross-dressing story in “Mulan ci” 木蘭辭 [the Song of Mulan]. See Karina A. Eileraas, Between Image and Identity: Transnational Fantasy, Symbolic Violence, and Feminist Misrecognition (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2007), 23. Laikwan Pang, The Distorting Mirror, 70. See Catherine Vance Yeh, “Shanghai Leisure, Print Entertainment, and the Tabloids, xiaobao,” in Joining the Global Public: Word, Image, and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870–1910, ed. Rudolf G. Wagner (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2007), 201–33. Sun Jiazhen 孫家振 (aka Sun Yusheng), Haishang fanhua meng 海上繁華夢 [Dreams of Shanghai Splendors] (Beijing: Dazhong wenyi chubanshe, 1999), 255–62. This bestselling novel was serialized in the newspaper on a daily basis from 1898 to 1906 and attracted a wave of imitations. In this episode, the studios are mentioned by their real names. Powkee (or Baoji) Studio in Shanghai offered the customers “a postcard picture”(mingxinpian xiang 明信片像), “an illusory image” (huanxiang 幻像), “a fun image” (quwei xiang 趣味像), “an image of the body beyond the body” (shenwai shen 身外身像), and “a postage image” (youpiaoshi xiang 郵票式像). See Shanghai sheying jia xiehui 上海攝影家協會, Shanghai sheying shi 上海攝影史 [The History of Photography in Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shanghai meishu chubanshe, 1992), 9. Tong Bingxue, Zhongguo zhaoxiangguan shi, 221. The Taifang (太芳) Studio once again took photographs of Mei Lanfang and Cheng Yanqiu 程硯秋 in 1918. The photographs were sold at the price of one yuan per photo. Tong lists this information based on the advertisements in Shuntian shibao 順天時報, October 2, 1917, and November 17, 1918 (221). Due to their wide circulation, Mei’s photographs became the exemplary model for emulation. For examples of exquisite photographic images of Mei posing in scenes of “Daiyu burying the flowers” and “celestial beings scattering flowers,” see Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, ed., Bainian huimou, 196–197. In Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, carte-de-visite became an important means of promotion. Theatrical performers posed for the camera in costumes and sold these photographs for profit and publicity. See Laurence Senelick, “Melodramatic Gesture in Carte-de-Visite Photographs,” Theater 18, no. 2 (1987): 5–13.

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56. Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, 5. Wue delineates two competitive visual and compositional styles of Western and Chinese photographers in places such as Hong Kong in the 1860s. Roberta Wue, “Essentially Chinese: The Chinese Portrait Subject in Nineteenth-Century Photography,” in Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture, ed. Wu Hung and Katherine R. Tsiang (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 257–80, esp. 268. See also Roberta Wue, “The Mandarin at Home and Abroad: Picturing Li Hongzhang (1823-1901),” Ars Orientalis 43 (2013):140–56; Jonathan Hay, “Painters and Publishing in Late Nineteenth-century Shanghai,” Phoebus 8 (1998): 134–88; Jan Stuart and Evelyn S. Rawski, Worshipping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 165–74. 57. Wu Hung, chap. 1 in Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (London: Reaktion Books, 2016). 58. Tong Bingxue, Zhongguo zhaoxiangguan shi, 143–52. Some scholars argue that there is no essential difference between Chinese and Western styles of early portrait photography. See Régine Thiriez, “Photography and Portraiture in Nineteenth-Century China,” East Asian History 17–18 (1999): 77–102. 59. See Ma Yunzeng et al., Zhongguo sheying shi, 99. Yang’s article succinctly discusses how role-play and traditional devices from portraiture and figure painting were used in photo shoots. Chia-Ling Yang, “The Crisis of the Real,” 25–33. 60. See Laurence Senelick, “Theatricality Before the Camera: The Earliest Photographs of Actors,” in European Theatre Iconography: Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Network, ed. Christopher B. Balme, Robert L. Erenstein, and Cesare Molinari (Roma: Bulzoni, 2002), 317–30. 61. Roland Barthes, Critical Essays, trans. Richard Howard (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 25. 62. Haiping Yan, “Theatricality in Classical Chinese Drama,” in Theatricality, ed. Tracy C. Davis and Thomas Postlewait (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 65–89, esp. 66–67. For a discussion of the wide-ranging definition of theatricality, see Thomas Postlewait and Tracy C. Davis, “Theatricality: An Introduction,” in Theatricality, 1–39. 63. Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundation of the Representational Arts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 11–69. 64. The Vimalakīrti Sutra, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 86–87. The falling petals stick to the bodies of great disciples but not to Bodhisattvas. Śāriputra offers this explanation of his unsuccessful attempt to brush off the flowers, suggesting that the flowers are not in accordance with the dharma. The goddess castigates Śāriputra for misinterpreting the dharma, stating that the genuine dharma is the avoidance of distinctions. For an interesting discussion of the story and the goddess, who appears as a kind of virtual double of Vimalakīrti, see Alan Cole, Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahāyāna Buddhist Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 283–88. 65. “Tianxu Wosheng nügongzi Cuina nüshi yu cigongzi Baojun hezuo Tiannü sanhua tu” 天虛我生女公子翠娜女士與次公子寶君合作天女散花圖 (fig. 1.21), Banyue 半月 [Half Moon] 1, no. 13 (1922). Another of Chen’s costume photograph with a different



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brother, titled Manwu 曼舞 [Dancing], shows a similar pose in Banyue 3, no. 11 (1924). Chen Cuina (aka Chen Xiaocui 陳小翠) was an accomplished classical-style poet and painter and a daughter of fiction writer Chen Diexian 陳蝶仙 (aka Tianxu wosheng 天虛我生). The publication of the Chen family’s photographs most likely happened through Chen Diexian’s relationship with Zhou Shoujuan, Banyue’s editor. Chen Diexian wrote about “the method of shooting the transformed body” (huashen zhaoxiang fa 化身照相法) in Jiating changshi 家庭常識 [Household Knowledge] 3 (1918): 58–60. 66. Catherine Vance Yeh, Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture, 1850–1910 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 136–77. 67. “Benkan zhuanshu Zhao Mianyun zhi huazhuang: Daiyu zanghua” 本刊撰述趙眠雲之化 裝(黛玉葬花) (fig.1.22), Kuaihuo 11 (1922). Tu Shouzhuo, “Ti Minyun huazhuang Daiyu zanghua xiaoying,” Kuaihuo 5 (1922): 8. Mei Langfang’s popular performance of “Celestial beings scattering flowers” and “Daiyu burying flowers” may have contributed to the popularity of these visual images in the modern era. Other examples of “Daiyu burying flowers” include the costume photos of Ouyang Yuqian inYouxi zazhi 18 (1915) and the courtesan Lü Mudan 綠牡丹 in Hong zazhi 紅雜誌 [The Scarlet Magazine]43 (1922). Another example that attests to the popularity of these images comes from a photograph of a youngster from Yangzhou, Wang Yiming 王一鳴, who also wrote an interesting poem on the portrait photograph about dressing up as Daiyu. Wang Yiming, “Ti huazhuang Daiyu zanghua xiaozhao” 題化裝黛玉葬花小照 [On the costume photo of Daiyu burying flowers], Xuesheng wenyi congkan 學生文藝叢刊 [Serials of Students’ Literary Writings] 7 (1924): 10. 68. “Ti Zhao Mianyun huangzhuang Daiyu zanghua xiaoying” 題趙眠雲化裝黛玉葬花小影 [On Zhao Mianyun’s costume portrait of Daiyu burying flowers] to the tunes of Xiaoxiang yeyu 瀟湘夜雨 and Busuanzi卜算子 by Zhang Zhegong 張蟄公 and Fan Yanqiao 范煙橋, Xiaoshuo xinbao 7, no. 3 (1922): 11. Other poems include Yimei [Zheng Yimei], “Ti Mianyun huazhuang daiyu zanghua xiaoying” 題眠雲化裝黛玉葬花小影 [On Mianyun’s costume portrait of Daiyu burying flowers], Kuaihuo 5 (1922): 13; Tianqi 天棲, “Xiaoxiang yeyu: Ti Zhao Mianyun Daiyu zanghua xiaoxing” 瀟湘夜雨 題趙眠雲黛玉葬花小影 [To the tune Xiaoxiang yeyu: On Zhao Mianyun’s costume portrait of Daiyu burying flowers], Kuaihuo 21 (1922): 4; Huaman 華鬘, “Ti Zhao Mianyun huazhuang daiyu zanghua xiaoying: Jinlouqu” 題眠雲化裝黛玉葬花小影 金縷曲 [On Mianyun’s costume portrait of Daiyu burying flowers: To the tune Jinlü], Xiaoshuo xinbao 7, no. 4 (1922): 6. 69. “Hangzhou zhu minggui huazhuang Yaochi xianzi sheying” 杭州諸名閨化裝瑤池仙子 攝影 (fig.1.23), Youxi zazhi 17 (1915). “Boudoir ladies” (Minggui) is most likely a euphemism for courtesans. After examining the original copies of the magazine at two libraries, I believe the photograph was taken around 1908 based on the inscriptions on the top of the image, which are almost illegible. 70. For the discussion of “meta-cliché,” see Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Anchor Books, 1977), 174–75. Lu Xun, who grew increasingly critical toward cultural tradition, expressed his impatience and derision after witnessing the formulaic recycling of cultural types and the uniformity of these mass products. See “Lun zhaoxiang zhilei.” 71. See Martin Meisel, Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in NineteenthCentury England (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 17–37, esp. 30.

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72. For the entire painting and inscriptions, see the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Portrait of Shaoyu, Accession Number: 2017.133, accessed June 21, 2019, https://www .metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/749116. 73. For an introduction to tri-kaya theory, see Gadjin M. Nagao, chap. 10 in Mādhyamika and Yogaācaraā: A Study of Mahāyāna Philosophies, trans. Leslie S. Kawamura (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1991); Paul Harrison, “Is the Dharma-kāya the Real ‘Phantom Body’ of the Buddha?,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 15, no. 1 (1992):44–94. 74. Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), 752. 75. Bernard Faure, Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism, trans. Phyllis Brooks (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 19. 76. For an understanding of the Buddha-body theory (two-body, three-body, four-body, and multiple body theories) in the Chinese context, see Robert H. Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), 100–111. For discussions of hua (“manifestation”) in medieval Buddhist art, see Eugene Y. Wang, Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 371–73; Sun-Ah Chou, “Quest for the True Visage: Sacred Images in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Art and the Concept of Zhen” (PhD diss. University of Chicago, 2012), 222–26. 77. Nanshe, Nanshe congke 南社叢刻 [Nanshe series], 8 vols. (Yangzhou: Jiangsu guangling guji keyinshe, 1996), 3: 2483. Terms such as huashen became fairly common in the lexicon of classical poetry and referred to imaginative manifestations or metamorphosis. For the ­rendition of zhenshi xiang, see A. Charles Muller, ed., Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, accessed June 8, 2015, www.buddhism-dict.net. 78. The poem is also cited by Zhou Shoujuan, in Zhou Shoujuan, “Ji huazhuang xiaoying,” Ziluolan ji. Line 7 refers to the story of Liu Zhen seeking audience with Consort Zhen (Cao Pi’s wife). In his enchantment at her beauty, he forgets to be respectful and looks directly at her. He is later persecuted because of this offense. The allusion is employed here to flatter his friend, drawing a parallel between the cross-dressed photograph and the beautiful women of the past. For the allusion, see Lu Bi 盧弼, Sanguozhi jijie 三國志集解 [Records of the Three Kingdoms with Commentaries] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), 514. 79. Visual manifestations of Vimalakīrti play an iconic role in Buddhist art in history as reflected in the series of visual image of Vimalakīrti (Weimo bian 維摩變). The topic of the Vimalakīrti Transformation tableaux has been extensively explored in art history. See, for instance, Emma C. Bunker, “Early Chinese Representation of Vimalakīrti,” in Artibus Asiae 30, no. 1 (1968): 28–52; Wen C. Fong, Beyond Representation, 330–32. 80. For Cao Zhi’s “Luoshen fu” 洛神賦 [Rhapsody on the Luo River Goddess], see Xiao Tong 蕭統 ed., Wen xuan 文選 [The Annotated Literary Anthology], annotated by Li Shan 李善 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986), 895–96. Allegedly, Cao Zhi expresses his forbidden romance to his brother Cao Pi’s wife, Consort Zhen. After Consort Zhen’s suicide, Cao Zhi has a dream about her while crossing the Luo River on his way home. Expressing his sorrow, he composes this rhapsody. This is the disputed, yet popular interpretation.



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81. Kasahara Chūji 笠原仲二, Kodai chūgokujin no biishiki 古代中國人の美意識 [Aesthetic Consciousness of Ancient Chinese] (Kyoto: Hōyū Shoten, 1979), 125–74. 82. “似者得其形，遺其氣；真者氣質俱盛。” Trans. Susan Bush with modification. Susan Bush and Hisao-yen Shih, eds., Early Chinese Texts and Painting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 146. Jing Hao, “Biji fa” 筆記法 [A note on the art of the brush], in Zhongguo hualun leibian 中國畫論類編 [Collection of Discourses on Chinese Painting] 2 vols., ed. Yu Jianhua 俞劍華 (1957; repr. Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1986), 1: 605–10, esp. 605. 83. “寫真一事，須知意在筆先，氣在筆後.” Ding Gao, “Xiezhen mijue,” in Zhongguo hualun leibian 1: 544. 84. Maki Fukuoka offers an account of the adoption of shashin as “photography” with its premise of fidelity to reality. Maki Fukuoka, “Toward a Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Genealogy of Shashin,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 18, no. 3 (2010): 571–97. 85. Yokoe Fuminori 横江文憲, “Between the Arrival of the Camera Obscura and the Daguerreotype in Japan,” trans. Ruth S. McCreery, in Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Shashin torai no koro 寫真渡來のころ [The advent of photography in Japan] (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Rekishi Bunka Zaidan, 1997), 163–65, esp. 163; Yokoe Fuminori, “The Arrival of Photography,” Shashin torai no koro, 166–68, esp. 167. This may partially explain why xiezhen, as a returned loan word, was briefly used to refer to photography but failed to become a standardized term for photography in the Chinese lexicon. Wang Tao used xiezhen to mean photography in 1879. See Federico Masini, The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and Its Evolution Toward a National Language: The Period from 1840 to 1898 (Berkeley, Calif.: Journal of Chinese Linguistics monograph series no. 6, 1993), 208. 86. See Yi Gu, “What’s in a Name?,” 130. 87. See Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 1–27. 88. The poem written for Wu Letian’s photograph of himself playing both halves of a couple (figure 1.8) begins with the phrase yizhen yijia. Jian’an 劍厂, “Ti Wu Leitian huazhuang xiaoying” 題吳樂天化裝小影 [On Wu Leitian’s costume photograph], Huaji zazhi 3 (1914). See also Zhu Tianshi’s comments on pushuo mili in note 49. 89. Listed as No. 80. Luo Han 羅漢, Minchu Luoshi Hankou zhuzhici jiaozhu 民初羅氏漢口竹 枝詞校注 [The Annotated Version of Luo’s Bamboo-Stick Songs from Hankou in Early Republic], annotated by Xu Mingting 徐明庭 (Wuhan: Wuhan chubanshe, 2011),78. 90. Faure, Visions of Power, 19. 91. For “silent transmission”, see Albert Walter, “Mahākāśyapa’s Smile: Silent Transmission and the Kung-an (Kōan) Tradition,” in The Kōan Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism, ed. Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 75–109. 92. Eugene Y. Wang, “Of the True Body: The Famen Monastery Relics and Corporeal Transformation in Tang Imperial Culture,” in Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture, ed. Wu Hung and Katherine R. Tsiang (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 79–118, esp. 81. 93. Huan can also refer to “tricks and stratagems of various kinds.” The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Franklin Edgerton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 126n6. Wu Hung

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glosses huan as “illusion, illusionism, and magical manifestation” (27) and discusses the relationship between illusion and magic. Wu Hung, The Double Screen, 102–4. 94. See Wu Hung, “What Is Bianxiang? On the Relationship Between Dunhuang Art and Dunhuang Literature,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 52, no. 1 (1992): 111–92, esp. 111–19. 95. Victor H. Mair, “The Narrative Revolution in Chinese Literature: Ontological Presuppositions,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 5, no. 1/2 (1983): 1–27, esp. 17–21. 96. See insightful discussions of cunsi tu in chap. 1 of Shih-Shan Susan Huang, Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012). 97. “明鏡之道，可以分形變化，以一為萬.” Zhang Junfang 張君房, “Yunji qiqian” 雲笈 七籤 [Seven lots from the book-pack of the clouds], in Siku quanshu 四庫全書 [The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries], 1,500 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987), 1060: 519; Ge Hong 葛洪, Baopuzi neipian jiaoshi 抱樸子內篇校釋 [Inner Chapters of the Book of the Master Who Embrace Simplicity], annotated by Wang Ming 王明 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 273, 325. 98. Victor H. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–3. See the stories in Anthony Yu, trans., Journey to the West, rev. ed. (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 99. Lai Shaoyao 賴紹堯, “Ti Huaiting shuangshen xiaozhao” 題槐庭雙身小照 [On Huaiting’s double-selves photo], in “Huizhi shicao 悔之詩草” [Huizhi’s Poetry], in Taiwan shihui 台灣詩薈 [Collection of Taiwan Poetry] 21 (1925): 19. Lai Shaoyao writes: “Nüwa has seventy forms, / Buddha transforms himself into millions of bodies. Where can Zuo Yuanfang be generated? / Discard the form and learn from the deity” (女媧七十餘變相, 菩薩億千 萬化身。何處生成左元放，離形也解學神人). 100. See Shang Wei 商偉, “Bizhen de huanxiang: Xiyang jing, xianfa hua yu Daguan yuan de menghuan meiying” 逼真的幻象：西洋鏡、線法畫與大觀園的夢幻魅影 [Realistic illusion: Western-style mirrors, linear method, and dreams and ghostly shadows in Grand View Garden], in Wenxue jingdian de chuanbo yu quanshi 文學經典的傳播與詮釋 [The Spread and Interpretation of Literary Canons], ed. Lin Meiyi 林玫儀 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 2013), 91–136, esp. 117. 101. Tom Gunning, “Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations: Spirit Photography, Magic Theater, Trick Films and Photography’s Uncanny,” in Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video, ed. Patrice Petro (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 42–71, esp. 42–43.

2. ENVOICING THE PAPER MIRROR: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MOMENTS 1. This is the commonly believed story, although a few details remain controversial. Xu Shouchang gave different versions of the story throughout his life, and various theories about the date of the event (1902, 1903, or 1904) have circulated. The photo that accompanied the poem has not survived, but a photo of a young Lu Xun in the same uniform (figure 2.1) does survive. Zhou Zuoren 周作人 (1885–1967) also received a print of this photo of Lu Xun from a friend returning from Japan, but not the poem. The photograph with the poem inscribed on the back has been reconstructed by the Lu Xun Museum



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and is available for purchase as a souvenir. Lu Xun rewrote the poem in calligraphy in 1931 (figure 2.2). Lu Xun Bowuguan, ed., Lu Xun wenxian tuzhuan 魯迅文獻圖傳 [History of Lu Xun’s pictorial materials] (Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, 1998), 30, 31. For a detailed description of the events and an explication of the poem, see Eva Shan Chou, Memory, Violence, Queues: Lu Xun Interprets China (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Association for Asian Studies, 2012), 57–61, 233–38. For the context of Lu Xun’s photograph and portrait culture, see Eileen J. Cheng, “Performing the Revolutionary: Lu Xun and the Meiji Discourse on Masculinity,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 27, no. 1 (2015): 1–43, esp. 2–11. For visual renditions and symbolic meanings of queue cutting, see chap. 3 in Wu Hung, Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (London: Reaktion Books, 2016). For factual issues involving the origin of this poem, see Matsuoka Toshihiro 松岡俊裕, “Lu Xun ‘Ziti xiaoxiang’ shengcheng kao” 魯迅《自題小像》生成考 [On the origin of Lu Xun’s “personally inscribed on a small picture”], trans. Zhang Tierong 張鐵榮 and Song Jingjin 宋京津, Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 魯迅研究月刊 [Lu Xun Studies Monthly] 5 (2012): 4–14 and 7 (2012): 4–10. Lu Xun, Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 [The Complete Works of Lu Xun], 16 vols. (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1981), 7: 423. The poem was originally untitled. The title “Ziti xiaoxiang” was given by Xu Shouchang. Translated by Kowallis with minor modification (102). See his careful annotations, Jon Eugene von Kowallis, The Lyrical Lu Xun: A Study of His Classical-Style Verse (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1996), 103–7. This was not the first time Lu Xun inscribed words onto a photograph. In 1902, Zhou Shuren first sent to Zhou Zuoren three photographs with inscriptions. Zhou Shuren writes: “A commoner of Kuaiji mountain, and a student traveling in Japan, wearing the uniform of Hirofumi School, took a photograph by Shinichi Suzuki. A young man over twenty chose a lucky day in the fourth month [to do so]. I hope these photographs which are traveling five thousand li via postal route reaches you, my young brother. Respectfully, Shuren, your elder brother” (會稽山下平民，日出國中之遊子。弘文學院之制服，鈴木真一之攝影。二十餘 齡之青年，四月中旬之吉日。走五千餘里之郵筒，達星杓仲弟之英盼。兄樹人 頓首). Cited in Lu Xun Bowuguan, ed., Lu Xun wenxian tuzhuan, 31. Hu Shi, “On my photo taken in November last year,” see “Hu Shi riji” 胡適日記 [Dairy of Hu Shi], dated August 21, 1939, in Hu Shi 胡適, Hu Shi quanji 胡適全集 [The Complete Works of Hu Shi], 44 vols. (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003), 33: 262. The photo of Hu Shi is at the Hu Shi Memorial Hall at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, accessed June 4, 2017, http://www.mh.sinica.edu.tw/koteki/service3.aspx. Hu wrote the poem again in calligraphy as a separate scroll. This piece came on the market at a Sotheby’s auction and received a record-breaking bid in 2010, largely due to Hu Shi’s fame, accessed June 4, 2017, http:// collection.sina.com.cn/ystz/20120104/110951365.shtml. The famous phrase “a pawn who has crossed the river” (guohe zuzi 過河卒子) was used by the CCP to criticize Hu Shi as “a pawn” of Chiang Kai-shek during the war era. Please note that the title of Lu Xun’s poem provided by Xu Shoutang is “ziti xiaoxiang.” Shih Shou-chien 石守謙, Fengge yu shibian: Zhongguo huihua shilun 風格與世變: 中國繪 畫十論 [Style and Social Changes: Ten Lectures on Chinese Painting] (Taipei: Yunchen chubanshe, 1996), 78.

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6. Compared to more rigid generic conventions and formulae of zan 贊 (four-character rhymed verse), in which eulogizing the subject is the main topic, the classical-style poems on the poet’s own portrait allow more room for detail and moral introspection. Bai Juyi’s 白居易 “Inscribing a Portrait of the Self” (Ziti xiezhen自題寫真) is one of the earliest representatives of this genre. Bai Juyi, “Ziti xiezhen,” in Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 [Complete Tang Poems], 15 vols., ed. Peng Dingqiu 彭定求 et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 7: 4736. Xiaoxiang and xiaozhao both refer to a small portrait painting, but in modern context ziti xiaozhao is typically used to mean “writing on the photograph of the self,” as zhao acquires its new meaning as photograph. 7. In this chapter, I use the term autobiography (zizhuan 自傳) in a loose sense. I call these lyrical moments autobiographical because the poems all feature a person writing about his or her own self-image and the resulting introspection. See Lawrence Yim 嚴志雄, Qian Qianyi Bingta xiaohan zayong lunshi 錢謙益《病榻消寒雜詠》論釋 [A Study of Qian Qianyi’s “Forty-Six Miscellaneous Poems to Dispel Cold on My Sickbed”] (Taipei: Lianjing chubanshe, 2012). For different definitions of autobiography in the West and China as well as the autobiographical elements in Chinese poetry, see Kawai Kōzō 川合康三, Zhongguo de zizhuan wenxue 中國的自傳文學 [Biographical Literature in China], trans. Cai Yi 蔡毅 (Beijing: Zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 1999), 1–12, 154–71. 8. Hajime Nakatani, “Body, Sentiment, and Voice in Ming Self-Encomia (Zizan),” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 32 (2010): 73–94, esp. 76. 9. Tan Sitong, “Shijuyinglu bishi: sipian no. 50” 石菊影廬筆識：思篇 五十 [Sections on Thoughts in Notes from the Studio of the Chrysanthemum-Inkslab’s Shadow, no. 50],” in Tan Sitong 譚嗣同, Tan Sitong quanji 譚嗣同全集 [The Complete Works of Tan Sitong], 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), 1: 150. In 1893, he took a photograph with two friends and wrote “Sanren xiangzan” 三人像贊 [an Encomium on a photograph of the three] (1: 99). These photographs are no longer extant. Three surviving photographs of Tan Sitong include one with Liang Qichao and others imitating the “seven sages of the bamboo grove” (zhulin qixian) in 1896, one with two others in 1897, and one with seven others in 1898. 10. Dong Jian’an 董劍厂, “Ziti xiaoying” 自題小影 [On my photograph] (fig. 2.4), Huaji zazhi 滑 稽杂志 [The Comical Journal] 3 (1914): 3. Dahua lieshi 大華烈士, “Ziti jiuzhao” 自題舊照 [On the old photograph of the self] (fig.2.5), Lunyu 論語 [Analects Fortnightly] 49 (1934): 47. 11. Qiu Fengjia 丘逢甲, “Ziti sanshi dengtan zhaopian” 自題三十登壇照片 [Inscribing a photograph of myself on the podium when I’m thirty], in Qiu Fengjia yizuo 丘逢甲遺作 [The Posthumous Works of Qiu Fengjia] (Taipei: Shijie Henantang Qiushi wenxianshe, 1998), 374. Lingyan Ge 凌煙閣 is a pavilion built in the Tang 唐 era (618–907) to honor meritorious officials, in which twenty-four portraits of distinguished officials and generals painted by Yan Liben 閻立本 (601–673) were kept. 12. Kang Youwei 康有為, “Ziti sanshi yingxiang” 自題三十影像 [Inscribing a portrait of a thirty-year-old self], in Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei shiwenxuan 康有為詩文選 [Selected Poetry and Essays by Kang Youwei] (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1990), 135. 13. Richard Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600–1900 (New York: University of Cambridge, 1992), 5–6. 14. Pei-Yi Wu, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990).



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15. The painting and its inscriptions are at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. One of the major differences among the writings on facing the mirror, on paintings, and on photographs is that time plays less of a role in writings about a reflection of the self in the mirror. 16. Shen Zengzhi 沈曾植, Shen Zengzhi ji jiaozhu 沈曾植集校註 [Annotated Works of Shen Zengzhi], annotated by Qian Zhonglian 錢仲聯 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2001), 815. 17. The photo possessed by Xu Naichang has not been located. Around 1915, Shen took another photograph in a Qing court robe, a political statement of the yimin. For figure 2.6 and other photos, see Xu Quansheng 許全勝, Shen Zengzhi nianpu changbian 沈曾植年譜 長編 [The Chronicles of Shen Zengzhi] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997). 18. The Surangama Sutra writes: “Life and death, death and life, all is like the wheel of fire, unstoppable” (生死死生，生生死死，如旋火輪，未有休息). Cited in Shen Zengzhi, Shen Zengzhi ji jiaozhu, 814. 19. Line 4 alludes to a story in “the biography of Yang Xiuzhi” 陽休之傳. See Li Yanshou 李延壽, “Beishi” 北史 [Northern history] in Ershiwu shi 二十五史 [Twenty-Five Histories] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986), 4: 3076. When Yang Xiuzhi 陽休之 encountered his younger brother’s manuscript of six-character verses, he attempted to correct the mistakes. The bookseller replied by saying that the book was written by ancient men and how dare he correct it. Line 5 alludes to a dialogue in Zhuangzi between the penumbra and the shadow, reflecting on the relationship between form and image and their replicability and instability. See Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 237. 20. Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 44. 21. Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 44. See also part 1 in Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981). 22. Cited in Shen Zengzhi, Shen Zengzhi ji jiaozhu, 191. 23. See Chen Jie 陳潔, “Lun Sengzhao de shijian guan” 論僧肇的時間觀 [On Sengzhao’s concept of time], Zhongnan daxue xuebao 中南大學學報 [Journal of Central South University] 9, no. 6 (2003): 724–27. 24. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Social Definition of Photography,” in Pierre Bourdieu, Photography: A Middle-Brow Art, trans. Shaun Whiteside (1965; repr. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 76. 25. Hans Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight: A Study in the Phenomenology of the Senses,” in The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (1966; repr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 135–52; esp. 145. 26. Tang Weihang 唐葦杭, “Ziti xiaozhao” 自題小照 [On my photograph], Guyin 孤吟 [Lonely chanting] 5 (1923): 1. 27. Shen Zengzhi, Shen Zengzhi jiaozhu, 381. Wang Quchang 王蘧常 (1900–1989) offers a description of the circumstances of this photograph. “In the first year of Xuantong [1909], Shen was sixty years old. As the nation was undergoing extraordinary circumstances, Shen wore a monk’s robe and took a photograph using European methods. He sent it to his friends to solicit poems and messages to be put on it. The next year, he wrote one of his own” (宣統元年己酉，公六十歲。時國事日非，公嘗作僧服，以歐法攝景，寄朋 儕題詠以寄意。明年自題云云). Cited Shen Zengzhi, Shen Zengzhi ji jiaozhu, 381.

