Becoming Chinese

by Yeh, Wen-hsin

• ISBN13: 9780520222182
• ISBN10: 0520222180
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

This volume evaluates the dual roles of war and modernity in the transformation of twentieth-century Chinese identity. The contributors, all leading researchers, argue that war, no less than revolution, deserves attention as a major force in the making of twentieth-century Chinese history. Further, they show that modernity in material culture and changes in intellectual consciousness should serve as twin foci of a new wave of scholarly analysis. Examining in particular the rise of modern Chinese cities and the making of the Chinese nation-state, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume of cultural history provide new ways of thinking about China's modern transformation up to the 1950s. Taken together, the essays demonstrate that the combined effect of a modernizing state and an industrializing economy weakened the Chinese bourgeoisie and undercut the individual's quest for autonomy. Drawing upon new archival sources, these theoretically informed, thoroughly revisionist essays focus on topics such as Western-inspired modernity, urban cosmopolitanism, consumer culture, gender relationships, interchanges between city and countryside, and the growing impact of the state on the lives of individuals. The volume makes an important contribution toward a postsocialist understanding of twentieth-century China.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Interpreting Chinese Modernity, 1900--1950	1	(30)
Wen-hsin Yeh
PART ONE THE CITY AND THE MODERN
The Cultural Construction of Modernity in Urban Shanghai: Some Preliminary Explorations	31	(31)
Leo Ou-fan Lee
Marketing Medicine and Advertising Dreams in China, 1900--1950	62	(36)
Sherman Cochran
``A High Place Is No Better Than a Low Place'': The City in the Making of Modern China	98	(39)
David Strand
Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928--1937	137	(24)
William C. Kirby
Hierarchical Modernization: Tianjin's Gong Shang College as a Model for Catholic Community in North China	161	(30)
Richard Madsen
The Grounding of Cosmopolitans: Merchants and Local Cultures in Guangdong	191	(40)
Helen F. Siu
PART TWO THE NATION AND THE SELF
Zhang Taiyan's Concept of the Individual and Modern Chinese Identity	231	(29)
Wang Hui
Crime or Punishment? On the Forensic Discourse of Modern Chinese Literature	260	(38)
David Der-wei Wang
Hanjian (Traitor)! Collaboration and Retribution in Wartime Shanghai	298	(44)
Frederic Wakeman Jr.
Of Authenticity and Woman: Personal Narratives of Middle-Class Women in Modern China	342	(23)
Prasenjit Duara
Victory as Defeat: Postwar Visualizations of China's War of Resistance	365	(34)
Paul G. Pickowicz
Glossary	399	(10)
Contributors	409	(4)
Index	413