Abstract:The growing scholarship on consumption has offered provocative new ways of using consumer goods as a lens to understand social relations, political subjectivity, and economic institutions in Mao’s China. However, the prevailing social-centered paradigm often views consumer goods as an abstract category rather than as materials with differing qualities. The literature has rarely considered the properties of materials, such as weight and durability, in connection with the nature of the Maoist system. By looking at materials in their own right, this article focuses on the material properties of a consumer product prominent in the Mao era and afterward: the Minguang brand of floral-patterned bedsheets, affectionately known as China’s “national bedsheet.” My research reveals that as a material embodiment of key differences between the Maoist system and other political-economic systems, the Minguang bedsheet’s material form was the result of understudied yet defining characteristics of the Maoist system, such as economic autarky, socialist realist industrial design, opposition to planned obsolescence, and an obsession with cotton fibers.
{"title":"Revolutionary Bedsheets: Industrial Design and the Material Properties of Maoist China","authors":"Zixian Liu","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The growing scholarship on consumption has offered provocative new ways of using consumer goods as a lens to understand social relations, political subjectivity, and economic institutions in Mao’s China. However, the prevailing social-centered paradigm often views consumer goods as an abstract category rather than as materials with differing qualities. The literature has rarely considered the properties of materials, such as weight and durability, in connection with the nature of the Maoist system. By looking at materials in their own right, this article focuses on the material properties of a consumer product prominent in the Mao era and afterward: the Minguang brand of floral-patterned bedsheets, affectionately known as China’s “national bedsheet.” My research reveals that as a material embodiment of key differences between the Maoist system and other political-economic systems, the Minguang bedsheet’s material form was the result of understudied yet defining characteristics of the Maoist system, such as economic autarky, socialist realist industrial design, opposition to planned obsolescence, and an obsession with cotton fibers.","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"159 - 177"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44278030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In 1955, Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet staged the first ballet adaptation of the Chinese land reform drama The White-Haired Girl in Tokyo, laying the foundation for Chinese revolutionary ballet. This is the first study in English to explore the Matsuyama Ballet production in detail. Employing Chinese-language sources from the production’s 1958 tour to China, this article explores the historical making, performance, and reception of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl and situates it in the context of Sino-Japanese relations during the 1950s. The article argues that the production resulted from a longer history of interactions between Japan, China, and the Soviet Union and that its interpretation of The White-Haired Girl story served as a bridge between the 1950 Chinese feature film and the 1971 Chinese ballet film. It also argues that Chinese responses to the production demonstrate significant differences between Japanese and Chinese discourses about Sino-Japanese friendship in the 1950s.
{"title":"Sino-Japanese Cultural Diplomacy in the 1950s: The Making and Reception of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl","authors":"Emily E. Wilcox","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 1955, Japan’s Matsuyama Ballet staged the first ballet adaptation of the Chinese land reform drama The White-Haired Girl in Tokyo, laying the foundation for Chinese revolutionary ballet. This is the first study in English to explore the Matsuyama Ballet production in detail. Employing Chinese-language sources from the production’s 1958 tour to China, this article explores the historical making, performance, and reception of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl and situates it in the context of Sino-Japanese relations during the 1950s. The article argues that the production resulted from a longer history of interactions between Japan, China, and the Soviet Union and that its interpretation of The White-Haired Girl story served as a bridge between the 1950 Chinese feature film and the 1971 Chinese ballet film. It also argues that Chinese responses to the production demonstrate significant differences between Japanese and Chinese discourses about Sino-Japanese friendship in the 1950s.","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"130 - 158"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42931148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Governing the Dead: Martyrs, Memorials, and Necrocitizenship in Modern China by Linh D. Vu (review)","authors":"D. Åsen","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"E-12 - E-14"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47528539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In parallel to the postsocialist transformations and growing geopolitical significance of the Russia-China relationship, recent years have seen a surge of interest among Anglophone scholars in the Sino-Russian border and the borderland region around it. Working against a perspective focused on the language and decision-making of the political center, the books under review train their ethnographic and historical focus on specific local case studies to illuminate the Russia-China border as a site that produces, reveals, and sustains difference. At the same time, the border region emerges as a zone where the agency of the particular, the local, and the exceptional can assert itself against dominant, normative, or centralizing forces. Read together, these studies present the Sino-Russian border as both the key to the relationship and the space of its exceptions.