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28. For instance, Deng Junwu 鄧均吾, “Ziti zhaopian” 自題照片 [On my photograph], Chuangzao jikan 創造季刊 [Creation Quarterly] 2, no.1 (1923): 136; Shenghe 聖和, “Ziti xiaoying” 自題小影 [On my photograph], Jiangxi funü 江西婦女 [Jiangxi Women] 1, no. 1 (1937): 67; Tian Xin 田心, “Ziti xiaozhao” 自題小照 [On my photograph], Jinan zhoukan 暨南週刊 [Jinan Weekly] 3, no. 7 (1928): 75–76. 29. Weng Linsheng 翁麟聲, “Ziti shiwusui xiaozhao” 自題十五歲小照 [On a photograph of the self at age fifteen], Xuesheng wenyi congkan huibian 3, no. 6 (1926): 11; Zheng Haoru 鄭浩如, “Ziti shiqisui xiaoying” 自題十七歲小影 [On a photograph of the self at age seventeen], Xuesheng wenyi congkan 4, no. 10 (1928): 27. A photograph of Zheng was published in Xuesheng wenyi congkan 5, no. 1. 30. See Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. L. H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick Hutton (London: Tavistock, 1988), 17–49; Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (New York: Vintage, 1986). 31. “Using a straight hook” refers to the famous angler Jiang Taigong. He fishes in a unique way without bait, telling himself that he will let the fish decide whether or not to come and swallow the hook. For the story, see Li Fang 李昉 et al., Taiping yulan 太平御覽 [Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era], 4 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960), 834 juan, 4: 3721. For more poems Xuyun wrote for his photographs, see Jinghui 淨慧, ed., Xuyun heshang quanji 虛雲和尚全集 [The Complete Works of the Monk Xuyun], 9 vols. (Luoyang: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 2009), 3: 86–89. 32. Figures 2.7 and 2.8, reprinted in Chunwen 純聞, ed., Yunshui chanxin: Xuyun heshang shiji xuanshang 雲水禪心：虛雲和尚詩偈選賞 [Cloud, Water and the Heart of Zen: Appreciating the Selected poems by the Monk Xuyun] (Beijing: Xiandai jiaoyu chubanshe, 2012). Xuyun wrote close to four hundred poems in his life. See Xuyun heshang quanji 3. Both poems were inscribed on other photographs. See “A recent photo of the old monk and this journal’s editor-in-chief Xuyun” 本刊社長虛雲老和尚近照, Yuanyin yuekan 園音月刊 7–8 (1948); Jinghui, Xuyun heshang quanji 9. 33. See, for instance, Cen Xuelü’s 岑學呂 account in nianpu “chronicle,” in Jinghui, Xuyun heshang quanji 3: 264–65. 34. Francesca Tarocco, “The Wailing Arhats: Buddhism, Photography and Resistance in Modern China,” in The Art of Merit: Studies in Buddhist Art and its Conservation, ed. David Park and Kuenga Wangmo (London: Archetype, 2013), 113–23, esp. 121; Francesca Tarocco, The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism: Attuning the Dharma (New York: Routledge, 2007), 46–96. 35. Walter Benjamin, Berliner Chronik, ed. Gerschom Scholem (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), 83–84. Cited in Linda Harverty Rugg, Picturing Ourselves: Photography & Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 136–37. 36. Rugg, Picturing Ourselves, 137. 37. Zhang Gang 張剛, “Ziti duli xiaozhao” 自題獨立小照 [On a photograph of the self standing alone], Dongxiang yuekan 動向月刊 [Trend] 1, no. 3 (1935): 19. 38. Shen Zengzhi, Shen Zengzhi ji jiaozhu, 815. Yan Fu, “Manti ershiliusui shi zhaoying” 漫題 二十六歲時照影 [On the photograph of the self at age twenty-six], in Yan Fu 嚴復, Yan Fu ji 嚴復集 [Yan Fu’s Collection], ed. Wang Shi 王栻, 5 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 2: 370. The image of this photo is included in volume 1 of Yan Fu ji. Qiu Jin 秋瑾,



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“Ziti xiaozhao: Nanzhuang” 自題小照: 男裝 [Inscribed on my portrait in male attire], in Qiu Jin, Qiu Jin ji 秋瑾集 [Qiu Jin’s Collection] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1991), 80. 39. Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Anchor, 1977), 175. 40. Louis Renza, “Review of Educated Lives: The Rise of Modern Autobiography in America, by Thomas Colley,” American Literary Realism 10 (1977): 317. Emphasis in original. 41. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 12. He writes: “For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity” (12). 42. Li Hua 李華, Tao Yuanming xinlun 陶淵明新論 [New Views on Tao Yuanming] (Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe, 1992), 101–14. For English translation of the poems “Form, Shadow, Spirit,” see T’ao Ch’ien, The Selected Poems of T’ao Ch’ien, trans. David Hinton (Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon Press,1993), 39–42. 43. Mao Wen-fang, Tucheng xingle: Mingqing wenren huaxiang tiyong xilun 圖成行樂: 明清 文人畫像題詠析論 [Painting and Entertainment: On Poetic Inscriptions on Portrait Paintings in the Ming and Qing] (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 2008), 99–185. 44. Nakatani, “Body, Sentiment, and Voice in Ming Self-Encomia (Zizan),” 74–80. 45. See Rugg, Picturing Ourselves, 13. 46. Zui 醉, “Bingyin ziti sheyingpian” 丙寅自題攝影片 [On my photograph in the year of Bingyin], Huibao 會報 [Electrical Association Magazine] 22 (1927): 14–15. 47. Binghun nüshi 冰魂女士, “Ziti xieyou cuoying” 自題偕友撮影 [Written on taking a photo with friends], Chenguang 晨光 [Morning Sun] 1, no. 2 (1922): 4. 48. “這是誰！這是我嗎？這真是我嗎？幾十年幾百年前，早已有我，卻不是今日的 我；幾十年幾百年後，仍舊有我，也不是今日的我；可見今日的我，和以前及 將來的我，都是一剎那的假我，不是永久的真我。那末，真我究在那裏呢？真 我被假我蒙住了，假我去盡，真我便見。” Dai Kedun 戴克敦, Jinde jikan 進德季刊 [The Tsin-Deh Quarterly] 3 (1925). The journal was published by the Tsin-Deh Society at Chung Hwa Book Co (Zhonghua shuju). 49. Wang Taowen 王弢文, “Ziti xiaozhao jiqing zhuda yintan cihe” 自題小照即請諸大 吟壇賜和 [Inscribing my photograph and soliciting responses from the poetic world], Chongshan yuebao 崇善月報 [Advocating Kindness] 64 (1929): 34; Hu Kai 胡楷, “Ti zhaoxiang” 題照相 [On a photograph], Tielu xiehui huibao 鐵路協會會報 [Railway Association Magazine] 78 (1919): 238. 50. Richard Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, 89. 51. Wang Xiaolu 汪嘯廬, “Ziti yueye qiaoshi tu sanshi chudu xiaoying” 自題月夜敲詩圖三 十初度小影 [On my photograph of writing poetry on a moonlit night, just having turning thirty], Yushe 虞社 [Yu Society] 155 (1929): 1. Figure 2.9, “Shiwo,” Youxi zazhi 10 (1914). 52. For insightful discussions of women’s visual representation, see Wu Hung 巫鴻, Zhongguo huihuazhong de “nüxing kongjian” 中國繪畫中的 “女性空間” [Feminine Space in Chinese Painting] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2019); chap. 2 in Binbin Yang, Heroines of the Qing: Exemplary Women Tell Their Stories (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015). 53. Xu Yunhua 徐蘊華, “Ziti xiaoying” 自題小影 [On my photograph] (fig. 2.10), in Nanshe, Nanshe congke, ed. Liu Yazi, 8 vols. (Yangzhou: Jiangsu guangling guji keyinshe, 1996), 4: 3104. 54. Zhu Suzhen 朱素貞, “Ziti xiaoying” 自題小影 [On my photograph], Xin Xuehai jikan 新學海季刊 [New Oceans of Knowledge] 1 (1920): 13. Zhu Suzhen 朱素貞 and her husband

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Pan Pu’en 潘普恩 (1875–1954). Both are known poets in the early Republic. She is the author of Yicui lou yincao 倚翠樓吟草 [The lyric collection from the Yicui Tower] (1907). 55. The fact that Zhu’s husband had a concubine is appended as a note in another poem on a photographic portrait of her. Xin Xuehai jikan 1 (1920): 13. Xue Yuan 薛媛, “Xiezhen jifu,” Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 [Complete Tang Poems], 15 vols., ed. Peng Dingqiu 彭定求 et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 12: 9085. The poem, attributed to Xue Yuan, describes her attempt to retain her husband’s memory by sending him her self-portrait painted via the mirror. 56. Grace S. Fong, “Radicalizing Poetics: Poetic Practice in Women’s World, 1904–1907,” in Women and the Periodical Press in China’s Long Twentieth Century: A Space of Their Own?, ed. Michel Hockx, Joan Judge, and Barbara Mittler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 104–20. For more discussions of cainü’s writing, see Ellen Widmer and Kang-I Sun Chang ed., Writing Women in Late Imperial China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997); Nanxiu Qian, Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2015); Grace S. Fong, Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016). 57. “Luo Jialing nüshi 羅迦陵女士” [Ms. Luo Jialing], Nüxue bao 女學報 [Chinese Girl’s Progress] 2, no. 1 (1902); “Wu Mengban nüshi 吳孟班女士” [Ms. Wu Mengban], Nüxue bao 2, no. 1 (1902); “Nüshi Xue Jinqin 女士薛錦琴” [Ms. Xue Jinqin], Nüzi shijie 女子世界 [Women’s World] 2 (1904). 58. “Jiaoyu jia Lü Bicheng nüshi xiaoying” 教育家呂碧城女士小影 [The photograph of the educator: Ms. Lü Bicheng], Funü shibao 婦女時報 [The Woman’s Eastern Time] 2 (1911); “Lü Bicheng nüshi Beiying” 呂碧城女士背影 [The view of Miss Lü Bicheng’s back], Funü shibao 10 (1913). The collections of her lyrics, such as Xinfang ji 信芳集 [The Xinfang Collection] in 1925 and Lü Bicheng ji 呂碧城集 [The Collection of Lü Bicheng] in 1929, have been included with a number of her glamorous photographs, which was not common practice in her time. For more discussion of women’s photographs published in Funü shibao, see chap. 2 in Joan Judge, Republican Lens: Gender, Visuality, and Experience in the Early Chinese Periodical Press (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). 59. Two such photographs of Wu Zhiying are reprinted in Hu Ying, Burying Autumn: Poetry, Friendship, and Loss (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016), 42, 44. 60. The letter sent from Wu to Xu is 17.6cm by 11.2cm and is at the National Museum of China. Wu’s husband, Lian Quan 廉泉 (1868–1932), was the founder of Wenming publishing house in Shanghai. His studio is named “Small House of Ten Thousand Willows” (xiao Wanliutang 小萬柳堂). Wu extended the literati’s habit of embellishing the personal letter with calligraphy or drawings into new, visual practices by imprinting a photographic self-image on paper. For the image and discussion, see Xiong Guangqin 熊廣琴, “Qiu Jin maigu xiling chuanqi: Du Wu Zhiying zhi Xu Zihua xinzha” 秋瑾埋骨 西泠傳奇: 讀吳芝 瑛致徐自華信札 [Burying Qiu Jin and the legend of Xiling: Reading Wu Zhiying’s letters to Xu Zihua], Rong Bao zhai 榮寶齋 [Rongbao Studio] 6 (2017): 246–55. For discussions of Wu Zhiying and Xu Zihua, see chaps. 1 and 2 in Hu Ying, Burying Autumn. 61. Funü zazhi 婦女雜誌 [The Ladies’ Journal] published a variety of photographs of female activities that are the product of concerted efforts between the editor Wang Yunzhang 王蘊章 (1884–1942) and female contributors. In “Call for writings and images,” the



62. 63.

64. 65.

66. 67.

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­magazine encourages potential contributors to send their photographs together with writing to be published. See Funü zazhi 1, no. 1 (1915). Figure 2.11, “Chongming Shi Shuyi xueshiti,” Funü zazhi 1, no. 2 (1915). Two poems by Shi Shuyi and other poetic responses are included in her poetry collection Binghun ge shicun 冰魂閣詩存 [The Poetry Collection from the Binghun Tower]. Shi Shuyi 施淑儀, Shi Shuyi ji 施淑儀集 [The Collection of Shi Shuyi], ed. Zhang Hui 張暉 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2011), 656–57. Shi Shuyi had another portrait photo published in Funü shibao 14 (1914). Xu Zihua 徐自華, “Qiu Jin yishi” 秋瑾軼事 [Anecdotes of Qiu Jin], in Qiu Jin yanjiu ziliao 秋瑾研究資料 [Qiu Jin Studies], ed. Guo Yanli 郭延禮 (Jinan: Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe, 1987), 65. Xu Zihua’s anecdotal essay reveals that Qiu Jin greatly enjoyed playing with costumes for the photo shoots. Qiu also urged her female friends to take cross-dressed photographs and invited Xu to appraise the images. At least two photographs of Qiu Jin in male attire exist. To which photograph Qiu Jin’s poem “Ziti xiaozhao” refers remains a point of contention. As Hu Ying points out, Qiu Jin’s cross-dressing was not simply posed for a typical studio shot for entertainment but was also adopted in her daily life. Hu Ying, Burying Autumn, 122. According to Qiu Zongzhang 秋宗章, in early 1906, Qiu Jin went to the Jiang Ziliang’s 蔣 子良 photography studio in Shaoxing and had herself photographed in male attire. Cited in Guo Yanli 郭延禮, Qiu Jin nianpu 秋瑾年譜 [The Chronicle of Qiu Jin’s Life] (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1983), 90. Qiu Jin, Qiu Jin ji, 80. Chen Wenshu 陳文述, “Bicheng nüzi shi” 碧城女子詩 [The poems by the female students of Bicheng], cited in Shi Shuyi 施淑儀, ed., Qingdai guige shiren zhenglüe 清代閨閣詩人徵略 [Excerpts of Materials on Boudoir Poets of the Qing] (Taipei: Tailian guofeng chubanshe, 1960), 446. Shengqing Wu, Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the Chinese Lyric Tradition, 1900–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013), 273–74. See also Hu Ying’s sensitive reading of Qiu Jin’s poem on the photograph, Hu Ying, Burying Autumn, 153–54. “To the tune Man jiang hong” 滿江紅, in Qiu Jin, Qiu Jin ji, 105. Wang Wentian 王文田, “Ziti xiaozhao erjue” 自題小照二絕 [Two quatrains on the photograph of the self], Tianjin yishibao 天津益世報 [Yishi Newspaper in Tianjin], May 24, 1920, 14. Ms. Xianting 獻廷女士, “Aiyi: Ziti xiaoying” 愛伊·自題小影 [Loving her: Inscribing on the photograph of the self], Minguo ribao: Pingmin 民國日報·平民 [Republican Newspaper: Common People], September 24, 1921, 4.

3. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF EMOTIONS: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE SINGULARITY OF THE GIFT 1. “矮克發照相軟片攝影既真，沖晒尤易，於家人師友臨歧之際，用留玉影，各藏一 幀。則鏡裡須眉，栩栩欲活﹔ 畫裡愛寵，婷婷多姿，宛聚首於一堂，慰相思於千里 矣。” The Agfa advertisement (fig. 3.1), Shenbao 申报, March 31, 1928. It appeared numerous times. 2. Marcus Banks and David Zeitlyn, Visual Methods in Social Research (London: Sage, 2015), 57. For more discussion on the photograph’s exchange values, see 56–61.

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3. Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64–94, esp. 64. 4. Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 74–75. 5. See De-nin D. Lee, The Night Banquet: A Chinese Scroll through Time (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), 4–5; Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1991), 116–140. 6. Georg Simmel, “Faithfulness and Gratitude,” in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. Kurt H. Wolff (New York: Free Press, 1950), 379–95, esp. 389. See also Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (London: Routledge, 2011). 7. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 4, 87. 8. Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” in Limited Inc, trans. Samuel Weber (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 1–24, esp. 20. For a parallel reading of Barthes’s ideas on photographs and Derrida’s “signature,” see Lori Wike, “Photographs and Signatures: Absence, Presence and Temporality in Barthes and Derrida,” InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture 3 (2000), accessed June 20, 2018, http://www.rochester .edu/in_visible_culture/issue3/wike.htm. 9. For more examples of the photograph bearing the signature and used as a form of communication, see Shanghai tushuguan, ed., Shanghai tushuguan cang lishi yuanzhao上海圖書館 藏歷史原照 [Original Photographs at the Shanghai Library], 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2007), 1:110–25. Examples include the photographs of Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen 孫中山, Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石, Puyi, Zhang Xueliang 張學良, and many others. 10. See Kenji Satô, “Postcards in Japan: A Historical Sociology of a Forgotten Culture,” International Journal of Japanese Sociology 11 (2002): 35–55. New relaxed rules introduced in 1900 allowed private printing companies to print the pictures on cards with standard sizes and weight limits and permitted the use of private cards in the mail (38–39). The popularity of “the postcards of beauties” (bijin ehagaki), followed by postcards of movie stars, gave rise to the hobby of collecting such objects. 11. “Manshu shangren yimo” 曼殊上人遺墨 (fig. 3.2), in Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑 ed., Manshu yiji 曼殊遺集 [The Posthumous Writings of Manshu] (Shanghai: Dadong shuju, 1928). See also “dongfang zhihua baizhu nüshi” 東方之花百助女史, in Xiaoshuo daguan [The Grand Magazine] 5 (1916); Banyue 半月 [Half Moon] 3, no. 16 (1924). 12. Liu Wuji 柳無忌, “Manshu jiqi youren” 曼殊及其友人 [Manshu and his friends], in Su Manshu 蘇曼殊, Manshu quanji 曼殊全集 [The Complete Works of Su Manshu], ed. Liu Yazi, 5 vols. (1929; reprint, Shanghai: Beixin shuju, 1934), 5: 1–82; esp. 65–66. Rumor had it that female students who typically were found “viewing themselves in mirrors by day and reading love poems by night” (白天照鏡子，晚上讀情詩) would hang this picture of Momosuke inside their mosquito nets and spend hours gazing at it. 13. The poem was later given the title “Ti Jingnü tiaozheng tu” 題靜女調箏圖 [Inscribed on a Picture of a Gentle Girl Playing Her Koto]. See Su Manshu, Yanzikan shi jianzhu 燕子龕詩 箋注 [Annotated Work of Yanzikan], annotated by Ma Yijun 馬以君 (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1983), 30.



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14. Barthes identifies two primary kinds of effects in the photographic image: stadium and punctum. Stadium refers to “a kind of general interest” and predictable elements, whereas a photograph’s punctum speaks to the personal, unnamable experience at that very moment: “punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).” Barthes, Camera Lucida, 26–27. Derrida reads punctum as the poignant detail of “the absolute singularity” and, metonymically, as the irreplaceable event, like Barthes’s death. Jacques Derrida, “Roland Barthes,” in The Work of Mourning, ed. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 31–67. 15. For Su Manshu’s translation, see Shengqing Wu, Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the Chinese Lyric Tradition, 1900–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013), 354–64. 16. These are Georg Simmel’s words. Georg Simmel, “Faithfulness and Gratitude,” 390. 17. Siegfried Kracauer, “Photography,” in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. and ed. Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 47–63, esp. 49–51. Wigoder claims that Kracauer’s early position in this essay presents a “dialectical,” twofold argument: photography presents cold, austere images of what it looks like to view nature from a position disassociated from consciousness; as photographs age and are no longer associated with living referents and as they are mass produced and copied, photography offers a powerful vision of reality by virtue of that which had appeared to be an inherent failure of the medium. Meir Joel Wigoder, “A Family Album: Photography Versus Memory in Siegfried Kracauer’s Writing on Photography,” Assaph 3 (1998), 179–94, esp.184. 18. Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” 20. 19. Figure 3.5, a postcard to Deng Qiumei sent by Su Manshu, Tianhuang 天荒 [The Eternal] (1917). For the photographic images sent to Cai Zhefu, Zhu Zongyuan, and Huang Jie, see Chen Shiqiang 陳世強, Su Manshu tuxiang: huajia, shiren, sengtu, qinglü de yisheng 蘇曼殊圖 像: 畫家詩人僧徒情侶的一生 [Images of Su Manshu: A life of a Painter, a Poet, a Monk, and a Lover] (Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 2008), 319–24; 327. Chen Shiqiang carefully delineates Su’s artistic and emotional life (227–332), from which my research has benefited. According to Chen, the unpublished manuscript Manshu yuji 曼殊餘集 [The Unpublished Works of Su Manshu], edited by Liu Yazi, includes a few of these women’s photos. The photographic image of Momosuke was described as enchanting; in Zhou Shoujuan’s words: “Divine glamour, separated and united, cannot be seen from up close. The jade moon and immortal flowers are not enough to describe her charms” (神光離合， 不可逼視，璧月瓊花，猶不足以方其明冶也). Liu Wuji, “Manshu jiqi youren,” 66. 20. Bao Tianxiao, “Ti Manshu shangren yimoce” 題曼殊上人遺墨冊 [Inscribing on Manshu’s remaining writings], in Yanzikan shi 燕子龕詩 [Poems of Yanzikan], ed. Shi Zhecun 施蟄 存 (Nanchang: Baihuazhou wenyi chubanshe, 1993), 94. 21. Cited in Xing Hua 星樺, “Zhang Shizhao yu Su Manshu de youyi” 章士釗與蘇曼殊的友 誼 [The Friendship between Zhang Shizhao and Su Manshu], in Nanfang doushi bao 南方 都市報 [Southern Metropolitan News], September, 2, 2010, B15. 22. See Ma Yijun’s discussion of authorship in Su Manshu, Yanzikan shi jianzhu, 32–33. 23. This poem was originally listed as the first of the “biographical poems,” but Su Manshu later made some changes in the second couplet to avoid repetition. According to the

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29.

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31. 32.

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manuscript available now, some scholars suggest that Chen Duxiu may have written a poem first, and Su may have written his in response. The authorship of several poems also remains undetermined. Wen Zhi 文芷, “Manshu shangren shice” 曼殊上人詩册 [Manshu’s poetry], in Yilin conglu 藝林叢錄 [The Series of the Arts] (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1964), 5: 73–84. Cited in Su Manshu, Yanzikan shi jianzhu, 31–46. Shengqing Wu, Modern Archaics, 363. All the poems are cited in Su Manshu, Yanzikan shi jianzhu, 38. Keen makes this point in her discussion of Western narrative forms of the thriller and romance novel genres. Suzanne Keen, Empathy and the Novel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), xiii. In her discussion of one of Wordsworth’s poems, Pinch points out that a body of shared convention and texts becomes animated in affective exchange. Adela Pinch, Strange Fits of Passion: Epistemologies of Emotion, Hume to Austen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 16. See Haiyan Lee, Guest editor’s introduction to the special issue on “Taking It to Heart: Emotion, Modernity, Asia,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 16, no. 2 (2008): 263–278. For an original account of emotion as space, see Ling Hon Lam, The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China: From Dreamscapes to Theatricality (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). Catherine A. Lutz, Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 5–6. Italics in the original. See also part 1 in William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2004). Huo Jiechen 霍潔塵, ed., Manshu shiyun chouji 曼殊詩韻酬集 [Collection of Poems Matching Manshu’s Rhymes] (privately printed, Chenyingzhai,1934). For more discussion of Mei Lanfang’s photos, see Laikwan Pang, The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), 87–96. For Mei Lanfang’s and Feng Chunhang’s rise to stardom and to become a symbol of an idealized femininity and a newly modern national culture, see Catherine Vance Yeh, “Politics, Art, and Eroticism: The Female Impersonator as the National Cultural Symbol of Republican China,” in Doris Croissant, Catherine Vance Yeh, and Joshua S. Mostow, eds., Performing “Nation”: Gender Politics in Literature, Theater, and the Visual Arts of China and Japan, 1880–1940 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 205–39. Cited in Yang Tianshi 楊天石 and Wang Xuezhuang 王學莊, eds., Nanshe shi changbian 南社史長編 [The Chronicle of the Southern Society] (Beijing: Zhongguo renming daxue chubanshe, 1995), 332. For more on the Feng-Jia debate, see Catherine Vance Yeh, “A Public Love Affair or a Nasty Game? The Chinese Tabloid Newspaper and the Rise of the Opera Singer as Star,” European Journal of East Asian Studies 2, no. 1 (2003): 13–51, esp. 36–42. Liu Yazi, ed., Chunhang ji 春航集 [The Chunhang Collection] (Shanghai: Shanghai guangyi shuju, 1913). Feng Chunhang and Lu Zimei were both dan actors (male performers who played female roles) in the Beijing Opera. For studies on Feng Chunhang and Lu Zimei, see Lu Wenyun 盧文芸, Zhongguo jindai wenhua biange yu Nanshe 中國近代文化變革與南社



35.

36. 37.

38. 39.

40. 41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

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[Cultural Transformation in Modern China and the Southern Society] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2008), 272–99; Naoko Fujino 藤野真子, “Ryū Ashi to ‘Shunkō shū’ ” 柳亜子と《春航集》 [Liu Yazi and the Collection of Chunhang], Journal of the Japan Association for Chinese Urban Performing Arts 中國城市戲曲研究 7 (2008): 4–24. Liu Yazi, ed., Zimei ji 子美集 [The Zimei Collection] (Shanghai: Guangyi shuju, 1914). For more collections of actors that contain poems and photos, see Wang Langao 汪蘭皋 ed., Mei Lu ji 梅陸集 [The Collection of Mei and Lu] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shiye congbao she, 1914); Xu Muyun 徐慕雲 ed., Liyuan yingshi 梨園影事 [History of Chinese Drama] (Shanghai: Shanghai donghua gongsi, 1922). Hu Jichen, “Chunhang ji jishi” 春航集紀事 [On the Collection of Chunhang], in in Liu Yazi, Chunhang ji, 56. Yao writes: “In the book there is beautiful Cui Hui, whom he faces at leisure day after day. Oh, he’s so pleased” (卷中有崔徽; 日日閑相對, 好不滿意也).Yao Yuanchu 姚鵷鶵, “Juyingji chuanqi” 菊影記傳奇 [The romance of shadows of Chrysanthemum], in Yao Yuanchu shengmo 姚鵷鶵剩墨 [The Remaining Works of Yao Yuanchu] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue wenxian, 1994), 162–177, esp.165. Cui Hui is a Tang dynasty singing girl, here standing for a beautiful and talented woman. Yao wrote this drama script to describe Liu Yazi’s fervent enthrallment with Feng, with obvious exaggeration and fabrication. Hu Jichen, “Chunhang ji jishi,” in Liu Yazi, Chunhang ji, 54–56. Due to the poor visual quality of Lu’s photographs in Zimei ji, I used this magazine page (fig.3.9) instead, Xinju zazhi 新劇雜誌 [New Drama Magazine] 2 (1914). All four photographs in figure 3.9 are included in Zimei ji. See various entries in Liu Yazi et al., Nanshe congke 南社叢刻 [The Collection of the Southern Society], 8 vols. (Yangzhou: Jiangsu guangling guji keyinshe, 1996). Ye Yusen, “Ti Zimei xiaoying liushou” 題子美小影六首 [Six Poems on Zimei’s Photographs], in Liu Yazi et al., Nanshe congke, 4: 3144. Ziye (Midnight) in line 2 is the name of a singing girl in the Six Dynasties period. A repertory of love poems in quatrain form is named after her. Li Shangyin, Li Shangyin shige jijie 李商隱詩歌集解 [An Annotation of Li Shangyin’s poetry], ed. Liu Xuekai 劉學鍇 and Yu Shucheng 余恕誠, 5 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988), 2: 401. Tang poet Li Shangyin was popular among late Qing poets. Jiju, which demonstrates a poet’s erudition and ability to draw from the poetic reservoir, is a respected poetic and popular subgenre. For a discussion of the Nanshe poets’ practice of jiju, see Lin Hsiang-Ling 林香伶, Nanshe wenxue zonglun 南社文學綜論 [An Overview of the Southern Society] (Taipei: Liren shuju, 2009), 382–405. In their critiques published in newspapers, the poets stressed that Feng’s performance showed “clear spirit and lingering profundity” (shen qing yi yuan 神清意遠), endowing it with lofty social and cultural meaning (Liu Yazi, zazhuan, in Chunhang ji, 47). Even within the different subgenres of poetry, the poems show different degrees of erotic imagination and tone. Song lyrics (ci), jiju and some tihua shi, are conditioned by generic traditions and inherit a particular way of writing about and imagining beauty. See Liu Yazi, Mojianshi shici ji 磨劍室詩詞集 [Poems of Mojian Studio], 2 vols (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1985), 1: 191, 201, 205, 222.

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46. Liu Yazi, Nanshe congke, 2: 1481. 47. For more a more detailed discussion of “xiangcao meiren,” see Wai-yee Li, Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), 3–46. 48. Taipingyang bao 太平洋報 [The Pacific News], July 12, 1912. 49. Several incidents indicate that Liu was extremely sensitive to innuendo on that front. See, for instance, Liu Yazi’s counterattack of Zhu Xi 朱璽, in Yang and Wang, Nanshe shi changbian, 496–98. See also, Liu Yazi, “Wo yu Zhu Yuanchu de gongan” 我與朱鴛鶵的公案 [My dispute with Zhu Yuanchu], Nanshe jilüe, 149–54. 50. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 1–2. 51. While evoking Sedgewick’s ideas, Volpp uses anthropological literature on gift exchanges to study the circulation of actors with a focus on the social currency and empathy involved in the process. The homoerotic desire expressed in the Xu Ziyun poems is not suppressed, and Volpp argues that both “the flouting of conventional boundaries of status” and “the transgression of heteroerotic norms” work to fashion homosocial bonds (973). Sophie Volpp, “The Literary Circulation of Actors in Seventeenth-Century China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 61, no. 3 (2002): 949–84. 52. In her discussion of The Peony Pavilion, Li claims that the question of whether the male character Liu Mengmei is worthy of love is irrelevant. Such detachment from the object of desire even while celebrating the passionate feelings of this desire is characteristic of the late Ming cult of qing. Wai-yee Li, Enchantment and Disenchantment, 52. 53. There are additional relevant examples of group activities relating to Feng Chunhang and Lu Zimei. For instance, in June 1913, Liu Yazi asked Lu Zimei for a painting based on his poem. Over the decades, Liu invited twenty-one painters to create artworks based on his poem, which led to more than two hundred poems. Liu Yazi, “Fenhu jiuyin tu ji” 分湖舊 隱圖記 [On the picture of retreating to Fen Lake], Nanshe congke, 3: 2396–97. 54. Haiyan Lee, “All the Feelings That Are Fit to Print: The Community of Sentiment and the Literary Public Sphere in China, 1900–1918,” Modern China 27, no. 3 (2001): 291–327, esp. 321. 55. For further analysis of the permeability of emotions with regard to the Southern Society’s practices, see Liu Na 劉納, Shanbian: Xinhai geming shiqi zhi Wusi shiqi de Zhongguo wenxue 嬗變: 辛亥革命時期至五四時期的中國文學 [Transformation: Chinese Literature from the Xinhai Revolution to May Fourth] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 1998), 110–42. 56. Kracauer, “Photography,” 52–55. 57. Catherine Yeh, Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture, 1850–1910 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 84–95. 58. Banks and Zeitlyn, Visual Methods in Social Research, 52. 59. Simmel, “Faithfulness and Gratitude,” 379–95. 60. Gao Tang 高唐 (aka Tang Dalang), “Zhou Lianxia de He xinliang” 周煉霞的賀新涼 [Zhou Lianxia’s poem to the Tune He xinliang], Ta Kung Pao 大公報 (Hong Kong), January 16, 1957. Some descriptions of this object are based on Tang’s article. 61. See my use of this concept in the context of poetry gatherings in the Republican era, Shengqing Wu, Modern Archaics, 36–39.



