Creating Chinese Modernity
Knowledge and Everyday Life, 1900-1940
1st Edition
Published on 10. April 2006
Book
Hardback
252 pages
978-0-8204-7945-3 (ISBN)
Description
Over the first half of the twentieth century, the lives of millions of urban Chinese were transformed by new ideas, new objects, new jobs, new leisure pursuits, new forms of transportation, new architecture: in a word, new «life-styles» and habits of mind. What did these changes mean to ordinary people? The essays in this book examine how prevailing discourses - on nationalism, feminism, democracy, individualism, socialism, and the like - emerged and were absorbed into the lived experiences and material culture of ordinary Chinese. Only from intimate personal experiences with forces ranging from war, revolution, and state-building to advertising blitzes and boycotts was Chinese modernity forged, forged out of «forces» larger than individuals but simultaneously observed, interpreted, adapted, and absorbed by those individuals.
More details
Person
The Editor: Peter Zarrow is Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. He received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and is the author of numerous works on modern Chinese intellectual history. His current interests include late Qing textbooks and the cultural significance of the collapse of the monarchy in 1911.
Content
Contents: Peter Zarrow: Introduction: New Discourses and Everyday Life in Modern China - Young-Tsu Wong: Zhang Binglin's Critique of Western Modernity: A Chinese View of Cultural Pluralism - Peter Zarrow: Constitutionalism and the Imagination of the State: Official Views of Political Reform in the Late Qing - Jon Kowallis: Lu Xun and Terrorism: A Reading of Revenge and Violence in
Mara
and Beyond - Chi Kong Lai: Merchant Discourse on Self-interest in Modern China - WeipinTsai: Having It All: Patriotism and Gracious Living in
Shenbao
's Tobacco Advertisements, 1919 to 1937 - Ning Jennifer Chang: Purely Sport or A Gambling Disgrace? Greyhound Racing and the Formation of Modern Shanghai - Jinlin Hwang: Authority over the Body and the Modern Formation of the Body - Ling-Ling Lien: Leisure, Patriotism, and Identity: The Chinese Career Women's Club in Wartime Shanghai.