{"title":"Eurasian Mirror: New Perspectives on The Russia-China Border","authors":"Edward Tyerman","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In parallel to the postsocialist transformations and growing geopolitical significance of the Russia-China relationship, recent years have seen a surge of interest among Anglophone scholars in the Sino-Russian border and the borderland region around it. Working against a perspective focused on the language and decision-making of the political center, the books under review train their ethnographic and historical focus on specific local case studies to illuminate the Russia-China border as a site that produces, reveals, and sustains difference. At the same time, the border region emerges as a zone where the agency of the particular, the local, and the exceptional can assert itself against dominant, normative, or centralizing forces. Read together, these studies present the Sino-Russian border as both the key to the relationship and the space of its exceptions.","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"178 - 185"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43946220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Xin shiji was a Chinese journal published in France by Chinese anarchists and revolutionaries from 1907 to 1910. This article examines the views of education and learning and views of Chinese language and script expressed in Xin shiji. Xin shiji presents a cosmopolitan moment of educational imagination in the late Qing and early Republican period of China that has been largely ignored in the scholarly literature on education of this period, which has focused instead on the role of education and educational transformation in state building. Dispassionate about disseminating ideas about citizenship and about exploring the role of education in creating new citizens, writers for Xin shiji emphasized the connection of an autonomous individual member of society who is not bound by the nation-state. This cosmopolitan vision of education did not situate itself within an existing tradition or presuppose the institutional and political forms through which education and learning should be implemented.
{"title":"Education as Revolution: Theorizing Education and Learning in Xin Shiji (1907–1910)","authors":"H. Liang","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Xin shiji was a Chinese journal published in France by Chinese anarchists and revolutionaries from 1907 to 1910. This article examines the views of education and learning and views of Chinese language and script expressed in Xin shiji. Xin shiji presents a cosmopolitan moment of educational imagination in the late Qing and early Republican period of China that has been largely ignored in the scholarly literature on education of this period, which has focused instead on the role of education and educational transformation in state building. Dispassionate about disseminating ideas about citizenship and about exploring the role of education in creating new citizens, writers for Xin shiji emphasized the connection of an autonomous individual member of society who is not bound by the nation-state. This cosmopolitan vision of education did not situate itself within an existing tradition or presuppose the institutional and political forms through which education and learning should be implemented.","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"109 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48771957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article reveals the uneven and locally differentiated process of the Chinese Revolution and socialist construction by examining the Chinese Communist Party's policies and their effects on coastal villages in Northeast China from 1946 to 1959. It focuses on two rural reforms conducted almost simultaneously in the area, namely land reform and fishery reform. The former shows conflicting party imperatives originating from different levels of leadership, as well as the impact of the postwar Soviet occupation on rural land policies. Fishery reform drew inspiration from land reform but also incorporated invented practices and values to win support from fishers. Although the party-state attempted to adjust its revolutionary programs to accommodate the local realities in coastal villages, tension emerged in response to changes centering on the division of labor between men and women and the pay disparity between farmers and fishers.