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62. See the auction catalog of spring 2018 from Canton Treasure Auction House. For more on Soong’s collection and the enduring aesthetic friendship between Soong and Zhou, see Soong Dennie and Soong Shu-kong, eds., The Cultural World of a Ci Poet 一個詞人的 翰墨因緣 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University, 2006). Major examples in this book Photo Poetics are photographs inscribed with classical-style poems. Well-known examples in vernacular literature include how Lu Xiaoman 陸小曼 inscribed her love poem on her photograph that she gave to Xu Zhimo and Eileen Chang 張愛玲 compiled her autobiographic photo album in Dui zhao ji: Kan lao zhaoxiangbu 對照記: 看老照相簿 [Mutual Reflections: Reading Old Photos]. For the latter, see Xiaojue Wang, “Memory, Photographic Seduction, and Allegorical Correspondence: Eileen Chang’s Mutual Reflections,” in Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon, ed. Carlos Rojas and Eileen Chow (London: Routledge, 2011), 190–206. 63. Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 80.

4. SUMMONING ZHENZHEN: CIRCULATION OF THE TROPES OF THE BEAUTY, THE SKULL, AND THE NUDE 1. Du Xunhe 杜荀鹤, “Songchuang zaji” 松窗雜記 [Records of Songchuang], in Zhou Guangpei 周光培, ed., Tangdai biji xiaoshuo 唐代筆記小說 [Collection of Tang Stories] (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1994), 2: 251. 2. For a detailed discussion of paintings and viewing the portrait in this play, see Anne Burkus-Chasson, “Like Not Like: Writing Portraits in the Peony Pavilion,” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 2, no. 1 (2015): 134–72. 3. Prostitution is a flexible figure with multiple figural meanings, and its meanings were transformed from the “embodiment of sophisticated urbanity” and a form of entertainment in the late nineteenth century to a social vice in the mid-twentieth century. Gail Shershatter, “Modernizing Sex, Sexing Modernity: Prostitution in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai,” Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State, ed. Christina K. Gilmartin, Gail Hershatter, Lisa Rofel, and Tyrene White (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 147–74, esp. 149–50. 4. “自西人有照相之法，而鏡中取影益覺活潑如生，更不必拈粉調脂，細寫名花 倩影也 . . . . . .凡柳巷嬌娃，梨園妙選，無不倩其印成小幅，貽贈所歡.” Xiangguo toutuo 香國頭陀, Shenjiang mingsheng tushuo 申江名勝圖說 [Illustrated Handbook of Shanghai’s Scenic and Historical Sights] (Shanghai: Guanke shouzhai,1884), 2: 69. 5. For further discussion on photography and prostitution, see chap. 6 in Joan Judge, Republican Lens: Gender, Visuality, and Experience in the Early Chinese Periodical Press (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015); Catherine Yeh, Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture, 1850–1910 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 84–95; Jonathan Hay, “Notes on Chinese Photography and Advertising in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai,” in Visual Culture in Shanghai, 1850s–1930s, ed. Jason Chi-sheng Kuo (Washington, D.C.: New Academia Publishing, 2007), 96–107. 6. In 1897, Li Boyuan 李伯元 distributed photographs of courtesans along with the Entertainment Newspaper (Youxi bao 遊戲報) on Sundays in Zhang Garden in Shanghai to

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promote sales of his newspaper about the entertainment quarters. Xiong Yuezhi 熊月之 “Zhangyuan: Wanqing Shanghai de yige gonggong kongjian yanjiu” 張園：晚清上海的一 個公共空間研究 [Zhang Garden: One case study of public space in late Qing Shanghai], Dang’an yu shixue 檔案與史學 [Archives and History] 6 (1996): 31–42. 7. Li Mo’an 李默庵 “Shenjiang zayong” 申江雜詠 [Miscellaneous poems of Shanghai], in Shanghai yangchang zhuzhi ci 上海洋場竹枝詞 [Bamboo-Stalk Songs from Shanghai], ed. Gu Bingquan 顧炳權 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1996), 76. 8. “Yingye xiezhen” 營業寫真 [Sketches on vendors], Tuhua ribao 圖畫日報 [The Pictorial Daily] 134, in Qingmo minchu baokan tuhua jicheng xubian 清末民初報刊圖畫集成續編 [The Sequel to the Collection of Illustrated Newspapers and Magazines in Late Qing and Early Republic], 20 vols.(Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan wenxian weisuo fuzhi zhongxin, 2003), 9: 3901. 9. See the caption of “Jinü zai Zhangyuan paizhao zhi gaoxing” 妓女在張園拍照之高興 [Courtesans’ delight at taking photographs at Zhang Garden], Tuhua ribao (148), in Qingmo minchu baokan tuhua jicheng xubian,9: 4068. 10. “蓋客獲此小影之後，必時時展玩，可增無限愛情之故。” See “Jinü zengke xiaozhao zhiyongyi 妓女贈客小照之用意” [The purpose of a courtesan giving photos to a patron] (fig. 4.1), Tuhua ribao (138), in Qingmo minchu baokan tuhua jicheng xubian, 9: 3948. 11. Cited in Wang’s mid-nineteenth-century guide to Shanghai, Wang Tao王韜, Yingruan zazhi 瀛壖雜誌 [Shanghai Miscellany] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989), 122. 12. Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲, “Riben zashishi” 日本雜事詩 [Poems on miscellaneous subjects in Japan], in Huang Zunxian quanji 黃遵憲全集 [The Complete Works of Huang Zunxian], 2 vols., ed. Chen Zheng 陳錚 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2005), 1: 59. The poem includes a note that describes the popularity of photography among Japanese women. 13. For the phrase, see figure 4.1. For the discussion of haosheng, see Qian Zhongshu, Guanzhui bian 管錐編 [Limited Views], 4 vols. (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007), 2:1128–29. 14. See Chien Yun-ping 簡永彬 et al., Ningwang de shidai: Rizhi shiqi xiezhen guan de yingxiang zhuixun 凝望的時代: 日治時期寫真館的影像追尋 [In Sight: Tracing the Photography Studio Images of the Japanese Period in Taiwan] (Taipei: Sunnygate, 2014), 3. 15. Tuhua ribao (270), in Qingmo minchu baokan tuhua jicheng xubian, 12: 5382. 16. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18; John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972), 41. 17. There are different accounts of courtesans’ participation in media: on the one hand, Zhan Kai and others depict courtesans’ enthusiastic embrace of photography and use of photos as gifts to male customers; on the other hand, we are also given an impression of courtesans’ reluctance to present their “public” images and participate in mass media. As reported in Bao Tianxiao’s memoir, Mingying 名影 studio, the photography studio owned by Di Baoxian designed strategies to lure courtesans to the studio. Fiction Times (Xiaoshuo shibao) and The Grand Magazine (Xiaoshuo daguan) frequently reprinted courtesans’ photographs without their consent. Bao Tianxiao, Chuanying lou huiyi lu 釧影樓回憶錄 [Memoirs of Chuanying Mansion], 3 vols. (Taipei: Longwen chubanshe, 1990), 2: 429–30. 18. This concept of ownership via substitution is modified from Lori Merish. Formulated in relation to Foucault’s account of the history of sexuality, Merish interprets “sentimental



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ownership” as “a particular inscription of emotion, an eroticized formation of proprietary and political desire that sentimental narratives both describe and constitute” (4). Lori Merish, Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture and Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000). 19. Matthew Fraleigh, “Wang Zhaojun’s New Portrait: Photography in Nineteenth Century Kanshibun,” in Reading Material: The Production of Narratives, Genres and Literary Identities, ed. Dennis Washburn and James Dorsey (Proceedings for the Associations for Japanese Literary Studies, 2006): 7: 94–106, esp. 99. Translation Fraleigh’s with slight modification. 20. Sugi Chōka 杉重華, Kankai shishi 環海詩誌 [Poetry of Sea Voyages], 1904. 21. Wang Zhaojun refused to bribe the court painter Mao Yanshou 毛延壽, so he depicted her as ugly and undesirable. The Han emperor, who had missed his opportunity to meet her beforehand, ordered Zhaojun to marry the Xiongnu leader based on the portraits presented to him. Before her departure, the emperor was stunned by her beauty in their farewell ceremony, but it was too late to keep her from leaving. Ge Hong 葛洪, Xijing zaji 西京 雜記 [Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 9. 22. Numerous examples from these sources are presented in chapter 1, including Haishang jinghong ying, Yanlian huaying, and Xin jinghong ying. Some images also appear in Funü shibao, suggesting that Di Baoxian and Bao Tianxiao played an active role in facilitating the relationship between courtesans and periodical magazines as a public forum. See chap. 6 in Judge, Republican Lens, esp. 207–9. 23. Ellen Widmer, Fiction’s Family: Zhan Xi, Zhan Kai, and the Business of Women in Late-Qing China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center, 2016), 92–134; Zhan Kai, Huashi 花史 [History of Flowers] (Shanghai: Zuoxin she, 1906); Zhan Kai, Huashi xubian 花史續編 [History of Flowers, Continued] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1907); Zhan Kai, Rouxiang yunshi 柔鄉韻史 [Poetic History of the Realm of Tenderness] (1898, Shanghai: Yuyan bao; repr. Shanghai: Wenyi xiaoqian suo, 1917). Translations of the book titles are Widmer’s. I am grateful for her generosity in sharing her materials on Zhan Kai and her thoughts with me. 24. Zhan Kai, Rouxiang yunshi, 2–3. Lanqiao bieshu is the style name of Zhang Baobao 張寶寶, a well-known courtesan in Shanghai at the time. 25. “Lanqiao bieshu” 藍橋別墅 (fig. 4.2) and “Youxi huashentu” 遊戲化身圖 (fig. 4.3), reprinted in Zhan Kai, Rouxiang yunshi (1917 edition). For more examples of the courtesan images from Zhan Kai’s works, see Widmer, Fiction’s Family, 108, 112, 117, 125. 26. Here we need to attend to genre difference. Some scholars argue that vernacular fiction writings such as Travelogue of Lao Can (Laocan youji 老殘遊記) ushered in a new kind of realistic description at the advent of photography. See Xsu Hui-lin 許暉林, “Jing yu qianzhi: shilun Zhongguo xushi wenlei zhong xiandai shijue jingyan de qiyuan” 鏡與前知：試 論中國敘事文類中現代視覺經驗的起源 [Mirrors and foresight: The origin of modern visual experiences in Chinese narrative literature], Taida Zhongwen xuebao 臺大中文學報 [Bulletin of the Department of Chinese Literature N.T.U., 2015], 48: 121–60. 27. J. D. Schmidt, Within the Human Realm: The Poetry of Huang Zunxian 1848–1905 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 271. Translation Schmidt’s with slight modification. Huang Zunxian, Huang Zunxian quanji 黃遵憲全集 [Complete Works of Huang Zunxian], 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2005), 1: 122.

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28. Xu Zhenya 徐枕亞, Yuli hun Xuehong leishi 玉梨魂·雪鴻淚史 [Jade Pear Spirit and the Tearful Story of the Snow Swan] (Beijing: Yanshan chubanshe, 1994), 54. See C. T. Hsia, “Hsü Chen-ya’s Yü-li hun: An Essay in Literary History and Criticism (1981),” in C. T. Hsia on Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 269–309. 29. “贈君此物，固以寄一時愛戀之深情，即以留後日訣別之紀念.” Xu Zhenya, Yuli hun Xuehong leishi, 55. 30. In “Ji Jingniang xiezhen” 寄荊娘寫真 [Jingniang sending her portrait], Li She writes: “Calling for a painter’s unsurpassed skills, the portrait and the real body is equivalent” (召 得丹青絕世工，寫真與身真相同). See Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 [Complete Tang Poems], 15 vols., ed. Peng Dingqiu et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 7:5457. See the sample letters in Jingyi nüshi 靜宜女士, “Qingshi yishu” 情詩一束 [Love letters], in Qingshu miaoxie cidian 情書描寫詞典 [Dictionary of Love Letters] (Shanghai: Zhongyang shudian, 1933), 13–16. One letter reads, “The photograph is indeed her substitute. If you are willing to give him the photograph, it is analogous to willingness to surrender your body to him” (照片竟 是他的代表，照片肯給他，身子近乎允許屬他了) (15). 31. Xu alluded to his real love affair in this story, see Fan Boqun 范伯群, Zhongguo xiandai tongsu wenxue shi 中國現代通俗文學史 [The History of Chinese Modern Popular Literature] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2007), 142–43. 32. Ye Shengtao 葉聖陶, “Boli chuangnei zhi huaxiang” 玻璃窗內之畫像 [The picture behind the glass widow], Ye Shengtao ji 葉聖陶集 [The Collection of Ye Shengtao’s Writings] (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2004), 3–7; original publication, Xiaoshuo congbao (June 1914), 2: 1–4, signed with the name Shengtao 聖陶. For Li Yu’s story, see Li Yu, A Tower for the Summer Heat, trans. Patrick Hanan (New York: Ballantine, 1992). 33. Zhuodai 卓呆 [Xu Zhuodai 徐卓呆], “Nüxing de wanwu” 女性的玩物 [Women’s plaything], Hong meigui 紅玫瑰 [Red Rose] 5, no. 3 (1929): 1–6. See also his “Zhengqiu zhongshen banlü” 徵求終身伴侶 [Seeking lifelong partner] in “Li Ah Mao waizhuan” 李阿毛外傳 [The unofficial stories of Li Ah Mao], in Wanxiang 萬象 [Phenomena] 1, no. 12 (1942): 217–19. For discussion of Xu’s work and his comic style, see chap. 5 in Christopher Rea, The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). For the translation, see Xu Zhuodai, China’s Chaplin: Comic Stories and Farces by Xu Zhuodai, trans. Christopher Rea (New York: Cornell University East Asia series, 2019). 34. The power of the realistic image is also a main theme of Zhou Shoujuan’s short story “Zhenzhen in the painting.” It tells a story of a young student who suffers from neurosis after encountering a beautiful, realistic painting of a lady in a museum. He eventually dies from the “loss” of the lover when the image is removed. Shoujuan [Zhou Shoujuan], “Huali zhenzhen” 畫裡真真 [Zhenzhen in the painting], Libai liu 禮拜六 [Saturday] 29 (December 1914): 12–27. 35. The response to technical visuality in literature is more intriguingly demonstrated in modern genres such as “movie stories,” loosely based on movie plots, or the New Sensationists’ writing in the 1930s. See Chen Jianhua 陳建華, “Zhou Shoujuan ‘Yingxi xiaoshuo’ yu Minguo chuqi wenxue xin jingguan” 周瘦鵑“影戲小說”與民國初期文學 新景觀 [Zhou Shoujuan, “Movie Stories,” and new literary scenes in the early Republican era], Zhongguo xiandai wenxue yanjiu congkan 中國現代文學研究叢刊 [Modern Chinese



36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

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Literature Studies] 2 (2014): 19–32; see chap. 6 in Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). Wilt L. Idema, The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhuangzi to Lu Xun (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 10; Wilt L. Idema, “Skull and Skeleton in Art and on Stage,” in Conflict and Accommodation in Early Modern Asia, Essays in Honour of Erik Zürcher, ed. L. Blussé and H. T. Zurndorfer (Leiden: Brill, 1993),191–215, esp. 191–93. The term hongfen kulou also has variations, such as hongyan baigu 紅顏白骨 (beautiful face turning into a white skeleton) or meiren huangtu 美人黃土 (the beauty and yellow earth). The “white skeleton contemplation” (白骨觀) or “the impurity contemplation” (不淨觀) refers to the Buddhist practice of visualizing skeletons or corpses to achieve spiritual transcendence over human desires. The skull also became a major motif in Quanzhen Daoism (全真教). See also Liu Yongqiang 劉勇強, “Meiren huangtu de aisi: Honglou meng de qinggan yiyun yu wenhua chuantong” 美人黃土的哀思:《紅樓夢》的情感意蘊與文化 傳統 [Lamenting on the beauty and yellow earth: Emotions in Dream of the Red Chamber and cultural tradition], in Chongdu jingdian: Zhongguo chuantong xiaoshuo yu xiqu de duochong toushi 重讀經典: 中國傳統小說與戲曲的多重透視 [Rereading Canons: Multiple Perspectives on Chinese Traditional Novels and Dramas], ed. Zhou Jianyu 周建渝 et al. (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2009), 688–710. “Lü Zushi jiang sanshierci ji” 呂祖師降三十二次偈 [Poems of Master Lü’s visit to the Altar], in Bo re bo luo mi duo xin jing 般若波羅蜜多心經 [The Heart Sutra of Prajna Paramita], in Dazang xinzuan xuzang jing 大蔵新纂卍續蔵經 (Taipei: Baima jingshe yinjinghui, 1990), 23: 993. See chap. 12 in Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 and Gao E 高鶚, Honglou meng 紅樓夢 (Dream of the Red Chamber), 4 vols. (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1973); see also Anthony C. Yu, Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 146. Nicolas Standaert, “A Chinese Translation of Ambroise Paré’s Anatomy,” Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal 21 (1999): 9–33, esp. 29. The article points out that at least two versions of the Pleasures of ghosts (Guiqu tu 鬼趣圖) by Luo Pin 羅聘 (1733–1799), made in 1772, have Western origins. “Chu xiangjian, ci xiangjian, zai xiangjian, moci xiangjian” 初相見, 次相見, 再相見, 末 次相見 (fig. 4.4), Xiaoshuo shibao小說時報 1 [Fiction Times], no. 5 (1910). Most likely, the editor, Bao Tianxiao, acquired a stock of courtesan photos and paired four photographs of eight courtesans of different ages together. The second to the right also appears in the courtesan album Haishang jinghong ying. For the biographical model for courtesans’ stories, see Paola Zamperini, Lost Bodies: Prostitution and Masculinity in Chinese Fiction (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 16–17. She uses this photograph as a visual metaphor to structure her analysis of the life trajectories reflected in late Qing courtesan novels. Turning the woman into a terrifying object was a standard trick. One example, offered by Zeitlin, is the frightening transformation of the beauty into a ghostly figure in a shadow puppet performance when a woman’s head turns into a hanged ghost. Judith T. Zeitlin,

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The Phantom Heroine: Ghosts and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Literature (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 28. 44. The 1922 movie Red Powder and the Skull (hongfen kulou), China’s first detective film made by the Xinya company, may have contributed to the popularity of the image in mass media. Allegedly, the title of the film was suggested by Yuan Kewen 袁克文. Using the medium of projection and X-ray machines, the magic trick of “a beautiful girl turning into a skeleton” was a form of popular entertainment in 1930s Shanghai. See Anonymous, “Meiren bian kulou youshang fenghua” 美人變骷髏有傷風化 [Beauty turning into a skull contributes to moral degeneration], Jinggao yuekan 警高月刊 [Police College Monthly] 4, no. 4 (1936): 121. Another example is that of the Dutch painter Antoine Wiertz’s oil painting Deux jeunes filles (La Belle Rosine) (1847), depicting the profile of a classical beauty in the face of an intimidating skeleton, which acquired “Red powder and the skull” (Hongfen kuluo) as its Chinese title. Beiyang huabao 17, no. 843 (1932). 45. Xianying 憲英, “Hongfen yu kulou” 紅粉與骷髏, Ziluolan 紫羅蘭 [Violet] 2, no. 22 (1927): 14. Ziluolan (1925–1930) was edited by Zhou Shoujuan in Shanghai. 46. Luo Baowu 羅保吾, “Cong hongfen shuodao kulou,” Shibao banyuekan 實報半月刊 [Truth Post Bimonthly] 5 (1935), 19–21. Shibao banyuekan (1935–1937)was published in Beijing, and Luo Baowu was one of the main editors. 47. “色空空色兮，花謝花開，觸目驚心兮，柔化骨堆。” Lianqing 蓮青, “Meiren kugu fu” 美人骷髏賦 (fig 4.5), Shibao banyuekan 5 (1935), 21–22. 48. The X-ray, with its official invention in 1895, generated different interpretations and uses in the public realm, causing an “X-ray mania.” See Lisa Cartwright, Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 107–9. 49. “X光線之下，萬物無所遁形。紅粉終屬骷髏，沉溺於慾海中者，可以自勉” (fig. 4.6), Liangyou 102 (1935): 38. 50. Sigmund Freud, “Medusa’s Head,” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1964), 18: 273–74; Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 6–18. See also Creed’s discussion of “monstrous-feminine” in horror films. Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 2012), 2–6. 51. Those fears are reflected in the wave of depictions of misogyny and misandry in Chinese urban culture. See Barbara Mittler, “In Spite of Gentility: Women and Men in Linglong (Elegance), a 1930s Women’s Magazine,” in The Quest for Gentility in China: Negotiations Beyond Gender and Class, ed. Daria Berg and Chloë Starr (New York: Routledge, 2007), 208–34. 52. The short-lived journal Jianmei yuekan 健美月刊 [Healthy Beauty Monthly] (1934–1935), published by Shanghai Qingqing Pictorial Publisher, features a good number of nude photographs by Chinese photographers. Quite a few such photographs are accompanied by poetic captions or poems. The text in the journal is not credited. Yan Ciping 嚴次平 is the editor of a number of film journals, including Qingqing dianying 青青電影 [Chin Chin Screen], whose text was handled by Zhou Boxun 周伯勛 (1911–1987). 53. Cilang 次郎, “Ni banlan de kulou” 你斑斕的骷髏 [You magnificent skull] (fig. 4.7), ­Jianmei yuankan 3 (1934).



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54. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (Penguin: London, 1984), 83. See also Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 138–59. 55. The nude body in art was a battleground in the early Republican era, a topic that has received significant critical interest in the last decade. See Wu Fangzheng 吳方正, “Luode liyou—ershi shiji chuqi Zhongguo renti xiesheng wenti de taolun” 裸的理由——二十世紀 初期中國人體寫生問題的討論 [The reason for the nude: Questions concerning nude figure drawing in China at the beginning of the twentieth century], Xin shixue 新史學 [New Studies in History] 15, no. 2 (2004): 55–110; Julia Andrews, “Art and the Cosmopolitan Culture of 1920s Shanghai: Liu Haisu and the Nude Model Controversy,” Chungguksa Yongu—Journal of Chinese Historical Researches (The Korean Society for Chinese History) 35 (April 2005): 323–72. 56. Yingjin Zhang, “Artwork, Commodity, Event: Representations of the Female Body in Modern Chinese Pictorials,” in Visual Culture in Shanghai 1850s–1930s, ed. Jason C. Kuo (Washington, D.C.: New Academia, 2007), 121–61. For discussions on the different conceptualizations of the body in East and West, see John Hay, “The Body Invisible in Chinese Art?,” in Body Subject and Power in China, ed. Angela Zito and Tani Barlow (Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press, 1994), 42–77; Mark Elvin, “Tales of Shen and Xin: Body-Person and Heart-Mind in China During the Last 150 Years,” in Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas P. Kasulis, Roger T. Ames, and Wimal Dissanayake (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 213–91. 57. Roland Barthes, “The Photographic Message,” in Image-Music-Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 26. 58. For an overview of the concept of xiangyan and its substantial influence on modern sensibilities and media culture in the Republican era, see Xiaorong Li, The Poetics and Politics of Sensuality in China: The “Fragrant and Bedazzling” Movement (1600–1930) (New York: Cambria Press, 2019), 1–45; 231–77. 59. For the concept of Jianmei, see Jun Lei, “Producing Norms, Defining Beauty: The Role of Science in the Regulation of the Female Body and Sexuality in Liangyou and Furen Huabao,” in Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926–1945, ed. Paul G. Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen, and Yingjin Zhang (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 111–28; esp. 125–28. 60. Liying Sun, “An Exotic Self? Tracing Cultural Flows of Western Nudes in Pei-yang Pictorial News (1926–1933),” in Transcultural Turbulences: Towards a Multi-Sited Reading of Image Flows, ed. C. B. Brosius and R. Wenzlhuemer (Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2011), 271–300. 61. See Stuart Hall’s classical conceptualization of the circulation of messages in mass media. Stuart Hall, “Encoding, Decoding,” in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (New York: Routledge, 1993), 90–103. 62. Beiyang huabao 437 (February 22, 1930), 440 (March 1, 1930), and 263 (1928). The quotations are from Xue Feng, Liu Guo, and Bai Juyi, respectively. Xue Feng 薛逢, “Gong ci 宮詞” [Palace song], in Quan Tang shi 8: 6376; Liu Guo 劉過, “Sizi ling” 四字令 [To the tune of Sizi ling], in Quan Song ci 全宋詞 [Complete Collection of Song Dynasty Lyrics], ed. Tang Guizhang 唐圭璋 5 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 3: 2151; Bai Juyi 白居易, “Changhen ge” 長恨歌 [The Song of everlasting sorrow], in Peng Dingqiu et al., Quan Tang shi, 7: 4826–30.

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63. “Meiren shiwu meitu” 美人十五美圖 (fig. 4.8), Beiyang huabao 5, no. 201 (1928): 7. The English title of the fig. 4.8 is original. Zhu Yizun 朱彝尊, Zhu Yizun ciji 朱彝尊詞集 [Lyric Collection of Zhu Yizun], annotated by Qu Xingguo 屈興國 and Yuan Lilai 袁李來 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang juji chubanshe, 1994), 217. 64. Heinz v. Perchhammer, Edle Nacktheit in China 百美影 [One Hundred Photographs of Beautiful Women] (The Culture of the Nude in China) (Berline: Eigenbrödler-Verlag, 1928). In the preface, he expressed his difficulty in hiring a model because nudity had never been an object of visual art in China. 65. The Chinese titles include “dignity” (zhuangyan 莊嚴), “lotus scent” (hexiang 荷香), “ancient scent” (guxiang 古香), “flowers and gentleness” (hua yu wencun 花與溫存), and “have you ever experienced picking flowers” (插花滋味可曾經). Beiyang Huabao 201 (July 7, 1928), 201 (July 7, 1928), 204 (July 18, 1928), 231 (October 16, 1928), 241 (November 8, 1928). 66. Beiyang huabao 268 (January 12, 1929), 208 (August 1, 1928), 234 (October 23, 1928), 238 (November 1, 1928). 67. See Lefevere’s discussion of “refraction” in the context of translation. André Lefevere, “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature,” in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (New York: Routledge, 2000), 203–19. 68. Dan Duyu, Mei de jiejing 美的結晶 [Move & Still], 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai Photographic Society, 1930 & 1931). English title original. Zheng Yimei in his preface points out that Dan integrates traditional principles of painting with substantial borrowings from Western pictorial compositions. Zheng, who often was responsible for the scripts for Dan’s movies, may have contributed to the editing and captioning of his photographs in these volumes. For Dan’s career, see Zheng Yimei 鄭逸梅, Yingtan jiuwen: Dan Duyu he Yin Mingzhu 影 壇舊聞：但杜宇和殷明珠 [Old Stories from the Cinematic Circle: Dan Duyu and Yin Mingzhu] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1982). 69. See Cai E 柴萼, “Meiren zayong sanshiyi ze” 美人雜詠三十一則 [Thirty-one poems on beauty], in Biji xiaoshuo daguan 筆記小說大觀 [Overviews of Anecdotal Literature], 45 series (Taipei: Xinxing shuju, 1988), 17th series, 9: 5700. 70. For a discussion of how metaphors and poetic images relate to traditional painting of beautiful women, see Ellen Johnston Laing, “Chinese Palace-Style Poetry and the Depiction of a Palace Beauty,” The Art Bulletin 72, no. 2 (1990): 284–95. 71. Figure 4.9, in Dan Duyu, Duyu baimeitu xuji 杜宇百美圖續集 [The Sequel to Duyu’s Portraits of One Hundred Beauties] (Shanghai: Shanghai Xinmin tushuguan,1920), 35; figure 4.10, in Dan Duyu, Mei de jiejing [Move & Still], vol.2. Pan Guangdan wrote his paper on Xiaoqing in the early 1920s and coined the phrase “falling in love with a shadow” (yinglian 影戀) to translate the Western notion of narcissism. Pan Guangdan 潘光旦, Xiaoqing zhi fenxi 小青之分 析 [Analyses on Xiaoqing] (1927; repr. Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 2014). 72. For perceptive discussion of Dan Duyu’s handling of female images, see Xiaorong Li, “Image, Word, and Emotion: The Persistence of the Beautiful/Lovelorn Woman in the New-Style ‘Hundred Beauties’ Albums (1900–1920s),” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 6, no. 1 (2019): 169–204, esp. 174–81; Lü Wen-tsuei 呂文翠, Yidai wenxin: Wanqing Minchu de haishang wenhua gengxu yu xinbian 易代文心：晚清民初的海上文化賡續與 新變 [Writing and the Mind in the Age of Transformation: Continuity and Changes of



73.

74.

75.

76.

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Shanghai Culture During the Late Qing and Early Republican Eras] (Taipei: Lianjing chubanshe, 2016), 410–41. At the risk of oversimplification, nude art photographs generally depict Chinese models with a degree of shyness and submission. The woman’s gaze is seldom directed toward the camera lens but points downward or off to the side. There are some exceptions. For instance, many nude photos in Fengyue huabao show the female body in its most objectified form and as sexually open, playing on the line between what could be considered aesthetics of the body (renti mei) and pornographic representation. Fengyue huabao (1933–1937) in Tianjin was an entertainment magazine featuring many photographs of courtesans and nudes. China’s earliest attempts at nude photography were made in 1919 by Huang Jian 黃堅, Liu Bannong, and Wu Jixi 吳輯熙. In 1928, Lang Jingshan and Lu Sifu shot nude photographs. Lang’s Meditation (Jingmo youyousi 靜默有憂思) became a well-known work. The nude model was severely beaten by his father. See Chen Shen 陳申 and Xu Xijing 徐希景, Zhongguo sheying yishu shi 中國攝影藝術史 [A History of the Art of Chinese Photography] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2011), 197–203. For instance, the two full-page nude photos by Chen Bingde 陳昺德 are titled Lotus pond girl (Lianzhao zhinü 蓮沼之女) and Looking like a willow tree (Puliu zhizi, 蒲柳之姿), Liangyou 51 (1930): 36, 37. Evocative literary phrases paired with images lend a lyrical tone to realistic visual representations of the nude body, whereas the vernacular title, “healthy and beautiful body” (Jian er mei de tige 健而美的體格), offers a modern interpretation of the images. Liangyou’s page size is approximately 40 × 27 cm. For more on modernist practices of photography in Liangyou, see William Schaefer, Shadow Modernism: Photography, Writing, and Space in Shanghai, 1925–1937 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017), 78–95; Paul W. Ricketts, “Kaleidoscopic Modernisms: Montage Aesthetics in Shanghai and Tokyo Pictorials of the 1920s and 1930s,” in Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 17–44. Huang Bore and Laosheng, Zaishui zhi mei 在水之湄 (fig. 4.11), Liangyou 120 (1936): 27. “Zaishui zhi mei” is a line from “Jianjia” 蒹葭 [Reeds] in The Book of Songs. Ma Zhiyuan, “Luo meifeng” 落梅風, see Yuanqu sanbaishou zhuping 元曲三百首注評 [The Annotated Edition of Three Hundred Songs of the Yuan Dynasty], ed. Ren Zhongmin 任中敏 and Lu Qian 盧前 (Nanjing: Fenghuang chubanshe, 2015), 48. Ms Lüdi 綠滴女士, “Duzi mu pinglan” 獨自暮憑欄 (fig. 4.12), Jianmei yuekan 2 (1934). Jianmei yuekan features some photographs credited to female authors, including Lüdi nüshi, Moli nüshi 茉莉女士, Daisi nüshi 黛絲女士, Dailü nüshi 黛綠女士, all under pennames. The quote with variations is from Li Yu’s 李煜 “To the tune of Lang Taosha” 浪淘沙, in Nan Tang erzhu ci 南唐二主詞 [Lyrical Songs of Two Emperors of the Southern Tang], by Li Yu 李煜 and Li Jing 李璟 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2001), 303. Lang Jingshan, “You meimei xi milian yu shuilian zhixiang” 有美妹兮迷戀於睡蓮之鄉 (fig. 4.13), Jianmei yuekan 2 (1934); Lang Jingshan, Xin jishi fo (fig. 4.14), Lang Jingshan sheying zhuankan 郎靜山攝影專刊 [Special Issue of Lang Jingshan’s Photography] 2 (1941), the catalog of his fourteenth personal photography exhibition. Lu Shifu, Huanjing 幻境 [Illusory realm] (fig. 4.15), Feiying 飛鷹 [Flying Eagle] 6 (1936): 22. Lu also made composite photographs of grand landscapes in the 1930s and engaged in

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modernist practices. This nude statue was used in another of his works called Envy (羨慕) in Changhong 長虹 [Long Rainbow] 2, no. 2 (1936). In socialist China, Lu Shifu became famous for his photographs of the Yellow Mountains. 79. Anonymous, “Huali zhenzhen” 畫裏真真 [Zhenzhen in the painting] (fig. 4.16), Qiu haitang 秋海棠 [Begonia] 6 (1946): 6.