{"title":"Making a Coastal Revolution: Farmers, Fishers, and Socialism, 1946–1959","authors":"Xiaofei Gao","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article reveals the uneven and locally differentiated process of the Chinese Revolution and socialist construction by examining the Chinese Communist Party's policies and their effects on coastal villages in Northeast China from 1946 to 1959. It focuses on two rural reforms conducted almost simultaneously in the area, namely land reform and fishery reform. The former shows conflicting party imperatives originating from different levels of leadership, as well as the impact of the postwar Soviet occupation on rural land policies. Fishery reform drew inspiration from land reform but also incorporated invented practices and values to win support from fishers. Although the party-state attempted to adjust its revolutionary programs to accommodate the local realities in coastal villages, tension emerged in response to changes centering on the division of labor between men and women and the pay disparity between farmers and fishers.","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"22 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43515321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article addresses two issues germane to the scholarly quest for Hui identity in the modern era. First, it adds to recent historiography on the Hui by constructing an account of the amalgamation of this corporate identity over the twentieth century. I argue that this conglomeration may only be maintained by overlooking the divergence between the territorially compact Hui communities in Northwest China and the deterritorialized Muslim minority members in China's eastern provinces. This article also cites the continued circulation of the Perso-Arabic xiao'erjin script as evidence for the distinctive northwestern Hui identity. I argue that decentering the eastern provinces and their Chinese language print culture results in a new typology of the Hui, one in which the state-defined negative attribute of "three lacks"—common script, common territory, common economic life—may define the widely dispersed eastern Hui but does not describe the Hui in the northwestern heartland.
{"title":"Who Are the Hui? A Necessary Footnote of Inconvenience","authors":"Peng Hai","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article addresses two issues germane to the scholarly quest for Hui identity in the modern era. First, it adds to recent historiography on the Hui by constructing an account of the amalgamation of this corporate identity over the twentieth century. I argue that this conglomeration may only be maintained by overlooking the divergence between the territorially compact Hui communities in Northwest China and the deterritorialized Muslim minority members in China's eastern provinces. This article also cites the continued circulation of the Perso-Arabic xiao'erjin script as evidence for the distinctive northwestern Hui identity. I argue that decentering the eastern provinces and their Chinese language print culture results in a new typology of the Hui, one in which the state-defined negative attribute of \"three lacks\"—common script, common territory, common economic life—may define the widely dispersed eastern Hui but does not describe the Hui in the northwestern heartland.","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"48 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42041166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:During the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945), cartoons constituted an important type of cultural production in Japanese-occupied China. Most scholarship focuses on the political stances shown in such cartoons. However, this article explores Chinese cartoons that seldom directly addressed political issues in wartime North China. In 1935, Zhang Guangyu created the first Folk Love Songs cartoon, which has been seen as representative of Sinicized cartoons, emphasizing the national characteristics shown in Chinese folk culture. With changes in formal and ideological matters, Folk Love Songs cartoons continued to appear in Japanese-occupied North China, featuring quotidian topics. This article argues that, by visualizing everyday life, Folk Love Songs cartoons displaced and de/politicized (depoliticized and simultaneously repoliticized) the national characteristics embedded in prewar Sinicized cartoons. The motif showcases the complexity of wartime cultural production that was not totally occupied by political propaganda.
{"title":"Visualizing Folk Love Songs: De/politicization of Sinicized Cartoons in North China under Japanese Occupation","authors":"Muyang Zhuang","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:During the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945), cartoons constituted an important type of cultural production in Japanese-occupied China. Most scholarship focuses on the political stances shown in such cartoons. However, this article explores Chinese cartoons that seldom directly addressed political issues in wartime North China. In 1935, Zhang Guangyu created the first Folk Love Songs cartoon, which has been seen as representative of Sinicized cartoons, emphasizing the national characteristics shown in Chinese folk culture. With changes in formal and ideological matters, Folk Love Songs cartoons continued to appear in Japanese-occupied North China, featuring quotidian topics. This article argues that, by visualizing everyday life, Folk Love Songs cartoons displaced and de/politicized (depoliticized and simultaneously repoliticized) the national characteristics embedded in prewar Sinicized cartoons. The motif showcases the complexity of wartime cultural production that was not totally occupied by political propaganda.","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"70 - 85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48771218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Internationalist Aesthetics: China and Early Soviet Culture by Edward Tyerman (review)","authors":"Emily E. Wilcox","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"E-11 - E-9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42719389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Composing for the Revolution: Nie Er and China's Sonic Nationalism by Joshua H. Howard (review)","authors":"Chuen-Fung Wong","doi":"10.1353/tcc.2023.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2023.0005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42116,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth-Century China","volume":"48 1","pages":"E-1 - E-3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45165018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：