5. IN SEARCH OF SOUL: PSYCHICAL STUDIES AND SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY 1. “仆審現在所出書，無不大害青年，其十惡不赦之思想，令人肉顫。滬上一班昏 蟲又大搗鬼，至於為徐班侯之靈魂照相，其狀乃如鼻煙壺。人事不修，群趨鬼 道，所謂國將亡聽命於神者。” Lu Xun, “Zhi Xu Shoushang” 致許壽裳 [Letter to Xu Shoushang], March 10, 1918, inLu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 [The Complete Works of Lu Xun], 16 vols (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1981), 11: 348. 2. Shanghai lingxuehui 上海靈學會 ed., Lingxue congzhi 靈學叢誌 [The Serials of Psychical Research] 1, no. 2 (1918) and 1, no. 3 (1918). For this incident, see Wang Hongchao 王宏 超, “Xu Banhou linghun zhaoxiang shijian” 徐班侯靈魂照相事件 [The incident of the photographs of the spirit of Xu Banhou], Shucheng 書城 [Book City] 7 (July 2015): 101–7. Figures 5.1, 5.2, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.11, 5.12, and 5.13 are reprinted in Shanghai lingxuehui 上海靈學會, Xianling zhaoxiang 仙靈照相 [Photographs of the Immortals and Spirits] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju,1921). 3. New Youth (Xin qingnian 新青年) from May 1918 to April 1919 published sixteen articles criticizing the practice and theory of “psychical research,” including essays by Chen Duxiu, Lu Xun, Qian Xuantong, and Liu Bannong. See Wu Guang 吳光, “Lingxue, Lingxue hui, Lingxue congzhi jianjie” 靈學 靈學會《靈學叢誌》簡介 [Brief Introduction to Psychical Research, the Society and the Journal], Zhongguo zhexue 中國哲學 [Chinese Philosophy] 10 (1983): 432–42; esp. 439. 4. Ichiko Shiga 志賀市子, Xianggang daojiao yu fuji xinyang: lishi yu rentong 香港道教與扶乩 信仰：歷史與認同 [Daoism in Hong Kong and Fuji Beliefs: History and Identification], trans. Song Jun 宋軍 (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013); Huang Ko-wu 黃克武, “Lingxue yu jindai Zhongguo de zhishi zhuanxing: Minchu zhishi fenzi dui kexue zongjiao yu mixin de zaisikao” 靈學與近代中國的知識轉型：民初知識分子對科學、 宗教與迷信的再思考 [Psychical research and the transformation of knowledge in modern China: Rethinking early Republican intellectuals’ attitudes on science, religion, and superstitions], in Sixiang shi 思想史 [Intellectual History] 2 (2014): 122–96; Huang Ko-wu 黃克武, Weishi zhi’an: Yan Fu yu jindai Zhongguo de wenhua zhuanxing 惟適之安：嚴復與 近代中國的文化轉型 [Feeling at Ease: Yan Fun and Modern Chinese Cultural Transformation] (Taipei: Lianjing chubanshe, 2010), 157–98. See also Wang Hongchao 王宏超, “Guixing shenying: linghun zhaoxiangshu zai jindai Zhongguo de yinjie he shijian” 鬼形神 影：靈魂照相術在近代中國的引介和實踐 [Ghostly form and spiritual shadows: Spirit photography and its practices in modern China], in lishi yishu yu Taiwan renwen luncong 歷史、藝術與台灣人文論叢 [The Humanity Series of History, Art, and Taiwan], ed. Wang Jianchuan 王見川, 10 (2016), 221–72.



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5. “乩壇盈城，圖讖累牘.” Liang Qichao 梁啟超, Qingdai xueshu gailun 清代學術概論 [Intellectual Trends of the Qing Period] (1920; repr. Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1994), 166. 6. For a pioneering treatment of the subject, see Xu Dishan 許地山, Fuji mixin de yanjiu 扶 乩迷信的研究 [Study of Rituals and Superstitions] (1946; repr. Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1999), esp. 7–21. See also Ichiko Shiga, Xianggang daojiao yu fuji xinyang, 33–43; Fan Chunwu 范純武, “近現代中國佛教與扶乩” [Buddhism and planchette in modern China], Yuanguang foxue xuebao 圓光佛學學報 [Yuan Kuang Journal of Buddhist Studies] 3 (1999): 262–92. For the relationship between Buddhism and fuji in the Republican era and spirit writing, see David K. Jordan and Daniel L. Overmyer, The Flying Phoenix: Aspects of Chinese Sectarianism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 36–88. In his memoir, Bao Tianxiao describes more than ten altars in his hometown of Suzhou when he was young, and fuji was commonly practiced in the Jiangnan area. Bao Tianxiao, “Fuji zhishu” 扶乩之術 [Techniques of fuji], in Chuanying lou huiyi lu 釧影樓回憶錄 [Memoirs of Chuanying Mansion], 3 vols.(Taipei: Longwen chubanshe, 1990),1: 81–86. 7. Wu Guang, “Lingxue, lingxue hui, lingxue congzhi jianjie,” 432–33. The essays, published in the 1910s, offered readers a glimpse into Western spiritualism. Yang Jinsen 楊錦森, “Lun xinli jiaotong” 論心理交通 [On spiritual communication], Dongfang zazhi 9, no. 8 (1913): 1–6; Luoluo 羅羅, “Xinling yanjiu zhi jinjing” 心靈研究之進境 [On the progress of the study of spiritual communication], Dongfang zazhi 15, no. 9 (1918): 79–86. First established in Yokohama, Japan, in 1909, Chinese overseas students such as Yu Pingke 余萍客, Liu Yuchi 劉 钰墀, Zheng Hemian 鄭鶴眠, and others formed the China Mentalism Club (中國心靈俱 樂部), conflating mentalism/psychic research (xinling xue 心靈學) and hypnotism (cuimian shu 催眠術). Xinling zazhi bianjibu 心靈雜誌編輯部, “Zhongguo xinling yanjiu hui xiaoshi” 中國心靈研究會小史 [Short history of the Chinese Hypnotism Society], Xinling 心靈 [The Psychic] 1, no 4 (1916): 48–50. The club was renamed the Chinese Hypnotism Society (中國心靈研究會) in 1918 in Shanghai. English translations of journals or associations titles are original. For more on the Chinese Hypnotism Society, see chap. 2 in Weihong Bao, Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915–1945 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015). For more on the spread of Western spiritualism early in the Republican era, see Huang Ko-wu, “Lingxue yu jindai Zhongguo de zhishi zhuanxing,” 126–33. 8. Spiritualism, which emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, has been interpreted as a social movement, a psychological phenomenon, and religious activism in recent scholarship. For works in the West and Japan, see Bret E. Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Ichiyanagi Hirotaka 一柳広孝, Shinrei shashin wa kataru 心霊写真は語る [On Spirit Photography] (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2004). The idea of “psychical studies” was introduced into China through Japan. See Wu Guang, “Lingxue, lingxue hui, lingxue congzhi jianjie,” 432. 9. For a brief account of Lingxue hui in English, see Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 103–4. For Lingxue and its connection with modern Japan, see chap. 5 in Huang Ko-wu, Weishi zhi’an, esp. 166–68. 10. Yang Guangxi, “Shengde tan yuanqi” 盛德壇緣起 [On the origin of Shengde Altar], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 1 (1918): 4–6.

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11. See “Shengde tan chengli ji” 盛德壇成立記 [On the formation of the Shengde Altar], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 1 (1918): 1–14, esp. 14. 12. Huang Ko-wu, Weishi zhi’an, 182–83. For more details on the Shengde Altar, see Yang Guangxi, “Shengde tan yuanqi,” 6. 13. Lingxue congzhi was published from the beginning of 1918 to 1921 with eighteen volumes in total. In its inaugural issue, the society laid out clear regulations and proper arrangements for personnel, as well as objectives and goals for editorial columns. See “Shengde tan tangui” 盛 德壇壇規 [Rules of the Shengde Altar], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 1 (1918): 1–8. Immortals allegedly took turns being in charge of the journal publication, assisted by rotating editors. See the advertisement in Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 5 (1918). The activities of Lingxue hui continued periodically until early the 1920s. In 1924, Wang Yiting 王一亭 (1867–1938) became the head of the association and launched Lingxue jinghua 靈學精華 [The Essence of Psychical Research] (1924–1925). This society continued to engage its moral and charity efforts until the 1940s. See Huang Ko-wu, “Lingxue yu jindai Zhongguo de zhishi zhuanxing,” 135–47. 14. “人生大惑不解問題，其在人鬼生死之間乎？” “遇有精微不可通之故，輒借徑於 扶乩，以遞人鬼之郵，以洞幽明之隔, 所得各種學理，往往絕奇，而於人鬼生死 間，尤能打破後壁直接了解，以視向來之扶乩，第以扣問休咎方藥，酬唱詩歌文 字者，別開一新世界。” This advertisement in Shibao 時報 [Eastern Time] in Shanghai was dated February 26, 1918. Also see Huang Ko-wu, Weishi zhi’an, 177. 15. The Wushan Society in Beijing published Lingxue yaozhi 靈學要誌 [Major Writings of Psychical Research] (1920–1926). In 1925, the Wushan Society was renamed the “New Religion to Save the World” (Jiushi xinjiao hui 救世新教會). For a brief introduction in English to the Wushan Society and other redemptive societies, see David Ownby, “Redemptive Societies in the Twentieth Century,” in Modern Chinese Religion II: 1850–2015, ed. Vincent Goossaert et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 685–727, esp. 697–98. See also Sakai Tadao 酒井忠夫, “Jinxiandai Zhongguo de shanshu yu xinshenghuo yundong” 近現代中國的善書與新生 活運動 [Good books and the New Life Movement in modern China], trans. Lai Xuzhen 賴旭貞, Minjian zongjiao 民間宗教 [Popular Religions] 2 (1996): 93–103. 16. For an informative anthropological study on spirit writing, see Philip Clart, “Moral Mediums: Spirit-Writing and the Cultural Construction of Chinese Spirit-Mediumship,” Ethnologies 25, no. 1 (2003): 153–89. 17. Clart, “Moral Mediums,” 181–82. For the changes of mediums within spiritualism in relation to societal changes in the United States, see Tom Gunning, ‘‘Invisible Worlds, Visible Media,’’ in Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible 1840–1900, ed. Corey Keller (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), 51–64, esp. 60. 18. Di Baoxian used the photographs and the credibility of Wu as a “gentleman” (junzi 君子) to warrant the existence of the ghost and the spirit. Di Baoxian, “Pingdengge suoyan” 平等閣 瑣言 [Random remarks of Equality House], Xiaoshuo shibao 9 (1911): 1–4, esp. 2. Ding Fubao also mentions that he personally viewed Wu Tingfang’s photographs of ghosts and knew that Wu would not deceive the people because he is a gentleman (junzi). Ding Fubao, “伍博士 之學說” [Dr. Wu’s theories], in Foxue cuoyao 佛學撮要 [Synopsis of Buddhism], in Dingshi foxue congshu 丁氏佛學叢書 [Series of Ding’s Work on Buddhism], ed. Cai Yunchen 蔡運 辰 ­(Taipei: Beihai chuban shiye youxian gongsi, 1970), 1: 86. For an account of Wu Tingfang’s pursuit of theosophy and psychic studies, see Hu Xuecheng 胡學丞, “Wu Tingfang de



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­shentongxue yu lingxue shengya” 伍廷芳的神通學與靈學生涯 [Wu Tingfang’s experiences with theosophy and psychic research], Zhengda shicui 政大史粹 [Historical Research at Chengchi University] 22 (June 2012), 1–22. For an account of religious activities in the Republican era, see Zheng Guo 鄭國, “Minguo qianqi mixin wenti yanjiu” 民國前期迷信問 題研究 (1912–1928) [The Study of Superstitions in the Early Republic (1912–1928)] (master’s thesis, Shandong Normal University, 2003). Other evidence demonstrates that Chinese practitioners were also aware of spirit photography in the West. Lin Shu 林紓 mentioned it in his anecdotal writing on “Taking pictures for ghosts” 為鬼拍照; Yu Fu’s friend Wang Chongyou 王寵佑 (1880–1958), an American-trained metallurgist and member of the British Psychical Research Society, informed Yu Fu about spirit photography in Great Britain, which became one of the inspirational sources behind Yu Fu’s enthusiastic involvement. See Lin Shu, Weilu suoji 畏盧瑣記 [Anecdotal Writings from Weilu] (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1922), 102; Yu Fu, “Xu Banhou xiansheng ji furen linghun sheying” 徐班侯先生暨夫人靈魂攝影 [On the spirit photographing of Mr. and Mrs. Xu Banhou], Lingxue congzhi 1, no 3 (1918): 12–13. 19. Shenbao (August 17, 1916): 10. Wu Tingfang wrote extensively about the existence of ghosts and the soul to enthusiastically promote spiritualism, including drafting a preface to a translated work on spiritualism. Chen Cisheng 陳此生, Wu Tingfang yishi 伍廷芳軼事 [The Stories of Wu Tingfang] (Shanghai: Hongwen tushuguan, 1924). 20. The caption states, “When a man in Zhabei district in Shanghai takes a photograph, a headless ghostly shadow appears” (上海閘北某君攝影時，發見無頭之鬼影). 21. Tom Gunning, “Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations,” in Patrice Petro, Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 48. For more on the iconography of spirit photography and their stylistic borrowings from painting and the Christian tradition, see John Harvey, Photography and Spirit (London: Reaktion Books, 2007), 46–53. 22. Harvey, Photography and Spirit; Rolf H. Krauss, Beyond Light and Shadow: The Role of Photography in Certain Paranormal Phenomena: An Historical Survey, trans. Timothy Bill and John Gledhill (Munich: Naraeli Press, 1996). Gunning has substantially explored the intersection between spirit photography and cinema. Gunning, “Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations,”42–71; Tom Gunning, “To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision,” Grey Room 26 (2007): 94–127; Tom Gunning, “Uncanny Reflections, Modern Illusions: Sighting the Modern Optical Uncanny,” in Uncanny Modernity: Cultural Theories, Modern Anxieties, ed. Jo Collins and John Jervis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 68–90. 23. “一個人死了之後，究竟有沒有魂靈的?” Lu Xun, “Zhufu” 祝福 [New Year’s Sacrifice], Lu Xun quanji 2: 5–21, esp. 7. 24. Leo Ou-fan Lee 李歐梵, Zhongguo wenhua chuantong de liuge mianxiang 中國文化傳統的 六個面向 [Six Aspects of Traditional Chinese Culture] (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2016), 253–58; Maruo Tsuneki 丸尾常喜, Ren yu gui de jiuge: Lu Xun xiaoshuo lunxi “人”與“鬼”的糾葛：魯迅小說論析 [The Entanglement of Human and Ghost: The Analyses of Lu Xun’s Fiction], trans. Qin Gong 秦弓 (Beijing: Remin wenxue chubanshe, 2006), esp. 188–218. 25. Cited in Yu Fu, “Xu Banhou xiansheng ji furen linghun sheying,” Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 2 (1918): 12–13.

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26. “吾知兒孫哀思殊切，特留靈魂照相，以慰孝思.” “Xu Banhou xiansheng lingsheng Chen Jifang xiansheng gang laihan” 徐班侯先生令甥陳紀方先生剛來函 [A recent letter from Mr. Chen Jifang, the nephew of Mr. Xu Banhou], lingxue congzhi 1, no. 2 (1918). See also “Linghunxue zuijin zhi xianyan” 靈魂學最近之顯驗 [Recent proof of the soul], Shibao 時報 [The Eastern Times], March 1, 1918. The spirit of Xu was photographed twice. The death of the highly respected literati Xu Banhou and his wife caused a great stir. Xu was also deified locally. See Wang Hongchao, “Xu Banhou linghun zhaoxiang Shijian,” 105. 27. See the section on “ghostly fun” (guiqu 鬼趣) in Xianling zhaoxiang. The album of fifty-two photographs was printed in collotype and sold at the price of three yuan. It had to be preordered (see the advertisement in Xianling zhaoxiang). Meanwhile, each spirit photograph was priced at twenty cents, and a collotype print of the painting of the immortal, thirty inches tall, was priced at thirty cents, with the service of framing and mounting offered for forty cents more. The inscribed scroll painting was meant to be hung in the household. See the advertisement in Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 9 (1918). 28. Cited in Xianling zhaoxiang. 29. See Yu Fu’s notes to the essay by Yang Tingdong, “Linghun zhaoxiang ji 靈魂照像記” [On taking spirit photographs], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 7 (1918): 8. 30. Yang Tingdong, “Linghun zhaoxiang ji,” Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 7 (1918): 5–8. Yang Tingdong is the translator of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract into Chinese. The article originally appeared in Shishi xinbao 時事新報 [The China Times], September 23, 1918. 31. “疑非甚似，閉目凝神，又恍惚酷肖.” Yang Tingdong, “Linghun zhaoxiang ji,” 7. 32. Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, “Spectrographies,” in The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory, ed. Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 37–38. See also his concept of “hauntology” in Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994). 33. See Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not: Photography & Remembrance (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004). Barthes describes a photo of a departed being touching the viewer like “the delayed rays of a star.” Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 80–81. 34. Louis Kaplan, The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 4, 227. For spirit photography in the context of mourning practice and the renegotiation of faith, see Jen Cadwallader, “Spirit Photography: Victorian Culture of Mourning,” Modern Language Studies 37, no. 2 (2008): 8–31; Harvey, Photography and Spirit, 141. 35. Martyn Jolly, Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography (London: British Library, 2006), 16–18. 36. Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1964), 14: 243–58. 37. See Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, “Introduction: Conceptualizing Spectralities,” in The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory, ed. Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 15. 38. Difan 滌煩, “Liqi guaidan zhi guiying” 離奇怪誕之鬼影 [A bizarre, ghostly shadow]; Ji Shiruo 記時若, “Zhuidaohui zhong zhi gui zhaoxiang 追悼會中之鬼照相” [On spirit



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photograph at the funeral], included in Ding Fubao, Dingshi foxue congshu 丁氏佛學叢 書 [Series of Ding’s Work on Buddhism], ed. Cai Yunchen 蔡運辰 (Taipei: Beihai chuban shiye youxian gongsi, 1970), 90–91. “Liqi guaidan zhi guiying” 離奇怪誕之鬼影 (fig. 5.3), Lingxu congzhi 2, no. 4 (1919); see also Shenbao, December 12, 1921. 39. Lu Xun, “Lun Zhaoxiang zhilei,” Lu Xun quanji, 1: 182. A rumor that circulated in Beijing around 1864 suggested that “Europeans steal Chinese children and gouge out their eyes, in order to use them for making photographs.” Whether this rumor is a reflection of a deepseated fear based on folk belief or the projection of the colonialists’ prejudiced view is not my critical focus here; nevertheless, it hits on the point of the striking technical similarity between the structure of the photographic eye and the human eye. Photographic Mitteilungen (1864/1865), 121, cited in Krauss, Beyond Light and Shadow, 17–18. 40. See Jiang Shaoyuan 江紹原, “Zhaoxiang yu liuxu zhi yingxiang shiyun” 照像與留鬚之影 響時運 [The influence on fortune of taking photographs and growing a beard], Xin nüxing 新女性 [New Women] 3, no. 9 (1928): 1075–78. See also Qian Zhongshu, Guanzhui bian 管 錐編 [Limited Views], 4 vols. (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007), 2:1130; 4: 2211. She (as in sheying) was often used in the context of ghosts snapping human souls. 41. For fears relating to the global dissemination of photography and the camera’s association with death and misfortune, see Heike Behrend, “Spaces of Refusal: Photophobic Spirits and the Technical Medium of Photography,” in Trance Mediums and New Media: Spirit Possession in the Age of Technical Reproduction, ed. Anja Dreschke, Martin Zillinger, and Heike Behrend (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 201–20, esp. 202–3. 42. Ying-Shih Yü, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ A Study in the Changing Conceptions of the Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47, no. 2 (December 1987): 363–95; esp. 374. 43. See the evolution of the concept in Yuet Keung Lo, “From a Dual Soul to a Unitary Soul: The Babel of Soul Terminologies in Early China,” Monumenta Serica 56 (2008): 23–53. A Han text Liji waizhuan 禮記外傳 [Outer Commentary on the Book of Rites] reads, “a person’s quintessence primal force is called hun and his physical body is called po. The combination of the yin and yang primal forces gives birth to life. When the body is tired out, shen will depart. After a person dies, it is difficult for him to revive. A filial son cannot bear [this] so he goes outside the house and summons the hunshen of the deceased”人之精氣曰魂，形體謂之魄，合陰陽二 氣而生也。形勞則神逝，死則難復生也。孝子之心不能忍也，故外屋而招其魂神 (29), translation Yuet Keung Lo’s. See Li Fang 李昉 et al., Taiping yulan 太平御覽 [Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era], 4 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960), 549 juan, 3: 2486. 44. Wu Tingfang was generally credited as the first Chinese to practice Linghun zhaoxiang. Yao Jiusheng 窈九生, “Linghun zhaoxiang tan” 靈魂照相談 [On spirit photography], Xiaoshuo yuebao 11, no. 8 (1920): 10. 45. Dungen 鈍根 [Wang Dungen], “Shuo linghun” 說靈魂 [On the soul], a translation of Tsumaki Chokuryō’s 妻木直良(1873–1934) work, Foxue congbao 佛學叢報 [Buddhist Studies] 7 (1913): 1–3. Mind, soul, and spirit have been translated as jingshen 精神, xinling 心靈, or linghun 靈魂. The article indicates that the term linglun acquired its modern meaning as Geist in Meiji Japan and conflates Western conceptions of “soul” and Geist. The etymological origin of the Western term comes from the Greek ψυχή (psuché).

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46. “Sympathetic cosmology” is a term borrowed from Robert Cox, Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 5. I use it to refer to the religious belief in a correspondence between heaven and earth and as the affective structure that operates in the reception of such photographs. 47. Weihong Bao, Fiery Cinema, esp. 63–90. 48. See Yu Fu, “Shengde tan shizhao xianling ji” 盛德壇試照仙靈記 [An immortal’s photographic experience at Shengde Altar], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 6 (1918): 4. 49. “神仙弄技，小示變幻。寧得以科學之常理測之耶.” See the preface by Yu Fu in Shanghai lingxuehui, Xianling zhaoxiang. 50. Chang Shengzi 常勝子, “Xianling sheying zhenli panic” 仙靈攝影真理判詞 [Proclamations on spirit photography], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 9 (1918): 3–5, esp. 3. 51. “今段誌所載，以徐班侯死後靈魂攝影最為驚人之事。此事歐、美已為數見，然 皆於無意中為生人照像，片中忽然呈現異影，莫測由來 . . . . . .至於已死靈魂託物 示意，指授攝取已影之法，從無出有，則真見所未見、聞所未聞者也。” Yan Fu, Yan Fu ji 嚴復集 [The Yan Fu’s Collection], ed. Wang Shi 王栻, 5 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986) 3: 720–21. Lingxue congzhi seized the opportunity and published Yan Fu’s letters as an endorsement of spirit photography (vol. 1). 52. Yu Fu, “Shengde tan shizhao xianling ji,” Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 6 (1918): 2. 53. See the discussion of light and spirit photography in Karl Schoonover, “Ectoplasms, Evanescence, and Photography,” Art Journal 62, no. 3 (Autumn 2003): 30–43, esp. 35–36. For a discussion of the coincidence of the development of the science of light, photography, and cinema, see Patrick Camiller, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, trans. Paul Virilio (London: Verso, 1989), 27–30. 54. Biyan xianzi, “Biyan xianzi shuying” 碧眼仙子述影 [Biyan Xianzi on shadows], Lingxue yaozhi 1, no. 1 (1920): 10–11. 55. “靈魂自體之發光（電磁現象），一因靈魂無靈媒之吸引，易於變動位置.” Yu Jinhe 余晉龢, Linghun xue 靈魂學 [The Study of the Soul] (Shanghai: Xinghua yinshuaju, 1930), 51. One section, titled Jiaoling cuoying 交靈撮影 [Communication between souls and capturing shadows], describes the spirit photographs (50–51). 56. Jianshe yuekan, “Linghun zhaoxiang zhi yanjiu” 靈魂照相之研究 [The study of spirit photographs], Shandong sheng Jianshe yuekan 山東省建設月刊 [Construction Monthly in Shandong Provence] 9 (1931): 44. The essay also mentions that Zhu Shouju 朱瘦 菊 and Dan Duyu did not believe in spirit photography and attempted to sneak into the darkroom to investigate the practice. In the discussion of spirit photographs by Yu Pingke, at least ten different methods can be used to create the effect, from inserting a prepared positive glass plate into the camera in front of an unused sensitive glass plate to retouching, hand drawing, and cut and paste methods. For techniques concerned with manipulating images and for a history of spirit photography in Great Britain, see Yu Pingke 余萍客, “Linghun sheying tan” 靈魂攝影談 [On spirit photographs], Xinling wenhua 心靈文化 [Spiritual Culture], special issue (1931): 117–23. For the term xianying, see Yao Jiusheng, “Linghun zhaoxiang tan.” 57. Yu Fu describes the aforementioned photograph of Xu Banhou and his wife in this way: Surrounding the two images and the blank space, there is white light emanating from



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within. He further points readers to the essay “On Magic Light,” allegedly by the immortal Shi Zhongzi, that Yu believes can further illustrate his points. Yu Fu, “Xu Banhou xiansheng ji furen linghun sheying,” Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 3 (1918). 58. Shi Zhongzi 時中子, “Shuo lingguang” 說靈光 [On spiritual light], Lingxue congzhi 2, no. 3 (1919): 12–13, esp. 12. The authorship of these essays, allegedly testimonials of the immortals visiting the altar, remains unknown. Most likely they were written by editors of the journal such as Yu Fu. 59. Chang Shengzi 常勝子, “Lingguang lingneng xiangyin shuo” 靈光靈能相因說 [On the mutual connection of magic light and magic energy], Lingxue congzhi 2, no. 1 (1919): 2–8. 60. “人之身體固物質也，亦精神之中心也。人身以外，實有諸光芒。其始如俗話所 云之三昧火 . . . . . .此光芒可以照相，可以受照.” Mingyue xianzi 明月仙子, “Lingguang lingneng xiangyin shuo” 靈光靈能相因說 [On the mutual connection of magic light and magic energy], Lingxue congzhi 2, no. 1 (1919): 9–12; Chang Shengzi 常勝子, “Lingguang shuo” 靈光說 [On magic light] 1, no. 5 (1918):25–26. 61. For discussion of light in terms of divinity, spirit, and divine creativity in Western religious thought, see Mircea Eliade, “Spirit, Light and Seed,” in History of Religions 11, no. 1 (August 1971), 1–30. Huang Ko-wu, Weishi zhi’an, 185. Huang points out that Chinese spiritualism mixes with yin and yang, two poles and magnetic forces (185). See also Zheng Yayin 鄭雅尹, “Qingmo Minchu de ‘gui’ yu ‘zhaoxiang shu’: Di Baoxian Pingdeng ge biji zhong de xiandai meiying” 清末民初的“鬼”與“照相術”——狄寶賢《平等閣筆記》中的現代 魅影 [Ghost and photography in late Qing and early Republican era: Modern enchanting shadows in Di Baoxian’s Pingdengge Writing], Qinghua zhongwen xuebao 清華中文學報 [Tsinghua Journal of Chinese Literature] 13 (2015): 229–81. 62. For a discussion of light in the Western and African context, see Heike Behrend, “Spaces of Refusal: Photophobic Spirits and the Technical Medium of Photography,” 217–20. 63. See Ellen Johnston Laing, “Daoist Qi, Clouds and Mist in Later Chinese Painting,” Orientation 29, no. 4 (1998): 32–39. In the photo album, only one photograph features two fair ladies riding over the clouds. 64. The image, captioned “The ritual object of Patriarch Lü” 呂祖師法物圖, is listed as no. 6 in Shanghai lingxuehui, Xianling zhaoxiang. 65. For a discussion of the popularity of worshipping Lü Dongbin in the Quanzhen school of Daoism and literati and business groups in the late Qing dynasty, see Ichiko Shiga, Xianggang daojiao yu fuji xinyang, 163–78. 66. “叩請神靈攝影，藉以堅人信仰，并闡揚神明濟人覺世之婆心.” Wushan she, “Fuyou dijun sheying ji” 孚佑帝君攝影記 [On photographing Lord Fuyou], Lingxue yaozhi 1, no. 1 (September 1920): 1–8. The poem by Lord Fuyou is cited on page 2. 67. Wushan she, “Fuyou dijun sheying ji,” Lingxue yaozhi 1, no. 1 (1920): 6. 68. Wushan she, “Fuyou dijun sheying ji.” Fuyou dijun zhuangyan faxiang 孚佑帝君莊嚴法像 (fig. 5.10), Lingxue yaozhi 1, no. 1 (1920). 69. “Fuyou jun ziti” 孚佑君自題 [Self-inscriptions by Lord Fuyou], Lingxue yaozhi 3, no. 3 (1925). 70. Fuyou dijun, “Fuyou dijun shuo lingguang” 孚佑帝君說靈光 [Lord Fuyou on magic light], Lingxue yaozhi 3, no. 6: 15-17, esp. 16. Situating them in their contemporary psychological discourses, Weihong Bao perceptively identifies resonance (gongming, a newly

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translated phrase from Japan) and anshi (suggestion) as the key concepts and discusses their implications for film making. See chap. 1 in Weihong Bao, Fiery Cinema. 71. Based on Ichiko Shiga’s and Wang Hongchao’s studies, the image of Ancestor Lü used at the Xinshan Ancestral Altar (Xinshan zique xuanguan 信善紫闕玄觀) in contemporary Hong Kong is the same one captured in the spirit photograph from the Wuhan Society in the early Republican era and reprinted here. For the shot of the altar, see Ichiko Shiga, Xianggang daojiao yu fuji xinyang, xx; Wang Hongchao, “Guixing shenying,” 243. The image of the Green-Eyed Immortal (Biyan guixian), purportedly obtained on April 29, 1920, and printed in the inaugural issue of Major Writings, is the same as the one obtained by the Shanghai Psychical Research Society on September 15, 1918. 72. Quoted in Shen Kuo 沈括, Mengxi bitan jiaozheng 夢溪筆談校證 [The Annotated Edition of Brush Talks from the Dream Brook], 2 vols., annotated by Hu Daojing 胡道靜 (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957), 1: 549. For the discussion of concentrated viewing and imagining (xincun muxiang) via a dilapidated wall, see Qian Zhongshu, Guanzhui bian, 3: 1588–89; Dong Yugan 董豫贛, Baibi yu feixu 敗壁與廢墟 [Dilapidated Walls and Ruins] (Shanghai: Tongji University Press, 2012), 14. In the practice of hypnotism in the early Republican era, a hanging white sheet was often used for envisioning things. 73. Shenbao (October 18, 1921). 74. “紙上呈雲霧狀，滿紙其白花，茸然若堆絮。忽豁然開朗，中現觀音像一尊。善 財龍女侍立左右，  .  .  .  .  .  .而蓮花千萬朵，湧現于觀音座下。一轉眼間，如來居 中，千佛圍繞四周，觀音像闃然寂滅矣.” Hou Yi 侯毅, “Ji shenyou qiongyuan shi” 記 神游瓊苑事 [On spiritual travel in Jade Garden], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 4 (1918): 9–12. 75. Hou Yi, “Ji shenyou qiongyuan shi,” 12. 76. “通靈由於感，感起於專，專起於誠.” Hou Yi, “Ji shenyou qiongyuan shi.” 77. “人與畫幅，是一是二，奇妙不可思議.” See the caption for “Mingyue xianzi Chang Shengzi huayou tu” 明月仙子常勝子畫遊圖 [The painting of Mingyue xianzi and Chang Shengzi’s journey], Xianling zhaoxiang. 78. The Serials of Psychical Research (Lingxue congzhi) featured a column for “wenyuan” 文苑, and Major Writings of Psychical Research (Lingxue yaozhi) had columns for “shici” 詩詞 and “changchou” 唱酬, correspondence in verses. 79. See Lord Fuyou’s poems in Lingxue yaozhi, “shici” column. Complete Tang Poems (Quan Tang shi) includes poems allegedly written by immortals, ghosts, and animals in vols. 860–867. 80. Many of the essays are two to three pages long and refer to contemporary ideas and events, so they were most likely ghost written by the editor who was responsible for that issue. Due to the coherence of the content and literary style, Yu Fu surely served a major role in producing these “divine” speeches in The Serials of Psychical Research (Lingxue congzhi). 81. “夫科學之見重于當世，亦以事事徵諸實相，定其公律，可成為有系統之學而 已，以今日所得扶乩之徵驗，則空中之確有物焉，不可誣矣.” Yu Fu, “Da Wu Zhihui shu” 答吳稚暉書 [Letter in reply to Wu Zhihui], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 1: 2–3, esp. 3. 82. Gunning, “Invisible Worlds, Visible Media,” 59. 83. See Huang Fengxi 黃鳳希, Linghun xue 靈魂學 [Studies of the Soul] (Shanghai: Youzheng shuju, 1926).



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84. Ding Fubao, Foxue cuoyao, 39–94; Mozi, Mozi: Basic Writing, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 97–113. 85. Ding Fubao, Foxue cuoyao, 89–90. 86. Yao Zuolin refers spirit photographs as lingji in Yao Zuolin xiansheng shu 姚作霖先生書 [Letter from Mr. Yao Zuolin], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 3 (1918): 5–6. Krauss discusses the indexical nature and its “luminous traces” in early photography. Rosalind Krauss, “Tracing Nadar,” October 5 (Summer 1978): 29–47. 87. Yan Fu, Yan Fu ji, 3: 722–723. 88. Bowler asserts that agnosticism expresses the desire to search for the truth without prejudice while refusing to dogmatically answer questions that cannot be rationally answered (16). Peter Bowler, Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early Twentieth Century Britain (Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press, 2001). 89. “大抵宇宙究竟，與其元始，同於不可思議。不可思議者，謂不可以名理論證 也.” Yan Fu, Yan Fu ji, 5: 1360. 90. “他如萬物質點，動靜真殊，力之本始，神思起訖之倫，雖在聖智，皆不能言， 此皆真實不可思議者.” Yan Fu ji, 5: 1379–80. The term also refers to “my Dharma is so wondrous that is inconceivable,” the realm of Buddhahood and the status of true awakening. See Nan Hua-chin, Basic Buddhism: Exploring Buddhism and Zen, trans. J. C. Cleary (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1998), 54. I choose to render buke siyi 不可思議 as “imponderable” here to echo the book title of a massive collection of occult phenomena in the Tony Oursler archives. Tom Eccles et al. eds., Imponderable: The Archives of Tony Oursler (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2015). 91. Huang Ko-wu, Weishi zhi’an, 190–97. 92. Yan Fu, “Yu Hou Yi shu,” Yan Fu ji, 3: 721. 93. See Huters’ discussion of Yan Fu’s appropriation of western ideas, in Theodore Huters, Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 60–73. 94. Zhou Lun 周綸, “Lingmei guaiji” 靈媒怪迹 [Wondrous traces of spirit mediums], Yiyao xue 醫藥學 [Medicine] 2, no. 9 (1925): 27–32. “Nerven fluidum” was originally included in the article. 95. David Wright, “Tan Sitong and the Ether Reconsidered,” in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 57, no. 3 (1994): 551–75. See also Hao Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890–1911) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 88–89; Weihong Bao, Fiery Cinema, 137–43. 96. Some aspects of thoughts were explored again in the well-known debate of “Science and Metaphysics” (Kexue yu Xuanxue 科學與玄學) in the 1920s. See chap. 2 in Eric S. Nelson, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). 97. “靈學者，實為凡百科學之冠，可以浚智慧，增道德，養精神，通天人.” See Yu Jue 余覺 (aka Bingchen), “Yu Bingcheng xiansheng shu” 余冰臣先生書 [Letter from Yu Bingchen], Lingxue congzhi 1, no. 3 (1918): 7–8. 98. See, for instance, Yue Song 岳松, “Ruhe she guiying” 如何攝鬼影 [How to capture a ghostly shadow], Sheying huabao 攝影畫報 [Pictorial Weekly] 11, no. 1 (1935): 6. For discussions of

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the use of spirit photography in modern entertainment in the West, see Gunning, “To Scan a Ghost,” 111–16; for an extensive exploration of the association of shadow and modernist photography, see William Schaefer, Shadow Modernism: Photography, Writing, and Space in Shanghai, 1925–1937 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017), esp. 119–44. 99. Wang Dunqing 王敦慶, Zhu Taoshan linghun sheying 諸濤山靈魂攝影 (fig. 5.14), Shanghai manhua 上海漫畫 [Shanghai Puck], no. 8 (1936): 14. 100. Harvey, Photography and Spirit, 157.

6. THE SHADOWS OF POETRY: MEDIATING “INTERIOR LANDSCAPES” 1. Yu Pingbo 俞平伯, “Yixin yingwu” 以心映物 [Reflecting things with the mind], cited in Long Xizu 龍熹祖, ed., Zhongguo jindai sheying yishu meixue wenxuan 中國近代攝影藝術 美學文選 [Selected Essays on the Aesthetics of Modern Chinese Photography] (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin meishu chubanshe, 1988), 127. 2. Pictorial photography was a worldwide movement from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. For an overview of pictorialism in the West, see David Bate, Art Photography (London: Tate, 2015), 31–53; see also Phillip Prodger, Impressionist Camera: Pictorial Photography in Europe, 1888–1918 (London: Merrell, 2006). For a discussion of geijutsu shashin 芸術写真 in Japan between the 1890s and the 1920s, see Karen M. Fraser, Photography and Japan (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), 14–21. 3. Liu Fu 劉復 [Liu Bannong], Bannong tanying 半農談影 [Bannong on Photography] (Beijing: Zhenguang sheyingshe, 1927). Liu purchased his first camera while studying in Paris in 1923. Beijing Guangshe 北京光社 (Beijing Light Society) was formed in 1924 out of the earlier association Yishu xiezhen yanjiuhui 藝術寫真硏究會 (Research Association for Art Photography) in 1923. Other photography clubs in the 1920s include the Chinese Photography Society (Zhongguo sheying xuehui 中國攝影學會) in Shanghai and Jing Society (Jingshe 景社) in Guangzhou. Ma Yunzeng et al., Zhongguo sheying shi 1840–1937 中國攝影史 [The History of Chinese Photography, 1840–1937] (Beijing: Zhongguo sheying chubanshe, 1987), 160–61. For recent discussions of Chinese pictorial photography, see Richard K. Kent, “Early Twentieth-Century Art Photography in China: Adopting, Domesticating, and Embracing the Foreign,” Trans Asia Photography Review 3, no. 2 (Spring 2013), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0003.204; Richard K. Kent, “Fine Art Amateur Photography in Republican-Period Shanghai: From Pictorialism to Modernism,” in Bridges to Heaven: Essays on East Asian Art in Honor of Professor Wen C. Fong, ed. Dora C. Ching and Jerome Silbergeld (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), 849–74. 4. In 1929, Liu Bannong expressed this desire in the preface to the Beijing Light Society photography album: “We need to use the camera to fully express our own personalities and the distinctive sentiments and refinements of the Chinese people, thus enabling our works to establish their own kind of character different from that of other countries” (必須能把我們自己的 個性，能把我們中國人特有的情趣與韵調，借著鏡箱充分的表現出來，使我們的 作品，於世界別國的作品之外另有一種氣息). Lui Bannong, preface to Beijing Guangshe nianjian 北京光社年鑒 [Annual of Beijing Light Society] (Beijing: Beijing Guangshe, 1929) 2: 2–6, esp. 5. Translation Kent’s, “Early Twentieth-Century Art Photography in China.”



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5. Liu Fu, Bannong tanying, 11–13. Liu’s use of xiezhen here is close to the Japanese conceptualization of shashin (transcribing the real) after the 1870s. 6. “把作者的意境，借著照相表露出來，必須有所寄藉。被寄藉的東西，原是死 的；但到作者把意境寄藉上去之後，就變做了活的.” Liu Fu, Bannong tanying, 13–14. Richard Kent points out that Liu received his influence from European pictorial photography, as revealed in Bannong tanying and in his photographic works. Kent, “Early Twentieth-Century Art Photography in China.” 7. Liu Fu, Bannong tanying, 14. 8. Zheng Wuchang 鄭午昌, Zhongguo huaxue quanshi 中國畫學全史 [The Complete History of Chinese Painting] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1927), 414–16. Zheng writes: “The matter of painting involves using the contours of external things to embody what is in the mind” 繪畫之事在借外物之形象寫胸中之所有. See also chapter 2 in Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037–1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555–1636) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012). Xieyi, xiezhen (as used in the late imperial era), and chuanshen were intimately related concepts. 9. Eugene Y. Wang, “The Winking Owl: Visual Effect and Its Art Historical Thick Description,” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 435–73, esp. 450. 10. See the discussion in Ronald Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1994), 283–84; Yu-Kung Kao, “Chinese Lyric Aesthetics,” in Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting, ed. Alfreda Murck, Wen C. Fong, and Wen Fong (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), 47. 11. “繪畫之事，胸中造化，吐露於筆端，怳忽變幻，象其物宜，足以啟人之高志， 發人之浩氣.” Cited in Zheng Wuchang, Zhongguo huaxue quanshi, 414. 12. “是以詩人感物。聯類無窮。流連萬象之際。沉吟視聽之區。寫氣圖貌。既隨 物以宛轉。屬采附聲。亦與心而徘徊.” Liu Xie 劉勰, “Wuse” 物色 [The sensuous colors of physical things], in Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍 [The Mind of Literature and Carving Dragons](Shanghai: Qizhi shuju, 1933), 249. Translation Stephen Owen’s, see Reading in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center 1996), 279–80. Based on Owen’s explanation (594), the use of yi in this chapter refers to (1) the author’s intention, will, preconceived notions, or his interpretation of certain external phenomena; (2) general ideas deduced from the particular in the author’s articulation; and (3) “motif,” or more broadly, “the way someone thinks of things” in the compounds such as shiyi or guyi 古意 (“on an ancient motif” or “the ancient attitude”). 13. The term “interior empiricism” is Owen’s (89). See also Owen, Reading in Chinese Literary Thought, 201–10. 14. Yu-Kung Kao, “Chinese Lyric Aesthetics,” 85. 15. Shih Shou-Chien, “Beyond the Representation of Streams and Mountains: The Development of Chinese Landscape Painting from the Tenth to the Mid-Eleventh Century,” in Bridges to Heaven: Essays on East Asian Art in Honor of Professor Wen C. Fong, ed. Jerome Silbergeld et al., 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 2011), 2: 579–604. 16. Dōshin Satō 佐藤道信, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu: bi no seijigaku 明治国家と近代美 術: 美の政治学 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1999), 215. See also Dōshin Satō, Modern

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Japanese Art and the Meiji State: The Politics of Beauty, trans. Hiroshi Nara (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2011), 237–38. 17. See the discussion in Cheng-hua Wang, “Rediscovering Song Painting for the Nation: Artistic Discursive Practices in Early Twentieth-century China,” Artibus Asiae 71, no. 2 (2011): 235–37. 18. For an etymological account of the words xiesheng, xieyi, and xiezhen in the Japanese and Chinese context, see Dōshin Satō, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu, 209–16. For the etymological background of the loanword xiesheng, as it was reintroduced in China from Japan in 1903, and the impact of this new practice on traditional landscape painting, see chap. 2 in Yi Gu, “Scientizing the Vision in China: Photography, Outdoor Sketching, and the Reinvention of Landscape Perception” (PhD diss., Brown University, 2009), esp. 60–63; chap. 12 in Shih Shou-chien 石守謙, Shanming guying Zhongguo shanshuihua he guanzhong de lishi 山鳴谷應: 中國山水畫和觀眾的歷史 [The History of Chinese Landscape Painting and Audience] (Taipei: Rock Publishing, 2019). 19. David Der-wei Wang, “In the Name of the Real,” in Chinese Art: Modern Expressions, ed. Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G. Smith (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 28–59, esp. 37–39. See also Aida Yuen Wong, The Other Kang Youwei: Calligrapher, Art Activist, and Aesthetic Reformer in Modern China (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 85–108. 20. See Chen Chuanxi 陳傳席, Zhongguo huihua meixue shi 中國繪畫美學史 [Aesthetic History of Chinese Painting] (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 2012), 588–94. In his influential article on “literati painting” (wenren hua 文人畫), Chen Shizeng characterizes the quintessential value of Chinese literati painting, of which he says: “its feelings and emotions go beyond the object, and the feelings and emotions are embodied in the images of the objects” (蓋其神情超於物體之外，而寓其神情於物象之中). Chen Shizeng 陳師曾, “Wenrenhua zhi jiazhi” 文人畫之價值 [On the values of literati paintings], Meishu congkan 美術叢刊 [Arts Series] 2 (1932): 12–15, esp. 15. 21. The photographers’ characterization of art photography as xieyi echoes Yu Shangyuan 余上沅 (1897–1970) and his colleagues’ reinvention of Chinese national theater, partially inspired by anxiety over the paradigmatic shift to realism and the desire to search for Chinese particularities. In a seminal article in 1926, Yu Shangyuan understood traditional Chinese theater as nonrealistic, “pure art” (chuncui yishu 純粹藝術), and expressed the belief that “the characteristics of xieyi” (xieyi xing 寫意性) can encapsulate the essence of all Chinese traditional arts. Yu Shangyuan, “Jiuxi pingjia” 舊戲評價 [Critiquing old drama], Chenbao fukan: Jukan 晨報副刊：劇刊 [the supplement of Morning Post] 3 (1926): 3–12. 22. Liu Fu, Bannong tanying, 21–22. 23. Liu Fu, Bannong tanying, 24–25. See also Zhang Yinquan 張印泉, “Xiandai meishu sheying de qushi” 現代美術攝影的趨勢 [On trends in contemporary art photography], Feiying 15 (1937): 7–8. 24. Bate, Art Photography, 31. 25. Hu Boxiang 胡伯翔, “Meishu sheying tan” 美術攝影談 [On art photography], Tianpeng 天鵬 [The China Focus] 3, no. 6 (1928): 34–35. 26. In an essay written in 1978, Lang best articulates his understanding of “truth” (zhen). Lang Jingshan, “Zhen shan mei de xin jingjie” 真善美的新境界 [The new realm of truth,



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virtue, and beauty], in Shenhuo xuanji 生活選集 [Selected Essays on Life], 2nd ed. (Taipei: Zhongyang ribao she, 1981), 1: 17–24. 27. As Kent’s observes, broadly speaking, from the mid-1930s the styles of Chinese art photography became more diversified and incorporated influences from other international movements. Kent, “Early Twentieth-Century Art Photography in China.” Chinese “pictorial photography” (huayi sheying) enjoyed an enduring popularity throughout the twentieth century and has undergone a revival, leading to a variety of experimentalism in the contemporary era particularly since the 1990s. See, for instance, Willow Weilan Hai, Jerome Silbergeld, and Jiang Rong eds., Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens, exhibition catalog (New York: China Institute Gallery and Art Media Resources, 2018). 28. Chang Jian 常建, “Ti Poshan simiao hou chanyuan,” in Quan Tang Shi [Complete Tang Poems], 15 vols., ed. Peng Dingqiu et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 2: 1464. Hu Shilian, Tangshi sheying xieyi 唐詩攝影寫意 [Photographs of a Tang poem and sketching ideas] (fig.6.1), Zhongguo sheying 中國攝影 [China Photography] 7 (1947): 29. Hu regrets that he could not find photographs to match the latter part of the poem, which engages in the poet’s inner, abstract reflection on the scenes. 29. James Cahill, The Lyric Journey: Poetic Painting in China and Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 7–72. 30. Guo Xi 郭熙 and Guo Si 郭思, Linquan gaozhi ji 林泉高致集 [Lofty records of forests and streams], in Siku quanshu [The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries], 1,501 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987), 812: 579. 31. Guo Xi and Guo Si Linquan gaozhi ji, in Siku quanshu,812: 579. 32. As the editor of Jingwu Pictorial writes, “Photography is a pictorial art with mechanical production (jixieshi de meishu 機械式的美術), containing pictorial meanings (huayi) and poetic flavor (shiyi).” Jingwu huabao 精武畫報 [Jingwu Pictorial] 4 (1927): 1. 33. “實則攝影者亦可如畫家之應用想像而拍得佳作，由平日涵養豐富之想象力，臨 時觸機，自得左右逢源，拍出照片自富畫意.” Anonymous, “Sheying shang de huayi” 攝影上的畫意 [Pictorial effects in photography], Keda zazhi 柯達雜誌 [The Chinese Kodakery] 5, no. 11 (1934): 16. These words remind us of what William Henry Fox Talbot (who defines photography as “words of light”) states in his The Pencil of Nature: “A painter’s eye will often be arrested where ordinary people see nothing remarkable. A casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across his path, a time-withered oak, or a moss-covered stone may awaken a train of thoughts and feelings, and picturesque imaginings.” Cited in Carol Jacobi and Hope Kingsley, Painting with Light: Art Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Modern Age (London: Tate, 2016), 31. 34. See Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書, Tan yi lu 談藝錄 [On the Art of Poetry] (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2011), 141–43. 35. For more on how to execute yi in painting, see Buyan tu 布顏圖, “Huaxue xinfa wenda” 畫 學心法問答 [Dialogues on painting and the mind], in Zhongguo hualun leibian 中國畫論 類編 [Collection of Discourses on Chinese Painting], ed. Yu Jianhua 俞劍華 (1957; repr. Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1986), 1: 192–222, 205. 36. Han Zhuo 韓拙 writes, “Generally, before you even grasp the brush, you must concentrate your spirit and clarify your thoughts, then the image will seem to be before your eyes. Hence,

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‘the idea exists before the brush.’ Afterwards, if by means of standards you have carried out your ideas, then it can be said that what has been obtained from the mind has been responded to by the hand” (凡未操筆，當凝神著思，豫在目前，所以意在筆先，然後以格 法推之，可謂得之于心，應之於手也). Han Zhuo, “Shanshui chunquan ji” 山水純全集 [Chunquan on painting mountains and water], in Zhongguo hualun leibian, ed. Yu Jianhua, 2: 659–83, esp. 671. Translation Susan Bush’s, in Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 182–83. See also the explanation of yi in Su Shi’s writing and the Northern Song cultural context, in Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi, 272–73. Zhang Houzhen [C. H. Chang], Wangan yanyu 萬竿煙雨 [Rainy day], Tianpeng 天鵬 [China Focus] 3, no. 6 (1928): 30; Hu Bozhou [P. C. Woo], Qiushan xinglü 秋山行旅 [Valley walker], in Tianpeng [China Focus] 3, no. 6 (1928): 18. English titles original. Established in Shanghai in 1928, the core members of the Chinese Photographic Society (Huashe 華社) included Lang Jingshan, Hu Boxiang, Zhang Houzhen, Chen Wanli, and others. Wang Mengshu’s Pictorial Meaning of Yunlin (Yunlin huayi 雲林畫意) and Chen Wanli’s After Ni Yunlin’s Small Scene of Pines & Rocks (Fang Ni Yunlin songshi xiaojing 仿倪雲林松石小景) explicitly acknowledge their indebtedness to the master painter Ni Zan in the title of their works. See discussion in Kent, “Early Twentieth-Century Art Photography in China.” Xu Muru [Zee Mok-yu], Mijia yanyu 米家煙雨 (fig.6.3), Zhonghua (Shanghai) 中華(上海) [China, Shanghai] 52 (1937): 30. See Max Loehr, The Great Painters of China (London: Phaidon Press, 1980), 159–61. See also a discussion of the Mi family’s style of “cloudy mountains” in Wen C. Fong, Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 8th–14th Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), 162–68. Jonathan Chaves, “The Message of the Mountains: The Yellow Mountains as Source of Inspiration for Painting, Poetry and Photography,” in Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens, ed. Willow Weilan Hai, Jerome Silbergeld, and Jiang Rong (New York: China Institute Gallery and Art Media Resources, 2018), 67-75. For a comparative discussion of the concept of imitation, see Martin J. Powers, “Imitation and Reference in China’s Pictorial Tradition,” in Reinventing the Past: Archaism and Antiquarianism in Chinese Art and Visual Culture, ed. Wu Hung (Chicago: the Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, 2010), 103–126. Guyi, as a pictorial idea initiated by Mi Fu and Zhao Mengfu 趙孟頫 (1254–1322), refers to a practice that seeks inspiration from the distant past rather than from contemporary works in order to achieve archaic stylistic effects. See Chen Chuanxi, Zhongguo huihua meixue shi, 313–30. Liu Bannong, Shanyu yulai fengmanlou 山雨欲來風滿樓, in Beijing Guangshe nianjian 北 京光社年鑒 [Annual of Beijing Light Society] (Beijing: Beijing Guangshe, 1929), vol. 2. The title is from Xu Hun 許渾,“Xianyang cheng donglou” 咸陽城東樓 [East tower of Xianyang city], in Quan Tang shi, 8: 6130. For more discussion of Liu Bannong’s work, see Chen Shen 陳申, Guangshe jishi 光社紀事 [On the Light Society] (Beijing: Zhongguo minzu sheying yishu chubanshe, 2017). For more of Liu Bannong’s work, see Beijing Guangshe nianjian, vol. 2. See Lang Jingshan’s inscriptions on two photographs written in 1957, in Xiao Yongsheng 蕭永盛, Huayi, jijin,



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Lang Jingshan 畫意集錦 郎靜山 [Pictorialism, Composition, Lang Jingshan] (Taipei: Xiongshi tushu, 2004), 45. Feng Zikai 豐子愷, “Meishu de zhaoxiang: Gei ziji hui zhaoxiang de pengyou men” 美術 的照相：給自己會照相的朋友們 [Pictorial photography: To friends who can take photography], in Zhongguo jiandai sheying yishu meixue wenxuan, ed. Long Xizu, 156–65, esp.165. Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 6–7, 200–212. See also Gombrich’s classical work on the roles stereotyped figures and formulas played in art history in representing the external world. E. M. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, millennium ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). The image of the lonely boat is credited to Chi Qinghua 池清華 (active in the 1930s). Shi zhi ying 詩之影 [The shadow of poetry] (fig. 6.5), Dazhong huabao 11 (1934). For Wei Yingwu’s 韋應物 poem “Chuzhou xijian” 滁州西澗 [West stream in Chuzhou], see Quan Tang shi, 3: 1999. Li Shifang, Sishui liunian 似水流年 (fig. 6.6), Tuwen 圖文 [Gravure Monthly] 1 (1936). For discussion of the framing and presentation style of landscape art photography, see Timothy J. Shea, “Re-framing the Ordinary: The Place and Time of ‘Art Photography’ in Liangyou, 1926–1930,” in Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 54–66. For a discussion of the meaning of space in words and print culture, see Water J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New York: Routledge, 2002), 120–35. Wang Jiezhi, “Huihua yu sheying” 繪畫與攝影 [Painting and photography], Zhongguo meishu hui jikan 中國美術會季刊 [The Chinese Art Society Quarterly] 1, no. 3 (1936): 44–46. For a parallel study of the concept of “tastes” (shumi 趣味) and the impact of Chinese aesthetic ideas on Japanese art photography, see Mikiko Hirayama, “  ‘Elegance’ and ‘Discipline’: The Significance of Sino-Japanese Aesthetic Concepts in the Critical Terminology of Japanese Photography, 1903–1923,” in Reflecting Truth: Japanese Photography in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere and Mikiko Hirayama (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2004), 98–108. The phrase jijin zhaoxiang first appeared in 1941. See Xiao Yongsheng, Huayi, jijin, Lang Jingshan, 135. Lang experimented with composite photography in the early 1930s and successfully created his first work in 1931. His first publicly recognized work of this type is Majestic Solitude (Chunshu qifeng 春樹奇峰) (1934). It is a composite work from two negatives that won international fame. Guoli lishi bowuguan 國立歷史博物館, Lang Jingshan bailing songshou sheying huigu ji 郎靜山百齡嵩壽攝影回顧集 [Chin-san Long’s 100th Birthday Commemorative Photo Album] (Taipei: National History Museum, 1990), 92. Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, Zhongguo yishu jingshen Shi Tao zhi yi yanjiu 中國藝術精神 石濤之 一研究 [The Artistic Spirit of China, and a Study of Shi Tao] (Beijing: Jiuzhou chubanshe 2014), 155–212. There are numerous accounts of qiyun in traditional theories of landscape painting. For instance, see Wang Shizhen, “Yiyuan zhiyan lunhua” 藝苑卮言論畫 [Accounts of painting], in Zhongguo hualun leibian 1: 115. Qi (breath, air, or vital force) and Yun (consonance), a compound phrase first proposed by Xie He, denotes a synergy of complementary masculine and feminine beauty, referring to the spiritual state of human

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beings (and later to flowers and birds, animals and landscapes) in Chinese painting theory. See Daan Pan, The Lyrical Resonance Between Chinese Poets and Painters: The Tradition and Poetics of Tihuashi (New York: Cambria, 2010), 201–2; Chen Chuanxi, Zhongguo huihua meixue shi, 91–104. 52. “六法之難，氣韻為最，意居筆先，妙在畫外  .  .  .  .  .  .” The English article by Chinsan Long [Lang Jingshan], “How to Make Composite Pictures,” was published in The Photographic Journal (1942) and is reprinted in the multilingual version. Lang Jingshan, “How to Make Composite Pictures,” in Jingshan jijin zuofa 靜山集錦做法, Techniques in Composite Picture-Making (Taipei: China Series Publishing Committee, 1958). In this edition, “rhythmic vitality” (Herbert A. Giles’s translation) was adopted for rendering qiyun shengdong. See Herbert A. Giles, Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art, 2nd ed. (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1918), 29. For a detailed analysis of the use of qiyun in Lang’s photography, see Liao Hsin-Tien 廖新田, “Qiyun zhiyong: Lang Jingshan sheying de jijin xushu yu meixue nanti 氣韻之用: 郎靜山攝影的集錦敘述與美學難題”[The exertion of aura: Chinese photographer Long Chin-Shang’s photomontage and the aesthetic dilemma,” Taiwan meishu 台灣美術 [Journal of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art] 103 (2016): 4–23; article title in English original. For more discussion of Lang’s “six laws,” see Edwin Lai, “The Life and Art Photography of Lang Jingshan (1892–1995)” (PhD diss., Hong Kong University, 2000), 165–77. 53. Xu Fuguan, Zhongguo yishu jingshen, 196, 207. For the account of zhen shanshui, see Guo Xi and Guo Si, Linquan gaozhi ji, in Siku quanshu, 812: 573–579. 54. See the entry on “Lun qiyun” 論氣韻 [On Qi and Rhythms], Gu Ningyuan 顧凝遠, “Huayin” 畫引 [On Painting], Zhongguo hualun leibian 1: 118. 55. Wu Hung, Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 178. 56. Lang Jingshan, “Composite Pictures and Chinese Art.” English original. 57. For a helpful psychological discussion of the functions of mental imagery in memory, thought, and art, see Allan Paivio, “The Mind’s Eye in Arts and Science,” Poetics 12 (1983): 1–18. 58. Lang Jingshan, “How to Make Composite Pictures.” 59. See William Schaefer, Shadow Modernism: Photography, Writing, and Space in Shanghai, 1925–1937 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017), 170–76. For an interesting discussion of how clouds are used as an iconic element in Correggio’s painting, see Hubert Damisch, A Theory of Cloud: Toward a History of Painting, trans. Janet Lloyd (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002). 60. Lang Jingshan, “Composite Pictures and Chinese Art.” See also Lang Jingshan 郎靜山, “Jijin jianshuo” 集錦簡說, Jijin zhaoxiang gaiyao 集錦照相概要 [On Composition Photography] (Shanghai, 1941). Lang Jingshan, “Liushi nian lai zhi Zhongguo sheying” 六十年來之中國 攝影 [Chinese photography in the last sixty years], in Ershi shiji zhi yishu 二十世紀之藝 術 [Twentieth-Century Art], ed. Ye Gongchao 葉公超 (Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1967), 370–420, esp. 382. When he was young, Lang was fascinated with transformation-body photography. Lang Jingshan, “Zhongguo sheying de fazhan” 中國攝影的發展 [The Developments of Chinese Photography], Hansheng 漢聲 [Echo Magazine] 1 (1978): 119. For more discussion on photomontage, see Roberta Wue, “China in the World: On Photography, Montages, and the Magic Lantern,” History of Photography 41, no. 2 (2017): 171–87.



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61. Zhang Daqian, “Jingshan jijin: Zhang xu” 靜山集錦·張序 [Zhang’s preface to Jingshan’s composition], in Jingshan jijin 靜山集錦 [Symphony in Black and White] (Shanghai: Tongyun shuwu, 1948). See the discussion of the artistic friendship between Zhang and Lang in Mia Yinxing Liu, “The Allegorical Landscape: Lang Jingshan’s Photography in Context,” Archives of Asian Art 65, nos. 1–2 (2015): 1–24, esp. 15–18. 62. The work Xiaofeng caiyue or Spring Fantasia has been reprinted in different editions with bilingual descriptions, the citation of Liu Yong’s entire poem, and the record of exhibitions. See for instance, Lang Jingshan shihua yiqu sheying tekan 郎靜山詩畫意趣攝影特刊 [Idyllic Composite Pictures by Chin-san Long] (Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 1988), 92–93. 63. For analyses of three-layered spatial composition in early landscape painting and illustrations, see Wen C. Fong, “Riverbank: From Connoisseurship to Art History,” in Issues of Authenticity in Chinese Painting, ed. Judith G. Smith and Wen C. Fong (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), 259–92, esp. 269. From the end of the Northern Song, the pictorial space became more continuous, usually connected by mist or an atmosphere that surrounds the objects (273). 64. For discussion of this compositional formula, see Harrie A. Vanderstappen, The Landscape Painting of China: Musing of a Journeyman, ed. Roger E. Covey (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014), 182. 65. François Jullien, In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics, trans. Paula M. Varsano (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007), esp. 45. 66. Jacobi and Kingsley, Painting with Light, 56–57. 67. Robinson himself considered this work a failure. Other Western photographers who used photographs to illustrate literary works include Julia Margaret Cameron, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Laure Albin-Guillot, and Germaine Krull. See Paul Edwards, “Henry Peach Robinson and the Poets,” Rivista di Letterature Moderne e Comparate 51, no. 2 (April–June 1998): 189–210, esp. 192. 68. Another good example for comparison is the work by Wen Weiqiu (active in the 1930s). It stages a modern couple’s parting beside a pond and quotes Liu Yong’s poem “To the Tune Yu Linling” in its entirety beneath the photo. See Wen Weiqiu 溫偉秋, Shangxin ci huayi 傷心詞畫意 [Heart-wrenching lyrics and pictorial effect], Liangyou 114 (1935): 44. 69. See Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (1968; repr. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 141–48. 70. For a discussion of Robinson’s composition photography in relation to realism, see Daniel A. Novak, “Photographic Fictions: Nineteenth-Century Photography and the Novel Form,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 43, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 23–30, esp. 25. 71. For a discussion of Lang’s recycling of his favorite symbolic rowboat in his landscape works to produce different effects, see Mia Yinxing Liu, “The Allegorical Landscape,” 12–13. Edwin Lai asserts that Lang’s composite photography was less rich than his earlier art photographs due to this reuse and the consistency of his photographic production. Edwin Lai, “The Life and Art Photography of Lang Jingshan (1892–1995),” 216. See also Monica Jane Butler, “Between Tradition and Modernity: The Composite Photographs of Lang Jingshan,” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 12, no. 1 (2012): 1–15.

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72. Lang Jingshan, Gumu xianqin古木仙禽 (fig. 6.9), Jingshan jijin zuofa. See Liao Hsin-Tien’s discussion of this work, “Qiyun zhiyong,” 15. 73. For a discussion of syntax in Tang poetry, see Yu-Kung Kao and Tsu-Lin Mei, “Syntax, Diction, and Imagery in T’ang Poetry,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 31 (1971): 49–136. 74. Su Shi, “Shu Wang Dingguo suocang Wang Jinqing hua zhuose shan ershou” 書王定國所 藏王晉卿畫著色山二首 [Writings about Wang Dingguo’s collection of Wang Jinqing’s landscape paintings], Su Dongpo quanji 蘇東坡全集 [The complete works of Su Dongpo], 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 1986), 1: 244.

7. INSCRIBING REMEMBRANCE: LYRICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL ENVISIONING OF THE PAST 1. “若大景致，若干亭榭，無字標題，任是花柳山水，也斷不能生色.” Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 and Gao E 高鶚, Honglou meng 紅樓夢, 4 vols. (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1973) 1: 185. For a detailed and vivid description of the process of naming and inscription, see Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹, The Story of the Stone (or The Dream of the Red Chamber), trans. David Hawkes (London: Penguin, 1973), 1: 324–47. 2. See, for instance, George Lakeoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 3. This term is borrowed from Murray Krieger, Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 11. 4. Chi Xiao, “Lyric Archi-Occasion: Coexistence of ‘Now’ and Then,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 15 (1993): 17–35. 5. Stephen Owen, Remembrances: The Experience of the Past in Classical Chinese Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), esp. 18–22. 6. Wu Hung, A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), esp. 18–19. 7. For a succinct discussion of photograph and memory, see Olga Shevchenko, “ ‘The Mirror with a Memory’: Placing Photography in Memory Studies,” in Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies, ed. Anna Lisa Tota and Trever Hagen (London: Routledge, 2016), 272–87. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously called daguerreotype the “mirror with a memory” in 1859. 8. See Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), 35–45. 9. Cai Tao 蔡絛 writes: “This is not necessarily the painter’s original meaning, but the poet expands upon it. Thus the poet’s mere description of the scene is not as good as a full rendition of feelings. This is the gist of inscriptions” (且畫工意初未必然，而詩人廣大之， 乃知作詩者，徒言其景，不若盡其情，此品題之津梁也). Cai Tao, “Xiqing shihua” 西 清詩話 [Poetry talks of xiqing], in Song shihua jiyi 宋詩話輯佚 [Collection of Lost Poetry Talks of the Song], ed. Guo Shaoyu 郭紹虞 (Taipei: Wenquange chubanshe, 1972), 358. 10. Ouyang Huiqiang 歐陽慧鏘, Sheying zhinan 攝影指南 [A Guide to Photography] (Shanghai: Baoji zhaoxiangguan, 1923). Kang and Zhang Yuanji 張元濟 wrote forewords to the photographic instruction manual by Ouyang. For Kang Youwei as calligrapher and artist, see Aida Yuen Wong, The Other Kang Youwei: Calligrapher, Art Activist, and Aesthetic



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Reformer in Modern China (Leiden: Brill, 2016). For the history of Powkee Studio, see Yi Gu, “Powkee and the Era of Large Studios,” in Portraiture and Early Studio Photography in China and Japan, ed. Luke Gartlan and Roberta Wue (London: Routledge, 2017), 59–76. 11. These are Zhang Yanyuan’s 張彥遠 words, cited in Long Xizu, ed., Zhongguo jindai sheying yishu meixue wenxuan 中國近代攝影藝術美學文選 [Selected Essays on the Aesthetics of Modern Chinese Photography] (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin meishu chubanshe, 1988), 87. 12. For instance, Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 writes, “ancient paintings depict ideas, not shapes” (古畫畫意不畫形), cited in Chen Chuanxi, Zhongguo huihua meixue shi 中國繪畫美學史 [Aesthetic History of Chinese Painting] (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 2012), 110. 13. After Kang’s encounter with Western painting in 1917–1918, in “Wanmu caotang canghuamu” 萬木草堂藏畫目 [Wanmu Catalog of Collected Paintings], Kang praised the realistic style of painting and called for reform in Chinese painting, which in his assessment was in decline. See Wong, The Other Kang Youwei, 155–85. 14. Ouyang Huiqiang, Sheying zhinan. 15. Long adopts Lessing’s concept to comment on the photograph. Long Xizu, ed., Zhongguo jindai sheying yishu meixue wenxuan, 87. 16. Ouyang Huiqiang, Jiading Kuixingge 嘉定魁星閣 (fig. 7.1); “水靜如鏡，忽遇小舟過處， 激成湯紋，幾疑身歷其境.” Ouyang Huiqiang, Sheying zhinan. 17. “洋場風景助以華式搖船令人起歷史之感想.” Ouyang Huiqiang, Sheying zhinan. 18. John Berger, Another Way of Telling (1982; repr. New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 89–90. 19. For more biographical information, see Jin Youming 金酉鳴, “Yi wode zengwai zufu Luo Bonian” 憶我的曾外祖父駱伯年 [Recollecting my great-grandfather Luo Bonian], in Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, ed. Luo Bonian 駱伯年 (Beijing: Beijing Lianhe chuban gongsi, 2016). 20. Luo Bonian archive; unpublished materials. In 1937, Luo participated in a small exhibition of photography, “Friendship Photo Exhibition” (聯誼影展), with two friends in Shanghai. Many inscriptions were made soon after the exhibition. 21. “鏡頭得來神秘，遠勝筆端.” Luo Bonian archive; unpublished materials. 22. See Jin Youming, “Yi wode zengwai zufu Luo Bonian.” Nearly three hundred silver gelatin prints survive in the Luo Bonian archives. In addition to traditional lyrical subject matter, Luo also made some works in the style of German modernists Albert Renger-Patzsch or Lotte Goldstern-Fuchs, exploring the “nonrepresentational and performative process of the medium itself.” See Stephanie H. Tung, “Luo Bonian: Three Approaches,” in Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, ed. Luo Bonian. 23. I use Burton Watson’s translation here, which Weinberger describes as “a telegraphic minimalism.” Eliot Weinberger, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (with More Ways) (1987; repr. New York: New Directions, 2016), 28. 24. These are Liu Chenweng’s 劉辰翁 words. Gao Bing 高棅 ed., Tangshi pinhui 唐詩品匯 [Appreciation of Tang Poetry], 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1982), 1: 398. 25. There is one more example of inscription by Chen Lu on Luo’s photograph, a few years before he was assassinated. See A weeping willow in drizzle tied to a beautiful boat (Xiyu chuiyang xi huachuan 細雨垂楊系畫船), Luo Bonian’s photograph, Xianxiang 13 (1936). The line, quoted from the Song poet Fan Chengda 范成大, is at the top of the picture. For Fan Chengda’s

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poem “Hengtang” 橫塘, see Quan Song shi 全宋詩 [Complete Song Poetry], ed., Beijing Daxue Guwenxian yanjiusuo, 72 vols. (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1991–98), 41: 25770. 26. Su Shi, Su Shi wenji 蘇軾文集 [The Collected Essays of Su Shi], 6 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 1: 8. 27. For the allusion of manchu, see Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 218. 28. Jennifer Green-Lewis, Victorian Photography, Literature, and the Invention of Modern Memory: Already the Past (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 41–42. 29. Huang Yanpei had recently resigned from his post as commissioner of the Jiangsu Educational Bureau. He simultaneously worked as a special travel reporter for Shenbao, recruited by his friend Shi Liangcai 史量才 (1880–1934). The travel accounts later became a two-volume book. Huang Yanpei, Huang Yanpei kaocha jiaoyu riji 黃炎培考察教育日記 [Huang Yanpei’s Diary of Education Inspection] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1914). 30. Huang Yanpei and Lü Yishou 呂頤壽, Huangshan 黃山 (Yellow Mountain) (Zhongguo mingsheng, series 1) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, December 1914); Lushan 廬山 (Lu Mountain) (series 2) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, February 1915); Xihu 西湖 (West Lake) (1: series 4) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, April 1915); and Huang Yanpei and Zhuang Yu 莊俞, Taishan 泰山(Tai Mountain) (series 6) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, December 1915). Zhongguo mingshen, twenty-two volumes printed in collotype, was put together by notable scholars and officials of the era, Huang Yanpei, Fu Zengxiang 傅增湘, Jiang Weiqiao 蔣維喬, and Zhang Yuanji 張元濟. 31. Shanghai tushuguan, ed., Shanghai tushuguan cang lishi yuanzhao [Original Photographs at the Shanghai Library], 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2007), 2: 311–23. 32. Claire Roberts, Photography and China (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 63. 33. The poem included in the diary is slightly different. It is titled “Ye Yanling ci” 謁嚴陵祠 [Paying a Visit to Yanling Temple]. Huang Yanpei, Huang Yanpei kaocha jiaoyu riji, 1: 188. According to the colophon, Huang claims that he both shot the photograph and wrote the inscription himself, but professional photographer Lü Yishou was with him. 34. Huang Yanpei, Huang Yanpei kaocha jiaoyu riji, 1: 186–87. 35. Lang Jingshan advocated the composition of “far distance vision” in photography. Lang Jingshan, Jingshan jijin zuofa 靜山集錦做法 [Techniques in Composite Picture-Making] (Taipei: The China Series Publishing Committee, 1958). 36. See “Sheying zhi yanjiu” 攝影之研究 [Studies of photography], Jingwu huabao 精武畫報 7 (1927). In its discussion of “dianzhui” 點綴 [decoration], the article mentions the example of the geese, which were raised by the studios in Hangzhou for photography shoots. 37. The photograph’s title Hongying qingling 紅影青靈 is inscribed in clerical style inside the frame of the photograph by the photographer, signed as Yiwu 亦吾 [Zhao Fuchen]. Yiwu, Hongying qingling, with Da’an Jushi’s inscriptions (fig.7.9), Sheying huabao 攝影畫報 [The Pictorial Weekly] 5 (1925). 38. Chen had gone to the Dunhuang Caves in the far western part of China with an American expedition in 1925, and they had frequently encountered camel teams. The result of this trip was a book by Chen Wanli, Xixing riji 西行日記 (Beijing: Pushe, 1926), but unfortunately all the photographs of ancient sites and antiquities were lost.



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39. “今別京華年餘。聞此雄偉壯觀之城已被毀於所謂整理市政者，鈴聲依然，城 郭全非，觀此畫不勝悵惘.” Huang Zhenyu 黃振玉, Guitu 歸途, with Chen Wanli’s inscriptions (fig. 7.10), in Chen Shen 陳申, Guangshe jishi 光社紀事 [On the Light Society] (Beijing: Zhongguo minzu sheying yishu chubanshe, 2017), 53. For a discussion of Huang and Chen’s collaborations, see Chen Shen, Guangshe jishi, 52–54. Chen Wanli wrote another inscription for Lang Jingshan’s work “Before the race” (Shima 試馬). See Liangyou, 25 (1928). 40. Bennett, Empathetic Vision, 36. 41. Shao Yuanchong 邵元沖, Xibei lansheng 西北攬勝 [China’s Northwest, a Pictorial Survey] (Nanjing: Zhengzhong shuju, 1936). The English title is original. Zhang Mojun 張 默君, Xichui yinhen 西陲吟痕 [The Traces of Chanting in the Western Borderland] (Nanjing: Guomin yinwu ju, 1935). Joan Judge has offered an original, detailed account of the historical circumstances in which the Xichui yinhen was put together and engaged in gendered analyses of Zhang’s cultural activities. See Joan Judge, “The Fate of the Late Imperial ‘Talented Women’: Gender and Historical Change in Early-Twentieth-Century China,” in Transformations: Gender in Chinese History, ed. Beverly Bossler (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 139–60, esp. 141–48; Joan Judge, “Jingtou beihou de nüzi: Gudai yizhi, shixue lunwang ji sheying de zai meijiehua” 鏡頭背後的女子： 古代遺址、詩學淪亡及攝影的再媒介化 [The woman behind the camera: Ancient ruins, poetic loss and photographic remediation], in Kanjian yu chupeng xingbie: Jinxiandai Zhongguo yishushi xin shiye 看見與觸碰性別：近現代中國藝術史新視野 [Seeing and Touching Gender: New Perspectives on Modern Chinese Art], ed. Lai Yu-chih et al (Taipei: Rock, 2020), 230–47. 42. Shao Yuanchong, Xibei lansheng, 2. 43. Li Liu, “Who Were the Ancestors? The Origins of Chinese Ancestral Cult and Racial Myths,” Antiquity 73 (1999): 602–13; James Leibold, “Competing Narratives of Racial Unity in Republican China: From the Yellow Emperor to Peking Man,” Modern China 32, no. 2 (2006): 181–220. 44. Another prominent KMT leader, Wu Zhihui 吳稚暉 (1865–1953), wrote the book title in seal script calligraphy. Li Jinxun 黎錦勛, a member of the film department of KMT’s propaganda bureau, also participated in the tour. Shao mentions making and editing the film several times in his diary. Shao Yuanchong, Shao Yuanchong riji 邵元沖日記 (1924–1936) [Shao Yuanchong’s Diary, 1924–1936], annotated Wang Yangqing 王仰清 and Xu Yinghu 許映湖 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1990), 1232, 1308, 1309. 45. “Huangdi shouzhi bai” 黃帝手植柏 (fig. 7.11) and “Yang Feichi” 楊妃池 (fig. 7.12), in Shao Yuanchong, Xibei lansheng, 4, 37. Shao describes the temple in ruins, cypresses, and his sentiments in detail. See Shao Yuanchong, Shao Yuanchong riji, 1235–36. For the travel account, see 1234–1303. 46. Owen, Remembrances, 2. 47. For the mode of emplotment in historical narrative, see Hayden White, Tropics of Discourses (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 48. Four of Zhang’s poem are included in Shao Yuanchong, Xibei lansheng, 10, 25, 42, 54. Shao Yuanchong believed that “national culture” (minzu wenhua 民族文化) played a cohesive role in uniting different ethnic groups to form national identities and solicit

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“historical longing” (sigu zhi youqing 思古之幽情). The first part of the book recounts the memorial event for the Yellow Emperor, and the photographs conform easily to the narrative; in the latter part of the book, the narrative plays a diminished role as the images exhibit exoticism and ethnographic diversity. 49. Even though on a few occasions Zhang posed with her camera in hand for a picture with her husband (Shao Yuanchong, Xibei lansheng, 13; Zhang Mojun, Xichui yinhen, 12), all of the photographs included in Xichui yinhen are the same as photos in Xibei lansheng, credited to Xu Shishen. 50. Zhang’s poems in Xichui yinhen are reprinted in Daning Tang ji 大凝堂集 [Collection of the Daning Hall] (Taipei: Zhonghua congshu,1960). 51. For a discussion of the draft-cursive style, see Qianshen Bai, Fu Shan’s World: The Transformation of Chinese Calligraphy in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center, 2003), 246–47. 52. See Judge, “Jintou beihou de nüzi.” 53. “Huangdi shouzhi bai” 黃帝手植柏 (fig. 7.13) and Zhang Mojun’s “Qiaoling ci Yiru yun, fengjian Puquan, Lizi, Mengshuo” 橋陵次翼如均奉簡溥泉力子孟碩 (fig. 7.14), Xichui yinhen, 4, 5. 54. For Shao’s poem, reprinted in figure 7.11. 55. For the photos and the poem, see also Zhang Mojun, Xichui yinhen, 22–23. For Bai Juyi’s “Chang henge,” see Peng Dingqiu et al., eds., Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 [Complete Tang Poems], 15 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 7: 4826–30. 56. For the use of photography and institutional practices, see John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 57. See Shao Yuanchong, Xibei lansheng, part 1. 58. Liu Fu, Bannong tanying半農談影 [Bannong on Photography] (Beijing: Zhenguang sheyingshe, 1927), 22. 59. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964), 22–23.

EPILOGUE 1. See Ho Fan’s video interview, Gannon Burgett, “Fan Ho’s Fantastic Black-and-White Street Photographs of 1950s Hong Kong,” https://petapixel.com/2014/08/25/fan-hos-incredibleblack-and-white-street-photography-of-1950s-hong-kong/. Ho relates his practices to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s concept of the “decisive moment,” but he redefines this moment by suggesting that he can re/capture the fleeting moment many times to obtain the essence of the moment. For more examples of his play with image and words, see Ho Fan, A Hong Kong Memoir (Hong Kong: Asia One Product, 2018). 2. Li Bai 李白, “Xuanzhou Xietiao lou jianbie jiaoshu shuyun” 宣州謝朓樓餞別校書叔雲 [Farewell to Secretary Shuyun at Xietiao Tower in Xuanzhou], Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 [Complete Tang Poems], ed. Peng Dingqiu et al., 15 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 3: 1814. The English title of figure E.1 is original.

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Epilogue   343 3. See Sarah Greene, “Fan Ho: Biographical Notes,” in Fan Ho, Portrait of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: WE Press, 2017), 202–13. 4. “主觀的真實是攝影者內在的心眼中所感見的一切聲色形貌的印象.” Fan Ho, Portrait of Hong Kong, 91. 5. See Ma Liang and Cong Yun 叢勻, “Chenzhong er langman de liliang” 沉重而浪漫的力 量 [Profound yet romantic power], in Ma Liang 馬良 by Ma Liang (Hong Kong: Voutu, 2013), 346. 6. Ma Liang, Ershou Tangshi 二手唐詩 [Secondhand Tang poems], in Ma Liang, 252–61. 7. Ma Liang explains that he used the fishing rod to hang his own childish calligraphy in the set. Ma Liang, Ma Liang, 346. For the poem, see Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元,“Jiangxue” 江雪 [River Snow], in Quan Tang shi 6: 3961; Burton Watson, ed. and trans., The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 282. 8. Ma Liang, Ma Liang, 345–46. Ma spent three months creating fifteen works with Tang poems; only nine were published as a series. 9. Gu Zheng 顧錚, “Jinqing xugou” 盡情虛構 [Indulging in fictionality], in Shuma sheying 數碼攝影 [Chip Foto-Video Digital] 1 (2015): 34–35. 10. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 11. Henk Oosterling, “Sens(a)ble Intermediality and interesse: Towards an Ontology of the In-Between,” Intermédialitiés 1, no. 1 (2003): 29–46, esp. 30. 12. See “Maleonn’s Strange World,” Artslant, January 25, 2010, https://www.artslant.com/ny /articles/show/13140-maleonns-strange-world. The artist’s parents named him after the mythical character and painter Ma Liang, who possesses a magic brush in the story “Ma Liang with magic brush” (Shenbi Ma Liang 神筆馬良).

Index

Page numbers in italics indicate photographs. actors: opera, 52, 152; photographs of, 128–38, 131; with dan role, 129, 308n24. See also Feng Chunhang; Jia Biyun; Lu Zimei; Mei Lanfang advertisements: Agfa films, 113–14, 114, 305n1; photography studio, 46, 47; Shanghai Society for Psychical Study, 186 affect, visuality and, 26, 27, 115, 184, 194, 255; with lyrical, 115 agnosticism, 208, 209, 329n88 analogical perfection, 21 analogon, 20 artistic vista (yijing), camera and, 214–15 art photography (meishu sheying), 213, 221. See also pictorial photography as a painting, so also a poem (ut pictura poesis), 2 “as if” effects, 6–7, 232 Auden, W. H., 6 aurality, visuality and, 2 autobiography: in context, 74–78; gendered voice and image, 98–109; with images as temporal passages, 78–90; with self encountered as other, 90–98 “Bamboo-stick Songs from Hankou” (Luo Han), 70

Bannong on Photography (Bannong tanying) (Liu Bannong), 214–15, 262 Banyue (Half Moon), 60, 117, 294n65 Bao Tianxiao, 117–18, 121, 123, 152, 312n17, 313n22, 315n41 Barthes, Roland, 9, 11, 21, 93, 115, 120, 279n50; Camera Lucida, 303n41,307n41, 324n33 Bazin, André, 20 “Beautiful girls indulging in the homeland of water lilies” (Lang Jingshan), 176 beauty: of conceptual expression, 229; woman persona, 28, 55, 107, 133, 135, 145, 164. See also gender; nudes beggar persona, 47, 50, 51, 55 Beijing Opera, 52, 56, 129, 308n34 Beiyang huabao (Pei-yang Pictorial News), 167–68, 169, 170 Bejeweled Mirror of Romance (fengyue baojian), 161 Benjamin, Walter, 85, 90–91, 94, 279n53 Berger, John, 14, 242 bian (transformation), 52, 68, 70–71, 73 bianwen (transformation-text), 71 bianxiang (transformation scenes), 71, 162, 291n40 “Biographical Poems” (benshi shi) (Su Manshu), 124–25

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INDEX

“Bizarre, Ghostly Shadow, A” (Lingxue congzhi), 192 bodies: Dharma body, 170; gendered identity and, 99–100, 104, 107, 150–51, 157, 170, 166–80; inscription of social power on, 166; parts, fetishization of, 171; transformation-body (huashen), 27, 44, 50, 672, 132, 153, 289n23, 295n65, 296n77, 336n60. See also nudes Book of Changes, 210, 282n70 Book of Songs,176, 319n75 bookworm persona, 50, 55, 97 Bourdieu, Pierre, 85 Bruegel, Pieter, 6 brush and shutter, 23 Buddhism, 18, 27, 35, 42, 44, 54, 58, 62, 65, 66, 70, 71, 88–80, 185–86, 199, 205, 280n57, 288n18, 291n40, 315n37; buke siyi and, 209–10, 329n90; female sexuality and, 161, 167, 170, 177; time and, 82, 93, 106–07, 109; trikāya theory and, 64–65 Building Materials Fill the River (Luo Bonian), with inscription by Yu Dafu, 245, 246 buke siyi, 203, 209–10, 329n90 Byron (Lord), 128 By the ripples (Huang Bore and Laosheng), 173, 174 Cai Zhefu, 122, 124, 126 calligraphy: clerical script (lishu), 259; draftcursive calligraphy (zhangcao), 259; Cao Rulin, 13; Chen Lu, 249; Chen Wanli, 255; Ho Fan, 265–66, 266; Hu Shi, 77, 299n3; Huang Yanpei, 251; Huo Jiechen, 128; Jian Youwen, 81; Liu Bannong, 225; Lu Xun, 75, 299nl; Ma Liang, 269; painting, poetry and, 3–4, 17, 274n14; pictorial space and, 249–50; text of Aihua zhuren in, 139; Su Manshu, 117, 118, 119, 120–21; Wu Zhiying, 304n60; Yi Ru, 253; Yi Xuan, 11; Yu Dafu, 244, 246, 247, 248; Zhang Mojun, 259, 261; Zhou Lianxia, 142; Zhu Wonong, 141. See also inscriptions; sanjue

camera: artistic vision and, 214–15; copy theory and, 214; filmic writing and, 6; limits of, 218; lyrical eye and eye of, 18–24, 222; portable, 12; as soul-arresting machine, 193 Cao Rulin, 13, 13–14 Cao Xiyu, 242 Cao Xueqin, 60, 62, 161, 237–38. See also Dream of the Red Chamber Cao Zhi, 67 Carp (Li) (Liu Bannong), 224 Cartesian perspectivism, 19–20, 283n77 Cen Can, 259 Cézanne, Paul, 19 Chang’e (goddess), 149; “Chang’e leaving for the Moon” (Chang’e benyue), 56 Chang Jian, 220–21 Chang Shengzi, 190–91, 195–97, 196, 199, 205 Chen Cuina, 59, 59, 295n65 Chen Duxiu, 123,125, 183, 217, 308n23, 320n3 Chen Feishi, 130 Chen Guangfu, 76 Cheng Yi, 215 Cheng Zhanlu, 12 Chen Jifang, 189–90, 324n26 Chen Lu, 248, 249, 339n25 Chen Shizeng, 217, 332n20 Chen Wanli, 213, 223, 239, 254–56, 255, 334nn37–38, 340n38 Chen Yi, 185 China Photography (Zhongguo sheying), 219 China’s Northwest, a Pictorial Survey (Xibei lansheng), 256–59, 262, 341n41 Chinese Daily News. See Shenbao Chinese Girl’s Progress (Nü xuebao), 101 Chinese Kodakery, The (Keda zazhi), 222, 333n33 Chunhang Collection, The (Chunhang ji), 129 Cilang, 165, 319n76 Cixi (Empress Dowager), 47; as Guanyin, 48 ciying (shadows of song lyrics), 142 ciyun (matching rhymes), 124 classical-style poetry, 4, 24–27; ci (song lyric), 79, 80, 118, 140, 154, 232, 295n68;

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INDEX   347 ciyun (matching rhymes), 124; dayou shi (doggerel), 80; guti shi (ancient-style poetry), 26; jiju (verbatim quotations), 128, 134, 309n43; jinti shi (recent-style poetry), 26; jueju (quatrain), 26, 66, 74, 151, 244, 268; lüshi (regulated verse), 26, 105, 132; zan (encomium), 8, 12, 93, 132, 160, 300n6; zhuzhi ci (bamboo-stalk songs), 70, 147–48; ziti xiaoxiang (poems on the portrait of the self), 77; ziti xiaozhao (poems on the portrait of the self), 77–109 cognition, 7, 127, 228; perception and, 21 Collection of Poems Matching Manshu’s Rhymes (Manshu shiyun chouji), 127–28 colophons: 12–13, 279n51 Comical Journal, The (Huaji zazhi), 43, 81, 288n19, 297n88 commodification, 114–15, 123; courtesans and, 147 composite photography (jijin zhaoxiang): Fairy Bird, 235, 236; The Lady of Shalott, 234, 234–35; qi and rhythms in, 229–36; Spring Fantasia, 232–35, 233. See also Lang Jingshan comprehensive observation (guan), 18, 20, 282nn69–70 Confucianism: self, ideology and, 27, 77, 82, 109, 156, 192; time and, 85 Cosmopolitan, The (Dazhong huabao), 221–22 “Costume photograph of young Guifen, courtesan from Nanjing, The” (Xiaoshuo xinbao), 36 “Costume photographs of well-known boudoir ladies in Hangzhou playing the fairies of the Jade Pool” (Youxi zazhi), 62, 63 costume photos (huazhuang zhao), 65; advertisements, 46; cross-dressing and, 46, 52–54, 53, 292n47; “The editor’s playful images,” 50, 51; gender-crossing, 46, 52–54, 53, 105, 106–07, 292n47, 293n50; “Novelist Zhou Shoujuan,” 52, 53; “Picture of being mysterious,” 54; “Picture of wishing Heaven to quickly turn me into a girl,” 53; “Qian Huafo’s transformation tableaux,”

50, 51; self and image with, 46–55; Seventh Prince Feeding Deer, 47, 48; Yuan Shikai in fisherman’s garb, 48–49, 49, 291n36 costuming (huazhuang): for detectives or zhentan huazhuang, 291n40; in entertainment tabloids, 52; gendercrossing, 46, 52–54, 53, 105, 106–07, 292n47, 293n50; for photo shoots or zhaoxiang huazhuang, 291n40, 292n47, 295nn67–69; theatrical, 291n40 courtesan albums, 16, 35, 37, 152, 315n41; Haishang jinghong ying, 313n22; Xin jinghong ying, 313n22; Yanlian huaying, 288n16, 313n22 courtesans: commodification and, 147; “The costume photograph of young Guifen, courtesan from Nanjing,” 36; culture and photo shoots, 55–56, 312n17, 313n22, 315n41; in entertainment tabloids, 147; entreating-the-self photos and, 35–38; Fan Caixia’s transformation-bodies, 42, 43; 1904 postcard, Sze Yuen Ming & Co., 37–38, 38; in photographs, 146–54, 161, 162; with photos in book format, 153–54; “The purpose of a courtesan giving photos to a patron,” 150, 151; “Transformation-body of the famous flower Luofei from Shanghai,” 40, 41; “The twin shadows of Hu Feiyun,” 36 creativity: 35, 63, 71, 73, 225–26; memory and, 231 cross-dressing, 52–55, 56, 60, 62, 106, 132; costume photos and, 46, 52–54, 53, 105, 106–07, 292n47, 293n50; gender and, 50, 52, 55, 104–06, 305n64; “Inscribed on My Portrait in Male Attire,” 104–08; men, 52–54, 53, 60, 61, 62, 292n47; “On Zhou Shoujuan’s Crossed-Dressed Photograph,” 67 Cunsi tu (visualization diagram), 71–72, 298n96 “cypress planted by Yellow Emperor, A”: in Xibei lansheng, 258; in Xichui yinhen, 260 Da’an Jushi (Yi Ru), 253, 253, 254, 255, 340n37 daguerreotype, 68, 277n32, 338n7

348 

P 

INDEX

Dahua lieshi (Jian Youwen), 80–81, 81 Dai Kedun, 95 Daily Pictorial (Tuhua ribao), 40, 147–50 “Daiyu burying flowers” (Daiyu zanghua), 56, 60–62, 61, 293n55, 295n67 Dan Duyu, 171–73, 172, 318n68, 326n56 Daoism, 186; Daodejing, 210; with bright mirror, 72; female sexual transgression and, 161; influence of, 27, 44, 62, 65, 199, 200–201; priest persona, 50, 161; “The Visualization Diagram” (cunsi tu) and, 71–72; Zuo Ci and, 72 Dazhong huabao (The Cosmopolitan), 221–22 death: beauty and, 160–65; life and, 83–84, 90, 301n18; of Xu Banhou, 183, 189, 324n26; spirit photography and, 189–95, 196, 197 Deer Fence (Luo Bonian), with inscription by Yu Dafu, 244, 244 “Deer Fence” (Wang Wei), 244, 245 Defeated (Ho Fan), 266, 267 Deng Mengshuo, 260 Deng Qiumei, 121, 124 Derrida, Jacques, 115, 121, 307n14 Dharma body (fashen), 65, 170 Dianshizhai Pictorial (Dianshizhai huabao), 16, 22 Di Baoxian, 152, 183, 187 Ding Fubao, 183, 195, 208, 322n18, 325n38 dividing forms (fenxing), 72 Dongfang zazhi(Eastern Miscellany, The), 48, 49 Dong Jian’an, 80 Dong Qichang, 243–44 double exposure, 35, 44–45, 191, 211, 265, 288n15 Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng) (Cao Xueqin), 60, 62, 161, 237–38 Dreams of Shanghai Splendors (Sun Yusheng), 55–56 Du Fu, 3, 221, 276n24 Du Qiong, 216 Eastern Miscellany, The (Dongfang zazhi), 48, 49 “editor’s playful images, The” (Youxi kexue), 50, 51

Edle Nacktheit in China (Perckhammer), 169–70 Elegance (Linglong), 167 embodiment, 19, 39, 222, 236; of ideal, 132, 136, 219 emotion: technology and, 15, 23–24, 26, 262–63; verbalization and, 25–26; sociality of, 113–16, 123, 124, 127, 136–37. See also affect; ganying; lyricism; qing enjoyment-body (yingshen), 65 entertainment, 17, 27; photography as, 35, 37, 42, 44, 49–52, 60–62, 68, 104; opera as mass, 128–29. See also youxi; yule Entertainment Science (Youxi kexue): “The editor’s playful images,” 51; literati and, 50–52 entertainment tabloids: 52, 147. See also The Comical Journal (Huaji zazhi); Entertainment Science (Youxi kexue); Glamour Magazine (Xiangyan zazhi); The Merry Magazine (Kuaihuo); The Pastime (Youxi zazhi) entreating-the-self photos (qiuji tu), 33–35, 37–38, 39, 40, 69, 288n14 erotic gaze, 44, 169, 170, 176 erwo tu. See twin-selves photos European pictorial photography, 6, 331n6 Eyebrow Talk (Meiyu), 54, 54 Fairy Bird (Lang Jingshan), 235, 236 Fan Caixia’s transformation-bodies (Haishang huayinglu), 42, 43 fantasy: projection with photographs, 33–63. See also costume photos; entreating-theself photos; twin-selves photos Fan Yanqiao, 62 Fanzhi (monk), 83–86 Fan Zhongyan, 252, 259 fashen (Dharma body), 65, 170 Feiying (Flying Eagle), 178, 242, 319n78 female body, portrait photography and, 146–54, 157, 314n30. See also nudes female nude by the pond, A (Duyu baimeitu xuji), 172

P

INDEX   349 female voice: of huaigu, 256–63; with selfportrait, 94, 96, 98–108, 142–43 Feng Chunhang, 52, 66, 129, 131, 134, 136–37 Feng Yuxiang, 80 Feng Zikai, 224 fenshen (divided body), 27, 71, 73, 289n23 fenxing (dividing forms), 72 fetishization: of body parts, 171; of nudes, 166–70 Fiction Times (Xiaoshuo shibao), 16, 129, 152, 161, 187, 288n16, 312n17, 315n41 322n18 “15-Beauty-Points of a Woman, The” (Beiyang huabao), 169 Fisherman’s Song on Lan River (Luo Bonian), with inscription by Yu Dafu, 245, 247 fluidity, gender and, 54, 73 Flying Eagle (Feiying), 178, 242, 319n78 Foucault, Michel, 166, 312n18 “fragrance and allure” (xiangyan),167, 169, 171, 317n58 Freud, Sigmund, 164, 191 fuji (spirit-writing), 187 Funü shibao (The Women’s Eastern Times), 101 Funü zazhi (The Ladies’ Journal), 102, 103 gantong (affective interpenetration), 210 ganying (affective responses), 18, 203 Gao Xiang, 244 Gao Xu, 124, 126 gaze: embodied, 19, 20; erotic, 44, 169, 170, 176; exotic and foreign, 38; gendered, 164; lyrical, 19, 20, 219, 222, 239, 250; subjective, 222; technological, 159, 230, 250; wandering, 18–19, 230, 282n70 gender: cross-dressing and, 50, 52, 52, 55, 104–06, 305n64; fluidity, 54, 73; performance and costuming, 52–54, 105; with voice and image, 98–109 gendered identities, poetic voice and, 98–108 “ghostly image of Lan and Zhao at the funeral, The,” 193 gift exchange, 7,13, 15, 142, 144, 157, 280n54, 310n51; memory image and, 116–28;

photos of actors and, 128–39; photos of courtesans and, 146, 148, 312n17; singularity of, 28, 113–15; social cohesion and, 115 Glamour Magazine (Xiangyan zazhi), 41, 288n17 Goldstern-Fuchs, Lotte, 339n22 Gombrich, E. H., 26, 335n46 Gong Zizhen, 25 Goodman, Nelson, 21 Grand Magazine, The (Xiaoshuo daguan), 117, 152, 288n16, 312n17 Great Wind Collection, The (Dafeng ji) (Chen Wanli), 213 Green-Eyed Immortal, 195, 196, 328n71 guan (comprehensive observation), 18, 20, 282nn69–70 Guangshe (Light Society), 214, 223, 225, 255, 330nn3–4 Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy), 35, 205; Cixi as, 48 Guide to Photography, A (Sheying zhinan) (Ouyang Huiqiang), 240–42, 241, 338n10 Gunning, Tom, 72, 323n22 guomin xing (national character), 33 Guo Xi, 221, 223, 225, 230 Gusty Wind in the Tower Foreboding the Approaching Storm (Shanyu yulai fengmanlou) (Liu Bannong), 223–24, 225 Haishang Shushisheng (Sun Yusheng), 50, 55–56, 293n54 Half Moon (Banyue), 60, 117, 294n65 Hall, Stuart, 168 hanging scrolls, 10–11, 39, 204 headless ghostly shadow in Zhabei district in Shanghai, 188 Healthy Beauty Monthly (Jianmei yuekan): nude photographs in, 316n52; “Standing by the railing alone facing the sunset,” 175, 175; “You magnificent skull,” 165, 166–67 Heart Is a Buddha, The (Lang Jingshan), 176–77, 177 Heart Sutra, The, 160

350 

P 

INDEX

Heidegger, Martin, 24 Ho Fan, 265–67, 266, 270, 342n1 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 338n7 homoeroticism, 136–37, 310n51 homosocial, 136, 310n51 hongfen kulou (the red-powered girl and the skull), 159–66 Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber), 60, 62, 161, 237–38 Hou Yi, 197–98, 204–5, 209, 210 huaigu (longing for the past), 29, 238–39, 258, 259 Huaji zazhi (The Comical Journal), 43, 81, 288n19, 297n88 huan (illusion), 23, 68, 70–71, 91, 96, 297n93 huayi (pictorial ideas), 217, 221, 222, 227,240, 242, 245, 333nn32–33, 334n37; sheying and, 333n27; shiqing and, 29, 221 Huang Bore (Wong Po-yeh), 173, 174, 178 Huang Jie, 122, 124 Huang Shan (Xu Muru), 224 Huang Tingjian, 2–3 Huang Yanpei, 251, 251–52, 255, 256, 340nn29– 30, 340n33 Huang Yue, 229 Huang Zhenyu, 254, 255, 341n39 Huang Zunxian, 149–50, 154, 157, 312n12 huashen (transformation-body), 27, 44, 50, 672, 132, 153, 289n23, 295n65, 296n77, 336n60; connotation, 65. See also fenshen; fenxing Huating’s Painting Manual (Luo Bonian), with Yu Shengming’s inscription, 243 huazhuang. See costuming huazhuang zhao. See costume photos Hu Boxiang, 219, 334n37 Hu Bozhou, 223 Hu Kai, 96 Huo Jiechen, 127–28 Hu Shi, 24–25, 76, 77, 79, 109, 183, 284n101, 299n3 Hu Shilian, 219, 220, 220–21 Husserl, Edmund, 19, 284n99 Hu Xigui, 38–39, 39, 287n11

Huxley, Thomas Henry, 209, 210 hypnotism, 185, 194, 205, 208, 210, 321n7, 328n72 ideal, 21, 69, 81,93,108, 133, 136; embodiment of 219; “the ideal form”, 23 illusion, 6, 23, 27, 35-63, 96, 106-07, 145, 268, 298n93; in Buddhism, 70–71; in Daoism 71–72. See also huan Illusory Realm (Huanjing) (Lu Shifu), 178 Illustrated Handbook of Shanghai’s Scenic and Historical Sights (Shenjiang mingsheng tushuo), 146 “Illustrations of photographs of transformation-bodies” (Liangyou), 45 image (xiang), 18, 23, 216, 282n69; bodily, 99–100, 104; Buddhist, 65–66, 70–71; costuming, 46–55; emotion and, 26; falling in love with, 154–59; gendered voice and, 98–109; gift exchange and memory, 116–28; poetic voice and, 1, 11, 13, 27, 49, 75, 86, 88, 79, 86, 88, 94, 99–100, 104, 108, 179, 252; as temporal passages, 78–90. See also memory image; visual image image-printing technology, 17 image-text: combinations, 4–7, 14–17, 22, 78, 87, 102, 116, 128, 169, 179, 207, 213, 228, 239, 250, 274n12, 280n57; pictorial space with, 15, 255–56. See also inscriptions imponderable, spirit photography with, 207–12. See also buke siyi Ingres’s Violin (Man Ray), 174 ink painting, 223–24, 234, 244; calligraphy and, 3 “Inscribed on a Picture of a Gentle Girl Playing Her Koto” (Su Manshu), 117, 120–21 “Inscribed on My Portrait” (Xu Yunhua), 99, 103 “Inscribed on My Portrait” (Zhu Suzhen), 99–100 “Inscribed on My Portrait in Male Attire” (Qiu Jin), 105–6

P

INDEX   351 “Inscribed onto the Wall of the Meditation Hall at Broken Mountain Temple” (Chang Jian), 220–21 “Inscription on a Self-portrait in a Monk’s Robe” (Shen Zengzhi), 86–87 inscriptions: by Aihua zhuren on the photograph of twin-selves, 138–40, 139; business of writing, 12–13; by Cao Rulin on the group photograph of the delegates, 13; by Chen Lu on Trees Stripped of Their Leaves, 248, 249; by Chen Wanli on Returning Home, 255; by Da’an Jushi on photograph of West Lake, 253; by Huang Yanpei on Yan Ziling Fishing Terrance, 251; by Huo Jiechen on Su Manshu’s photograph, 128; by Liu Bannong on his photograph, 225; Portrait of Shaoyu in the guise of Liu Ling, 64; Portrait of Yunfeng entreating the self, 39; photograph of still life with, 249; by Yu Dafu on Luo Bonian’s photographs, 244, 246, 247; by Yu Mingsheng on Luo Bonian’s photograph, 243; on pictorial space, 256; self-inscriptions of the photo of Hu Shi, 77; self-inscriptions of the photos of Xuyun, 89; self-inscriptions of the photo of Shi Shuyi, 103; by Su Manshu on the Picture of A Gentle Girl Playing Her Koto, 117–23, 117, 119, 122; by Zhou Lianxia on her photograph, 142; by Zhu Wonong on his family portrait, 141; by Zhang Mojun on the photographs, 261;. See also remembrance, inscribing inscriptive desire, 14, 23, 143, 263 integral poem-painting, 3, 274n12 interior landscapes (xiongzhong zaohua), 216; mediating: with pictorial ideas and lyrical mood, 219–28; qi and rhythms in composite photography, 229–36; transplanting xieyi, 214–19 intramedial, 276n19 intermediality: intertextuality and, 4–5; photo poetics and, 4; practices and, 27, 34, 52,

57, 154, 159, 213, 267n19, 276nn19–20, 270; typologies, 5–6 intermedial references, 5–6, 57 intermedial transposition, 5, 52 Is It One or Two? (Song painting), 46 “Is this me?” (Youxi zazhi), 97, 97–98 Jade Pear Spirit (yuli hun) (Xu Zhenya), 156–57 Jesuits, 16, 161, 288n15 Jia Biyun, 129 Jiang Kesheng, 130 Jiang Shaoyuan, 193–94 Jianmei yuekan. See Healthy Beauty Monthly Jian Youwen (Dahua lieshi), 80–81, 81 Jin Cheng, 217 Jing Hao, 68 Jingwu Pictorial (Jingwu huabao), 222, 333n32 Jin Nong, 38, 47, 57, 287n11 Jin Shaoyu, 64, 64–65 Jonas, Hans, 85–86 Journey in Autumn Mountains (Qiushan xinglü) (Hu Bozhou), 223 Journey to the West (Xiyou ji), 72 Kang Youwei, 29, 81–82, 211, 217, 239–41, 250, 306n9, 338n10 kanshi, 151–52 Kasahara Chūji, 68 Keda zazhi (The Chinese Kodakery), 222 keepsake, photos as, 138–44 Kong Fushou, 39–40 Kopytoff, Igor, 114–15, 143 Kracauer, Siegfried, 121, 138, 307n17 Kuaihuo (The Merry Magazine), 37, 61, 62 Kuang Baihui, 45 Kuixin Pavilion of Jiading (Ouyang Huiqiang), 241 Kuomingtang (KMT, Nationalist Party), 256, 257, 341n44 Ladies’ Journal, The (Funü zazhi), 102, 103 Lady of Shalott, The (Robinson), 234, 234–35 “Lady of Shalott, The” (Tennyson), 235

352 

P 

INDEX

Lai Shaoyao, 72, 298n99 landscape painting, 1, 6, 18–19, 217, 229, 230, 252, 268, 335n51, 337n63 Lang Jingshan (Long Chin-san), 29, 175, 224, 334n36, 340n35; “Beautiful girls indulging in the homeland of water lilies,” 176; composite photography, aesthetic ideas and, 229–31, 332n26, 335n50, 336n52, 336n60; Fairy Bird, 235, 236; The Heart Is a Buddha, 176–77, 177; nude photography, 175–78, 319n73; photomontage and, 232; Spring Fantasia, 232–35, 233 Lanqiao Bieshu (Zhang Baobao), 153, 154, 313n24 Laokoön (Lessing), 2 Lao She, 12, 278n45 Laosheng (Wang Laosheng), 173, 174 Layman Kuanqin, 89 Layman Kuanjing, 88 Ledderose, Lothar, 225, 226 Lee, Leo Ou-fan, 189, 281n59 Leizu (Yellow Emperor’s Consort), 260, 261 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 2, 339n15 Liang Hongzhi, 242 Liang Qichao, 183, 184, 300n9 Liang Shitai (See Tay), 47, 290n34 Liangyou. See Young Companion, The Li Bai, 266–67 Li Dijun, 76 light: magic, 86, 193, 327n57, 333n33; spirit and: Picture of Luo Book and Generating Qi through Wuxing, 200; Portrait of Chang Shengzi, 196; Portrait of the Green-Eyed Immortal’s Transformed Body, 196; Portrait of the New Souls of the Chen Sisters Lanruo and Huiruo, 197; Portrait of Xunfeng King, 200; spirit photography and, 188, 195–201, 202–3, 211, 326n53, 326n57; technical property, 23, 45, 57, 174, 177, 198, 212, 224, 229, 231, 234, 240, 245, 265, 271 Light Society (Guangshe), 214, 223, 225, 255, 330nn3–4

Li Gonglin, 2, 3, 273n7 Li Hongzhang, 7, 276n31 Li Jinxun, 341n44 Li Mo’an, 147–48 Lincoln, Abraham, 191 Linghun (souls), 185, 188, 193–94, 212, 325n45 linghun zhaoxiang. See spirit photography Linghun xue (The Study of the Soul), 208, 326n55 Linglong (Elegance), 167 Lingxue congzhi. See Serials of Psychical Research, The Lingxue yaozhi. See Major Writings in Psychical Research lingji (traces of spirits), 208, 329n86 Lin Shu, 217, 323n19 Li Shangyin, 134 Li Shifang, 227, 227–28 Li Shutong, 52 literary magazines, 16, 35, 44, 281n60; Eyebrow Talk (Meiyu), 54; Fiction Times (Xiaoshuo shibao), 16, 129, 152, 161, 187, 288n16, 312n17, 315n41 322n18; Grand Magazine, The (Xiaoshuo daguan), 117, 152, 288n16, 312n17; Half Moon (Banyue), 60, 117, 294n65; Ladies’ Journal, The (Funü zazhi), 102–03; New Journal for Fiction (Xiaoshuo xinbao), 36, 41, 288n16, 289n20, 295n68; Short Stories Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao), 152; Violet (Ziluolan), 162 literary scenes, 5, 235, 300n9, 314n35. See also reenactments literati, 134, 136–37, 140, 143, 147, 149, 160, 183, 185, 186, 205, 219, 221, 235, 238, 248, 304n60 literati painting, 3, 5, 68, 214–16, 229, 230, 332n20 lithography, 16, 22 Liu Bannong, 320n3; artistic vision and, 214–15; Bannong on Photography, 214–15, 262; Carp (Li) (Liu Bannong), 224; Gusty Wind in the Tower Foreboding the Approaching Storm (Shanyu yulai fengmanlou), 223–24, 225; Not Much Drawing (Zhaomo wuduo), 224; photography and, 330nn3–4; with “emotive resonance,” 262;

P

INDEX   353 with pictorial ideas and lyricism, 223, 224, 225; technology and, 218; xieyi and, 214 Liu Chenweng, 339n24 Liu Jiping (Liu San), 124 Liu Ling, 64, 64 Liu Xie, 25, 216, 331n12 Liu Yazi, 66, 116, 136–37, 144, 307n19, 309n37, 310n49, 310n53; with Su Manshu, 124, 125; with Feng Chunhang and Lu Zimei, 129–30, 132–37; poems by, 125, 135 Liu Yong, 232 Liu Zongyuan, 268–69 Li Xiaotun, 124 liyi (conceiving ideas), 221 Li Yu (playwright), 158 Li Yu (emperor poet), 175 Li Yuanhong, 198 “longing for the past.” See huaigu Long Xizu, 240, 339n15 look of the past: photograph of West Lake with inscription by Da’an Jushi, 253; remembrance, inscribing with, 250–56; Returning Home with inscription by Chen Wanli, 255; technological and lyrical gaze, 250–51; Yan Ziling Fishing Terrace, 251, 252 Lord Fuyou, 201–3, 202, 206 “Loving her” (Aiyi) (Xianting), 108 Lü Bicheng, 101, 304n58 Lüdi nüshi, 175, 319n76 Lufei Kui, 185, 211 Luo Bonian, 239, 242–50; Building Materials Fill the River, with inscription by Yu Dafu, 245, 246; Deer Fence, with inscription by Yu Dafu, 244; Fisherman’s Song on Lan River, with inscription by Yu Dafu, 245, 247; Huating’s Painting Manual, with inscription by Yu Shengming, 243; photograph of still life with inscription, 249; Trees Stripped of Their Leaves, with inscription by Chen Lu, 248, 249 Luo Han, 70 Luo Jialing, 101

Luo Pin, 161 Lu Shifu, 175, 178, 178, 319n78 Lu Shusheng, 47 Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren), 12, 74–75, 79, 109, 295n70, 298n1, 299n2, 320n1; legacy of, 76–77; “New Year’s Sacrifice” (Zhufu), 189–90; with poem in calligraphy, 75; portrait photo of, 75; on photographic culture, 33–34, 38; on spirit photographs, 183, 190, 193 Lu Zimei, 52, 129–32, 131, 134–37, 308n34, 310n53 lyrical eye, 232, 253–54; camera and, 22–23, 222; mind and, 18–24. See also Chinese lyricism lyrical gaze, 19, 20, 219, 239, 250 lyrical subjectivity, 27, 267 lyrical vision, 23, 228, 236, 267 lyricism, 3, 17, 24, 143, 223, 270, 285n108; focus, 26; photography and, 167, 168, 223–36; intermediality, transmediality and, 5–6, 27. See also Chinese lyricism magic, 50, 72, 205, 292n44, 298n93, 316n44; skulls and black, 160, 162; with spirits, 193, 195–207 Mahākāśyapa, 70 Major Writings in Psychical Research (Lingxue yaozhi), 201–03 Ma Liang, 265, 267–71, 269 Man Ray, 174 Mao Guangsheng, 142 Ma Zhiyuan, 174 media: defined, 275nn18–19, culture, 1–7, 15–17, 27, 274n10, 279n52, 285n106, 312n17; mass, 16, 17, 25, 137, 146, 166, 179, 275n18, 279n53, 281n62, 312n17, 316n44, 317n60. See also intermediality; print media; visual media Mei Lanfang, 52, 56, 58, 129, 293n55 meiren (beautiful woman), 52–53, 101, 107,123, 135, 163, 171,315n37; xiangcao and, 136 meishu hu (double blurring), 218 meishu sheying (art photography), 213, 221 Meiyu (Eyebrow Talk), 54, 54

354 

P 

INDEX

memories: creativity and, 230–31; image and, 250, 255; seal imprints and, 248; subjective, 121; visual image, language and, 84, 116–28, 117, 119, 122, 239. See also huaigu; look of the past; remembrance, inscribing men: in costume photos cross-dressing, 52–54, 53, 292n47; with fear of women, 164; homoeroticism and, 136–37; with reenactment and cross-dressing, 60, 61 Mencius, 185, 186 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 19–20, 284n96 Merry Magazine, The (Kuaihuo), 37, 61, 62 messages: coded, 47, 57, 168; connoted, 9, 10; denoted, 9 Mi Fu, 7, 223, 224, 334n42 Millais, John Everett, 235 Miller, Milton, 57 mind: as xin, 213, 219, 267; lyrical eye and, 18–24; painting and, 216; xieyi and, 216 Minli Newspaper (Minli bao), 129 mirrors, 23, 40, 46, 70, 82, 85, 92, 99, 100, 113, 149, 152, 155, 156, 168, 172, 204, 301n15; Bejeweled Mirror of Romance (fengyue baojian), 161; Daoist, 72; Mirror girl, 172; “mirror painting” (jinghua), 7; Picture of “bowing toward the mirror” (yijing tu), 40; Picture of “the shadow in the mirror” (jingying tu), 46; with memory, 239, 338n7 Mirror girl (Move & Still) (Dan Duyu), 172 “Miscellaneous Poems of Shanghai” (Li Mo’an), 147–48 “Miscellaneous Poems on Shanghai” (Sun Cigong), 148 Misty Rain Among Thousands of Trees (Wangan yanyu) (Wen Zhengming), 223 Misty Rains of the Mi Family (Mijia yanyu) (Xu Muru), 223 Mitchell, W. J. T., 7, 275n16, 276n18, 280n57 Mi Youren, 7, 223 Momosuke (Ms.), 116–18, 117, 119, 121–24, 122, 127, 137, 306n12, 307n19

Moon Lady (Mingyue xianzi), 195, 203, 205 Move & Still (Mei de jiejing) (Dan Duyu), 171–73, 172 Mulvey, Laura, 164 Mumler, William, 187, 191 “Musée des Beaux Arts” (Auden), 6 mute poetry (wusheng shi), 1–7, 273n6 Nakatani, Hajime, 78, 93 Nanshe. See Southern Society Nationalist Party. See Kuomingtang naturalism, 22, 217 New Journal for Fiction (Xiaoshuo xinbao), 36, 41, 288n16, 289n20, 295n68 Ni Zan, 118, 223, 334n38 Not Much Drawing (Zhaomo wuduo) (Liu Bannong), 224 “Novelist Zhou Shoujuan” (Youxi zazhi), 52, 53 nudes: “Beautiful girls indulging in the homeland of water lilies,” 176; Buddhism and, 170; By the ripples, 173, 174; domesticating/fetishizing, 166–70; female nude by the pond, A, 172; The Heart Is a Buddha, 176–77, 177; Illusory Realm, 178; interiority inscribed to, 170–80; photographs, 163, 163–66, 316n52, 319nn73– 74, 320n78; photo with lyricism, 166–79; “The shadow in the mirror,” 172; in social context, 146, 317n55, 318n64; “Standing by the railing alone facing the sunset,” 175, 175; “Zhenzhen in the painting,” 179 Nüwa (goddess), 72, 298n99 Nü xuebao (Chinese Girl’s Progress), 101 Nüzi shijie (Women’s World), 101 objectivity, photography and, 9, 20–23, 68, 91, 152, 217, 222, 283n82 “On a Photograph of the Self at Age Fifteen” (Weng Linsheng), 87 “On a Photograph of the Self at Age Seventeen” (Zheng Haoru), 87

P

INDEX   355 “On a Photographic Mirror” (Huang Zunxian), 149 “On Costume Photos” (Zhou Shoujuan), 52 “On Mianyun’s Costume Portrait of Daiyu Burying Flowers” (Tu Shouzhuo), 61–62 “On My Photo Taken November Last Year” (Hu Shi), 76 “On My Back-view Portrait of Writing on Banana Leaves” (Shi Shuyi), 103, 104 “On Zhou Shoujuan’s Crossed-Dressed Photograph” (Zhang Ruilan), 67 opera: Beijing Opera, 52, 56, 128–29, 152, 308n34; as plurimediality form, 5 other, self as, 90–98 Ouyang Huiqiang, 240, 241, 242, 250, 338n10 Ouyang Shizhi, 240 Ouyang Yuqian, 52, 295n67 Owen, Stephen, 258, 331n13 painterly poetry, 3 painting: calligraphy, poetry and, 1–4, 6; Journey in Autumn Mountains (Qiushan xinglü tu) (Guo Xi), 223; ink, 223–24, 234, 244; “integral poem-painting,” 274n12; landscape, 1, 6, 18–19, 217, 229,230, 252, 268, 335n51, 337n63; literati, 3, 5, 68, 214–16, 229, 230, 332n20; tihua shi (poems on paintings), 3–4, 279n51, 309n44; Is It One or Two?, 46; Painting of Collecting Lingzhi (Caizhi tu), 47; Pavilion of Rising Clouds (Yunqi lou tu), 224; “pleasure painting” (xingle tu), 51; Portrait of Shaoyu in the Guise of Liu Ling, 64; Portrait of Yunfeng entreating the self, 39; Scholar with His Portrait, A, 45 painting in poetry, 1, 240 Pang Shubai, 129 Pastime, The (Youxi zazhi): “Costume photographs of well-known boudoir ladies in Hangzhou playing the fairies of the Jade Pool,” 63; “Is this me?,” 97, 97–98; literati and, 52; “Novelist Zhou Shoujuan,” 52, 53;

“Qian Huafo’s transformation tableaux,” 50, 51; “Three transformation bodies of Ms. Chanqing,” 41; “Yu Caisheng’s images of replication-body,” 42, 43 Pavilion of Rising Clouds (Mi Fu), 223, 224 Pei-yang Pictorial News (Beiyang huabao), 167–68, 169, 170 Peony Pavilion, The (Mudan ting), 145 perception, 2, 17, 18, 19, 22, 57, 85; cognition and, 21; lyrical, 222 Perckhammer, Heinz, 169–70 Perfumed lotus (Miao lianhua), 170 “Personally Inscribed on a Portrait” (Ziti xiaoxiang) (Lu Xun), 74 phantomatic effect, 191 phenomenological seeing, 24, 284n99 photo albums, 204, 311n62, 327n63; Haishang jinghong ying, 313n22; Portraits of I-huan, 277n31, 290n34; Xianling zhaoxiang, 182– 207,184, 188, 193, 196, 197, 200, 204, 206; Xin jinghongying, 313n22; Yanlian huaying, 288n16, 313n22; Youzheng Book Company and, 152 photographic technology, 52, 91, 218 Photograph of the Spirit of Zhu Taoshan (Wang Dunqing), 212 photographs: of actors, 128–38, 131; courtesans in, 146–54, 161, 162; of courtesans in book format, 153; inscriptions on, 13, 117–23, 117, 119, 122, 128, 138–40, 139, 142, 141, 225, 242–49, 243, 244, 246, 247, 248, 251, 253, 255, 259–61; seal imprints on, 9–11, 10, 47, 48, 80, 115, 118, 119, 128, 140, 142, 142, 224, 225, 244, 247, 249, 248, 249, 261, 290n34; self-inscriptions on photographs, 77, 89, 103. See also costume photos; entreating-the-self photos; inscriptions; twin-selves photos Photographs of a Tang poem and Sketching Ideas (Tangshi sheying xieyi) (Hu Shilian), 220, 221 Photographs of the Immortals and Spirits (Xianling zhaoxiang),182– 207, 184, 188, 193, 196, 197, 200, 204, 206

356 

P 

INDEX

photography: art, 213, 221; composite, 229–36, 233–35; with emotive resonance,262–63; ink painting and, 234; Liu Bannong and, 214–15, 262, 330nn3–4; lyricism and, 167, 168, 223–36; objective reality and, 9, 20–23; painting and, 6; pictorial, 5, 6, 29, 213, 219, 267, 330n2, 331n6, 333n27; popularity of, 8, 11–12; time and, 84–86; trick, 9, 35, 286n4, 287n5. See also pictorial photography; portrait photography; spirit photography photography studios, 11, 46, 52, 55, 56, 57, 146, 278n42, 287n5, 290n34, 340n36;advertisements, 46, 47; Erwo, 202; Guanghua lou, 153; Jiang Ziliang, 305n65; Luzhen, 195; Mingying, 312n17; Powkee, 55, 240, 293n54; Rongfeng, 56; Sze Yue Ming, 37; Taifang, 293n55; Yiwu, 253; Yuelairong, 46, 290n31; Zhenzhen xiezhen guan, 149; Zhizhen, 55; Zhonghua, 44 photomontage, 173–74, 232, 336n52 “photo of Ms. Wu Chanqing at the age of nineteen, The” (Xiangyan zazhi), 40, 41 photo poetics, 4–5, 7, 15, 25, 275n15 “pictorial ideas.” See huayi “pictorial ideas and lyrical mood” (shiqing huayi), 29, 221, 227 pictorial magazines, 5, 16, 29, 37, 40, 152, 167, 221, 242; The Chinese Kodakery (Keda zazhi), 222, 333n33; The Cosmopolitan (Dazhong huabao), 221–22; Daily Pictorial (Tuhua ribao), 40, 147–50; Dianshizhai Pictorial (Dianshizhai huabao),16, 22; Elegance (Linglong), 167; Flying Eagle (Feying), 242; Gravure Monthly (Tuwen), 227–28; Healthy Beauty Monthly (Jianmei yuekan), 165–67, 175; Jingwu Pictorial (Jingwu huabao), 222, 333n32; Pei-yang Pictorial News (Beiyang huabao), 167–70; Pictorial Shanghai (Shanghai huabao), 16; Pictorial Weekly (Sheying huabao), 242; The Young Companion (Liangyou), 16–17, 45, 164, 167, 173-74, 221, 281n61, 319n74

pictorial photography: Chinese, 5, 6, 29 213, 219, 267, 330n3, 331n6, 333n27; European, 6, 330n2, 331n6. See also meishu sheying; huayi sheying Pictorial Shanghai (Shanghai huabao), 16 pictorial space: with image-text combinations, 3,15, 248, 255–56, 274n12; with spatial composition, three-layered, 337n63 Pictorial Weekly (Sheying huabao), 242, 253, 289n23, 340n37 “picture behind the glass widow, The” (Boli chuangnei zhi huaxiang) (Ye Shengtao), 157–58 Picture of a Gentle Girl Playing Her Koto, 117 Picture of a Wonderland Manifested on White Paper (Xianling zhaoxiang), 204 “Picture of being mysterious” (Meiyu), 54 “Picture of celestial ladies scattering flowers” (Banyue), 60, 294n65 Picture of Luo Book and Generating Qi through Wuhang (Xianling zhaoxiang), 200, 200 Picture of the Immortal Garden (Xianling zhaoxiang), 206 Picture of the Immortal Land (Xianling zhaoxiang), 205–6, 206 “Picture of wishing Heaven to quickly turn me into a girl” (Xiangyan conghua), 53 Pictures of Consort Yang’s pool, 258 “pleasure painting” (xingle tu), 51, 291n41, 292n41 plurimediality, 5, 6, 11 poems: with entreating-the-self photo, 37; integral poem-painting, 274n12 love, 120, 306n12, 309n41, 311n62; painting and, 221; on photographs, 24–25; visual images paired with, 227; poem in the Heart Sutra, 160; poem in the story by Xu Zhenya, 156–57. See also poets Poetic History of the Realm of Tenderness (Rouxiang yunshi), 153 poetic language, 120, 226, 237, 255. See also classical-style poetry; vernacular-style

P

INDEX   357 poetic message. See shiyi. poetics: defined, 4, 275n15; photo, 4–5, 7, 15, 22, 25, 26, 275n15; visual, 4, 274n14 poetic voice, 49, 124, 165–66, 174–76; gendered image and, 98–109, 259–62; image and, 1, 11, 13, 27, 49, 75, 86, 88, 79, 86, 88, 94, 99–100, 104, 108, 179, 252 poetry: calligraphy, painting and, 3–4; forms, 26; mute, 1–7, 273n6; painting and, 2–3; painting in, 1, 240. See also classical-style poetry; vernacular-style poetry-inspired picture (shiyi tu), 5, 180, 221, 276n24 poets: Aihua zhuren, 138; anonymous, 37; Cai Zhefu, 126; Chang Jian, 220; Chen Cuina, 60; Chen Duxiu, 125; Cilang, 166; Da’an Jushi (Yi Ru), 253, 254; Dai Kedun, 95; Gao Xu, 126; Hu Kai, 96; Hu Shi, 76, 77; Huang Tingjian, 2; Huang Yanpei, 252; Huang Zunxian, 149; Kang Youwei, 81; Kong Fushou, 39; Li Bai, 267; Li Hongzhang, 7; Li Mo’an, 147; Liu Yazi, 125, 135; Liu Yong, 232; Liu Zongyuan, 269; Lord Fuyou, 201; Lu Xun, 74, 75; Mr. Zui, 94; Ms. Binghun, 94–95; Qiu Jin, 106; Shen Daofei, 66; Shen Zengzhi, 83,86–87; Shi Shuyi, 103, 104; Su Manshu, 117, 118, 119; 124–25; Su Shi, 236; Sugi Chōka, 152; Sun Cigong, 148; Sun Yusheng, 50; Tan Sitong, 79; Tu Shouzhuo, 61; Wang Taowen, 96; Wang Wei, 245; Wang Xiaolu, 97; Xianting, 108; Xu Yunhua, 99, 102; Xuyun, 89; Ye Yusen, 133; Yi Xuan, 10, 11; Yuan Shikai, 49; Zhang Mojun, 260–61, 261; Zhang Ruilan, 67; Zhou Lianxia, 142; Zhu Suzhen, 99–100; Zhu Wonong, 141; Zou Boqi, 8 Portrait of Chang Shengzi (Xianling zhaoxiang), 196 Portrait of Shaoyu in the guise of Liu Ling, 64, 64–65 Portrait of the Green-Eyed Immortal’s Transformed Body (Xianling zhaoxiang), 196

Portrait of the New Souls of the Chen Sisters Lanruo and Huiruo (Xianling zhaoxiang), 197 Portrait of Xunfeng King (Xianling zhaoxiang), 200 Portrait of Yunfeng entreating the self (Hu Xigui), 38–39, 39 portrait photography: Chinese, 33–34, 57, 294n58; painting and, 6, 8, 25, 45–47, 57–58, 82, 98, 145; of women, 101, 148–49. See also costume photos; entreating-theself photos; twin-selves photos Pound, Ezra, 17 Powkee Studio, 55, 240, 293n54 present: visual image and, 86, 91–93, 97, 156, 193, 258; with Buddhist sequence of time, 84, 107 Prince Bao Hongli, 46, 47 Prince Chun. See Yi Xuan print technology, 16 print media, 17, 50, 98, 100, 101, 102, 160, 180. See also entertainment tabloids, newspapers, pictorial magazines, women’s magazines prostitution, 311n3, 311n5 “purpose of a courtesan giving photos to a patron, The” (Tuhua ribao), 150, 151 qi (vital energy): with rhythm in composite photography, 229–36; souls and, 192, 193, 199, 200, 203, 205, 210; with spirit (shen) and painting, 68, 216, 221 Qian Huafo, 50–51, 51, 55, 71 “Qian Huafo’s transformation tableaux” (Youxi zazhi), 50, 51 Qian Xiangru, 50–51, 55, 71, 292n44 Qian Xuantong, 214, 320n3 Qian Zhongshu, 2, 325n40, 328n72, qianshen (previous body), 61, 62, 92, 93, 96 qing (feeling), 25, 118, 122, 126, 134, 135, 137, 310n52; jing (scenes) and, 238 Qingming jie (Grave Sweeping Day), 256 Qiu Fengjia, 81–82, 300n11 Qiu Jin, 92, 101, 104–8, 105, 305nn63–65, 305n68

358 

P 

INDEX

qiuji tu. See entreating-the-self photos qiyun shengdong (rhythmic vitality), 229–32; 335nn51–52 realism, 19, 21, 22, 69, 72, 171, 217, 235, 332n21, 337n70; in Japan, 217 reality: effect, 235; photography and, 9, 20–24, 34, 68, 73, 85, 92, 95, 96,121, 216, 219, 225, 230, 250, 257, 285n103, 297n84, 307n17 Records of Trivial Matters in Eastern China (Donghua suolu), 46 red-powdered girl, skull and (hongfen kulou), 159–66 reenactments, 5, 23, 235, 57, 60–62, 270; as a fisherman, 48, 49; “celestial ladies scattering flowers,” 56, 59, 60, 67, 294n65; “Daiyu burying flowers,” 61, 62; “fairies of the Jade Pool,” 62, 63; “seven sages of the bamboo grove,” 300n9; theatricality and, 55–63 Rejlander, Oscar Gustave, 232 remembrance, inscribing: in cultural context, 237–38; with look of the past, 250–56; with meaning beyond pictures, 239–50; tomb, cypress, female voice and, 256–63 Renger-Patzsch, Albert, 339n22 Returning Home (Huang Zhenyu), with inscription by Chen Wanli, 255 “Rhapsody on the beauty and the skeleton” (Shibao banyuekan), 163, 163 rhythmic vitality (qiyun shengdong), 229–32; 335nn51–52 rhythms, with qi and composite photography, 229–36 Ricci, Matteo, 288n15 rituals: practices, 185, 186; spiritualism and, 184–88, 205–06 “River Snow” (Jiangxue) (Liu Zongyuan), 268–69 Robinson, Henry Peach, 234, 234–35, 337n67 Rongfeng Studio, 56 sanjue (three perfections), 4 Satō Dōshin, 217, 332n18

Scholar with His Portrait, A, 45–46 se (form), 160, 163, 170 seal imprints: calligraphic inscriptions and, 5, 11, 80, 249, 259; imperial, 11, 47; memories, historicity and, 121, 248, 249; on photographs, 9–11, 10, 47, 48, 80, 115, 118, 119, 128, 140, 142, 142, 224, 225, 244, 247, 249, 248, 249, 261, 290n34; plurimediality and, 5–6; singuality and, 115, 143 Secondhand Tang poems (Ershou Tangshi) (Ma Liang), 267–71, 269 Sedgwick, Eve, 136, 310n51 See Tay (Liang Shitai), 47, 290n34 Se is empty (se jishi kong), 163, 170 Sekula, Allan, 34 self: Confucianism and, 27; entreatingthe-self photos, 33–35, 37–38, 39, 40, 69, 288n14; with image, costuming, 46–55; lyric, 8, 25, 28, 74–109; as other, 90–98; reenactment and theatricality, 55–63; transformation of, 34–46; between true and untrue, 63–73 self-image: poetic voice and, 8, 49, 74–109, 202, 300n7, 304n60; visual representation of, 23, 28 Sengzhao, 84–85 Serials of Psychical Research, The (Lingxue congzhi), 183, 186, 190–93, 197–201, 206–07, 328n80 Seventh Prince Feeding Deer, 47, 48 shadows (ying): 23, 93,108, 194, 226; “A Bizarre, Ghostly Shadow,” 192; “Form, Shadow and Spirit,” 93; headless ghostly, 188; “the shadow in the mirror,” 172; “the shadow of love yearning,” 149; “the twin shadows of Hu Feiyun,” 36. See also sheying Shadows of Poetry, The (Dazhong huabao), 226 Shanghai huabao (Pictorial Shanghai), 16, 281n61 Shanghai Society for Psychical Studies, 28, 185, 186, 188 Shao Lizi, 256, 260 Shao Yuanchong (Y. C. Shao), 256–60, 341n41, 341n48, 341nn44–45

P

INDEX   359 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 176 Shenbao (Chinese Daily News), 46, 113, 114, 187, 204, 251, 340n29 Shen Daofei, 66 –67 Shengde Altar (Shengde tan), 185–86, 190 –192, 195–201, 203–07 Shen Taimou, 46 –47 Shen Zengzhi, 82–84, 84, 86–87, 92, 109, 301n17, 301n27 shenyou (spiritual wandering), 204, 328n74 sheying, defined, 23, 283n89. See also huayi sheying; meishu sheying; photography; shiyisheying Sheying huabao (Pictorial Weekly), 242, 253, 289n23, 340n37 Sheying zhinan (A Guide to Photography) (Ouyang Huiqiang), 240–42, 241, 338n10 Shibao banyuekan (Truth Post Bimonthly), 163, 163 shiqing huayi (pictorial ideas and lyrical mood), 29, 221, 227 Shi Shuyi, 103, 103–4, 305nn61–62 shiyi (poetic message), 5. See also huayi; shiyi tu; shiyi zhao shiyi tu (poetry-inspired picture), 5, 180, 221, 276n24 shiyi zhao (poetry-inspired photography), 221 Shi Zhongzi, 195, 198, 327nn57–58 “Shooting the Self-Portrait to Pass Down My True Image” (Zizhao yizhen) (Zou Boqi), 8–9 shuqing. See Chinese lyricism Simmel, Georg, 115 singularity, 28, 114–16, 140, 143, 307n14 Six Dynasties period, 25–26, 309n41 “Six Poems about Zimei’s Photographs, Quoting Yishan’s [Li Shangyin] Lines (No. 6)” (Ye Yusen), 133–34 “sketching ideas.” See xieyi skulls (kulou): beauty and, 159–66; with death and beauty, 165; “Eulogy of the Skull,” 160–61; parable, 160; multiple encounters, 161; “Red powder and the skull,” 162–63; “Rhapsody on the beauty and the

skeleton,”163; “Under X-ray,” 164; “You magnificent skull,” 165, 166–67 sociality, of emotions, 115–16, 136–38 Solemn Portrait of Lord Fuyou, The, 202 Song Di, 204 Songs of Chu (Chuci), 136, 176 Soong Hsun-leng, 142–43, 142 Southern Society (Nanshe), 66, 87, 129–38, 303n53 space: time and, 2–3, 22, 252, 257. See also pictorial space spatial composition, 255–56, 337n63 Spencer, Herbert, 210 spirit photography: as linghun zhaoxiang, 183, 189, 194, 326n56; “ghostly image of Lan and Zhao at the funeral, The,” 193; Great Britain and, 323n18; headless ghostly shadow in Zhabei district, 188; with imponderable, 207–12; light and, 195–201; Lu Xun on, 183; with soul, calling to, 189–95; with spiritual vision, 201–7; synergy of rituals and spiritualism with, 184–88; of Xu Banhou and wife, 184, 197 spiritualism: criticism of, 183; rituals and, 184–88 spiritual vision: Photographs of the Immortals and Spirits (Xianling zhaoxiang), 182–207, 184, 188, 193, 196, 197, 200, 204, 206; spirit photography and, 201–7 spirit-writing (fuji), 187 Spring Fantasia (Xiaofeng canyue) (Lang Jingshan), 232–35, 233 “Standing by the railing alone facing the sunset” (Ms Lüdi), 175, 175 Student Literary Writing (Xuesheng wenyi congkan), 96, 302n29 subjectivity: 15, 28, 55, 78, 93, 98, 116, 121,130, 136; lyrical, 27, 103, 120, 124, 127, 144, 267; objectivity and, 21, 217 Sugi Chōka, 151–52 Su Manshu: with fashioning sentimental subject, 137; inscription on postcard, 117, 119, 122; memory image and, 120–21, 123–24, 127; poetic voice and, 117–18, 124–25; with the communities, 123–28

360 

P 

INDEX

Sun Cigong, 148 Sun Yusheng (Haishang Shushisheng), 50, 55–56, 293n54 Su Shi, 35, 40, 160–61, 227, 236, 248, 273n2 “swan tracks in the snow of karmic connections, The,” 122 synaethesia (tonggan), 3, 19 Sze Yuen Ming & Co. (Yao Hua Studio), 37–38, 38, 58, 59 Taifang Studio, 56, 293n55 Tang Dalang, 142 Tang Dynasty, 1, 77, 145, 215, 257, 273n2, 292n41, 309n37 Tang Huanzhang, 187 Tan Sitong, 79–80, 92, 211, 300n9 Tao Qian, 93 Tao Xuan, 65 technological gaze, 159, 230, 250 technologized visuality, 18, 281n66 technology: creativity and, 71; emotion and, 23–24; as “enframed,” 24; image-printing, 16–17; of seeing, 23 telepathy, 185, 210 Tennyson, Alfred (Lord), 234–35 textuality, visuality and, 14–15 theatricality, 27, 132, 270, 294n62; gendercrossing costume photos and, 52, 53, 54, 60, 61; self with reenactment and, 55–63; as suppositionality, 58 thinking, vision and, 18–21, 204 Three illuminators (sanguang), 170 “three perfections” (sanjue), 4 “Three transformation bodies of Ms. Chanqing” (Youxi zazhi), 41, 42 tibi shi (poems on walls), 220 tihua shi (poems on paintings), 3–4, 279n51, 309n44 time: Buddhism and, 83–84, 107, 109; with image as temporal passages, 26, 78–90, 96, 227–28, 231, 234; photography and, 14, 84–86, 92–94; space and, 2, 22, 252, 257

Time Flowing Like Water (Li Shifang), 227, 227–28 tizhao shi (poems written about portraits or photographs), 6 tonggan (synaethesia), 3 “To the Tune Wang Hai Chao” (Tan Sitong), 79–80 traces, 15, 23, 54, 86, 90, 92, 104, 115, 121, 208, 211, 236, 238, 254, 256, 329n86. See also lingji Traces of Chanting in the Western Borderland, The (Xichui yinhen), 256, 259–262 transformation (bian), 52, 68, 70–71, 73 transformation-body. See huashen “Transformation-body of the famous flower Luofei from Shanghai” (Xiaoshuo xinbao), 40, 41 transmediality, 5, 27, 146, 180, 218 Treasured Wizard King, 200, 200 Trees Stripped of Their Leaves (Luo Bonian), with inscription by Chen Lu, 248–49, 249 trick photography, 9, 35, 286n4, 287n5 trikāya theory, 65 Truth Post Bimonthly (Shibao banyuekan), 163, 163 tu (pictures), 5-6; Baizhifu huanxian xianjing tu, 203; Caizhi tu, 47; cunsi tu, 71; Hangui siyuan tu, 292n47; Jingnü tiaozhen tu, 117; jingying tu, 46; Lushu Wuxing shengqi tu, 200; Mingyue tu, 205; Pushuo mili tu, 54, 293n49; Qiushan xinglü tu, 223; shinü tu, 54; shuangshen tu, 288n15; shuangying tu, 288n15; Tiannü sanhua tu, 56, 59, 60, 67, 294n65; wo yu wo zhouxuan tu, 46; Xianjing tu, 205; Xianyuan tu, 206; xingle tu, 51; yijing tu, 40; youxi huashen tu, 153; zhubin tu, 288n17; Ziqi gong tu, 206; zuohua zuiyue tu, 56. See also erwo tu; qiuji tu; shiyi tu Tuhua ribao (Daily Pictorial), 40, 147–50 Tu Shouzhuo, 61–62 twin-selves photos (erwo tu), 33–46, 288nn15–16; “The costume photograph of young Guifen, courtesan from

P

INDEX   361 Nanjing,” 36; Fan Caixia’s transformation-bodies, 42, 43; with inscriptions by Aihua zhuren, 138–40, 139; “Illustrations of photographs of transformation-bodies,” 45; “Is this me?,” 97–98, 97; lady’s transformation-bodies, photograph of, 44; 1904 postcard, Sze Yuen Ming & Co., Shanghai, 37–38, 38; Portrait of Yunfeng entreating the self, 38–39, 39; “Transformation-body of the famous flower Luofei from Shanghai,” 40, 41; transformation of self and, 34–46; “The twin shadows of Hu Feiyun,” 36; “Wu Letian’s costume photo,” 42, 43. See also entreating-the self-picture (qiuji tu) “twin shadows of Hu Feiyun, The” (Haishang jinghongying), 36 “Under X-ray” (Liangyou), 164, 164 urbanities, 17, 42, 73, 87, 129, 158 urban scenes, 171–72, 175, 206, 212 urban environments, 34, 47, 60, 129, 151, 162, 163, 184 ut pictura poesis (as a painting, so also a poem), 2 verbalization, emotion and, 25–26 vernacular-style, 24, 76, 86, 87,93, 94, 95, 98, 108, 159, 163, 165, 311n62, 313n26, 319 Vimalakīrti (Weimo), 58–59, 66–67, 294n64, 296n79 Vimalakīrti Sutra, 58, 294n64 Vinograd, Richard, 57, 82, 291n39, 294n56 vision: camera and artistic, 214–15; disembodied, 283n77; lyrical, 5, 23, 174, 228, 235–36, 267; spiritual, 201–07; thinking and,18–23 “Visiting Chunhang in Shanghai” (Liu Yazi), 135 visual image, 27, 82, 134, 153, 255; arousal and, 26; present and, 86, 120, 156; truth and, 149

visuality: aurality and, 2; technologized, 18, 281n66; textuality and, 15 visual media, 96, 207, 253, 257 visual poetics, 4, 274n14 vital energy. See qi Walton, Kendall, 58, 60 wandering gaze, 18–19, 230, 282n70 Wang Chongyou, 323n18 Wang Dunqing, 211–12, 212 Wang Jiezhi, 229 Wang Mengshu, 223, 334n38 Wang Taowen, 96 Wang Wei, 2, 244–45, 273n2, 273n7 Wang Wentian, 108 Wang Yunzhang, 130, 304n61 Wang Zhaojun, 151–52, 313n21 Wei Yingwu, 227 Weng Linsheng, 87 “With Nothing to Do In My Guest Lodgings, I Whimsically Compose this Poem on The Camera” (Sugi Chōka), 152 Wolf, Werner, 5–6, 276n19 woman in a painting. See Zhenzhen women: bodily image and, 99–100, 104; embodiment of ideal, 56–62, 133, 136, 295n67; female body and, 148–49; female voice in Xichui yinhen, 256–63; with gendered voice and image, 98–109; men with fear of, 164; nudity, 163–66, 166–79; persona of beautiful, 28, 55, 107, 133, 135, 145, 164. See also courtesans; meiren women’s magazines: Chinese Girl’s Progress (Nü xuebao), 101; Elegance (Linglong), 167; Eyebrow Talk (Meiyu), 54; Ladies’ Journal, The (Funü zazhi), 102–03; Women’s Eastern Times, The (Funü shibao), 101; Women’s World (Nüzi shijie), 101 Women’s Eastern Times, The (Funü shibao), 101 “Women’s plaything” (Nüxing de wanwu) (Xu Zhuodai), 158–59 Women’s World (Nüzi shijie), 101

362 

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INDEX

writing: intermedial, 1–17; in poetic form, 24–29; spirit-writing, 184, 187. See also classical-style poetry; inscriptions; vernacular-style “Writing One Quatrain for Yazi, as He Showed Me Multiple Costume Photographs of Chunhang” (Shen Daofei), 67 Wu Chanqing, 40, 41, 42, 44, 288n17 Wu Hung, 57, 230, 238, 290n26, 292n41, 298n93, 334n42 Wu Letian, 42, 43 Wu Mengban, 101 Wushan Society (Wushan she), 186–87, 188, 201–03, 322n15 Wu Tingfang, 183, 187, 323nn18–19 Wu Zao, 106–7 Wu Zhihui, 207, 341n44 Wu Zhiying, 101, 304nn59–60 xiang. See image xiangyan (fragrance and allure), 167, 169, 171, 317n58 Xiangyan zazhi (Glamour Magazine), 41, 288n17 Xiaofeng canyue (Spring Fantasia) (Lang Jingshan), 232–35, 23 Xiaoshuo daguan. See Grand Magazine, The Xiaoshuo shibao. See Fiction Times Xiaoshuo xinbao. See New Journal for Fiction “Xiaoyu is gone” (Xiaoyu quyi) (Wu Chanqing), 44 Xibei lansheng (China’s Northwest, A Pictorial Survey), 256–59, 258 Xichui yinhen (The Traces of Chanting in the Western Borderland), 256, 259–262, 260, 261 Xie He, 229 Xie Jinqin, 101 xiesheng (drawing from nature), 217, 332n18 xieshi (depicting the real), 217–18 xieyi (sketching ideas), 29, 213, 220, 221; defined, 215; mind and, 216; practices of, 219–22, 229–36; transplanting, 214–19

xieyi zhaoxiang, 214, 215 xiezhen, 68, 100, 214, 215, 284n95, 297nn83–85, 331n5, 332n18; as shashin, 68-69, 297nn84– 85, 330n2 xin (heart-mind), 18, 177, 194, 213, 219 Xing club (Xingshe), 60–62 xingle tu (pleasure painting), 51, 291n41, 292n41 xingpo (bodily soul), 194 xiongzhong zaohua. See interior landscapes xiucai, 50, 55 Xiyou ji (Journey to the West), 72 X-rays: invention of, 316n48; photographs, 163–64, 164, 316n44; “Under X-ray,” 164, 164 Xu Banhou: death of, 183, 189–90, 324n26; spirit photography of, 184, 197 Xu Beihong, 217 Xuesheng wenyi congkan (Student Literary Writing), 96, 302n29 Xu Fuguan, 229, 335n51 “Xu Jiyu [Xu Naichang] Showed Me a Photo of Myself Taken in the Year of Yisi and Asked Me to Compose a Poem” (Shen Zengzhi), 83 Xu Muru (Zee Mok-yu), 223, 224 Xu Naichang, 83, 301n17 Xu Ning, 1, 2, 3 Xu Shishen, 257, 258, 342n49 Xu Shouchang, 74, 183, 298n1, 299n2, 299n2 Xu Wei, 215 Xuyun, 88–90, 89, 302nn31–32 Xu Yunhua, 99–100, 102, 102–3 Xu Zhenya, 156–57 Xu Zhuodai, 158–59 Xu Zihua, 104 Yan Fu, 92, 183, 197–98, 209–10, 329n90, 329n93 Yang Guangxi, 185 Yang Tingdong, 190–91 Yang Xuan, 185, 204–5 Yang Yuhuan (Consort Yang), 168, 258, 262 Yan Ziling Fishing Terrace (Yan Ziling diaotai) (Huang Yanpei), 251, 252 Yao Yuanchu, 130, 309n37

P

INDEX   363 Ye Gongchuo, 140 Yellow Emperor, 256–58, 258, 260, 262, 342n48 Ye Shengtao, 157–59, 314n32 Ye Yusen, 133–34 yi (intent or idea), 213, 215–19, 222, 228, 229, 240, 242, 331n12, 333n35, 334n36. See also huayi; shiyi; xieyi yijing (artistic vista), 214–15 yimin (loyalists), 82, 301n17 ying. See shadows. yingshen (enjoyment-body), 65 Yi Ru (Da’an Jushi), 253, 253, 254, 255, 340n37 yitai (ether), 211 Yi Xuan (Prince Chun), 9–11, 47, 277n31, 290n34; photographs of, 10, 48 “You magnificent skull” (Healthy Beauty Monthly) (Cilang), 165, 166–67 Young Companion, The (Liangyou), 16–17, 221, 281n61, 319n74; “Illustrations of photographs of transformation-bodies,” 45; nudes in, 167, 173, 173–74; “Under X-ray,” 164, 164 youxi, defined, 50–52 Youxi kexue (Entertainment Science), 50–52 youxi xiaoying (small shadows of entertainment), 42, 50, 52 Youxi zazhi. See Pastime, The Youzheng Book Company, 16, 152 Yü, Ying-Shih, 194 Yuan Shikai, 47, 48–49, 49, 291n36 Yuan Shilian, 48 Yu Caisheng, 42, 43 Yu Dafu, 242, 245, 250; calligraphy of, 248; Building Materials Fill the River and inscription by, 245, 246; Deer Fence and inscription by, 244, 244; Fisherman’s Song on Lan River and inscription by, 245, 247, 248 Yu Fu, 185, 190, 198, 203, 207, 323n18, 326n57, 327n58, 328n80; with imponderable, 207–9; The Serials of Psychical Research and, 328n80; with spirit and light, 195–96 Yu Jianhua, 129

Yu Jue, 211, 347n97 Yule, defined, 49, 52, 292n45 Yuli hun (Jade Pear Spirit) (Xu Zhenya), 156–57 Yu Pingbo, 213 Yu Shengming, 242–44, 243 Yu Society (Yushe), 87, 96 Zhang Baobao (Lanqiao Bieshu), 153, 154, 313n24 zhangcao (draft-cursive calligraphy), 259 Zhang Daqian, 232, 235, 243, 337n61 Zhang Ji, 257, 260 Zhang Jinzhi, 52, 54 Zhang Mojun, 29, 239; Xichui yinhen, 256, 258–62, 261, 341n41 Zhang Ruilan, 66–67 Zhang Shizhao, 24–25, 117, 118, 121, 123, 284n101 Zhang Yinquan, 227 Zhang Zhenhou, 223 Zhan Kai, 153–54, 312n17, 313n23 Zhao Fuchen, 253–54, 340n37 Zhao Mianyun, 60–62, 61, 295nn67–68 Zhao Yan, 145 Zhao Zongding, 242 zhen: connotations, 23, 68–69; self between untrue and, 63–73; subjective, 267; transformation and illusion with, 69–71; ultimate, 68, 219, 230, 332n26. See also xiezhen Zheng Banqiao, 174, 227 Zheng Haoru, 87 Zheng Wuchang, 216, 331n8 zhenxiang (true image), 22 zhenshi xiang (marks of reality), 66 Zhenzhen (woman in a painting), 28, 145, 179–80, 179; allusion in poems, 99–100, 147, 148, 149, 156–57; calling to lady in photograph, 146–59 Zhonghua Publishing House, 95, 185 Zhou Enlai, 52 Zhou Lianxia, 140–44, 142

364 

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INDEX

Zhou Shoujuan, 66, 295n65, 296n78, 307n19, 314n34; cross-dressing and, 47, 52–54, 53, 292n47; “On Zhou Shoujuan’s CrossedDressed Photograph,” 67 Zhou Shuren. See Lu Xun Zhuangzi, 160, 166, 185, 248, 301n19 Zhu Shaoping, 130 Zhu Suzhen, 99–100 Zhu Taoshan, 212, 212

Zhu Wonong, 140, 141 Zhu Xi, 82 Zhu Yizun, 169 Zhu Zongyuan, 122, 124 Zhuo Wenjun, 52 Zigu (goddess of the latrine), 185 Zimei Collection, The (Zimei ji), 129–32 Zou Boqi, 8–9