In this article, we explore the way men and women used the idea of violence to transform their broader political roles in their desired new Republic. We argue that the espousal of violence, whether or not actually undertaken, became an important part of the accoutrements of progressive political forces in China at this time. Violent action was perceived as virtuous rather than villainous among reformers and radicals in the late Qing and early Republic. We demonstrate that the impact and significance of this turn to violence differed for men and for women. For men, the ability and willingness to take violent action symbolized a break with the effete literati of the imperial past by their envisaging of a muscular Confucianism; for women, it provided a platform on which their claims to equal citizenship with men could be performed. The gendered nature of the virtue of violence within this rapidly changing political context produced unexpected results for both male and female political aspirants.
This article investigates the distribution and consumption of Way Down East (directed by D. W. Griffith, 1920) in Chinese cities in the 1920s in an attempt to explore the impact of foreign films on early Chinese filmmaking in particular and on Chinese society in general. Griffith’s Way Down East highlights a young woman’s trials and tribulations caused by male tyranny and deception. Such films by D. W. Griffith struck a chord in China in the 1920s, when the concerns of women and the loss of family values after the May Fourth movement found expression in film. The embracing of Way Down East in China, particularly among progressive intellectuals, indicates the existence of an anti-May Fourth conservatism. Chinese intellectuals were inspired by Way Down East to deny Chinese women’s subjectivity as new women who could control their own destinies; such a denial thereby rejected romantic love as a means of women’s emancipation and enlightenment. The intellectual class’s jettisoning of the rhetoric of “free love” and free marriage and re-emphasizing family values in the 1920s were conducive to the Nationalist Party’s conservative agenda to discipline individuals and Chinese society in the late 1920s and 1930s. Therefore, the “partification” of China during the Nanjing Decade (1927–37) was a direct outgrowth of a conservative consensus that followed upon May Fourth.
The Young Companion, an important representative of Republican Shanghai’s popular magazines, organized a Healthy Baby Contest from August 1926 to March 1927. Though its slogan, “Strong babies promise strong people, strong people guarantee a strong nation” expressed a nationalistic spirit, this contest was rather a commercial activity organized by a popular magazine and its commercial sponsor exploiting nationalistic discourse. Such an integration of nationalistic discourse and commercial interests profoundly influenced mass culture and ultimately promoted China’s modernization and its development as a nation. With this contest as an example, this paper sheds light on the relationship between popular journals and the making of a nation.
“Bare branches,” the name given to unmarried men in China, have historically posed a great threat to social stability in that country. Based on historical records and literature, the findings in this study reveal that female infanticide, coupled with the practice of polygyny, meant that during the Ming and Qing dynasties and the Republican Era, up to twenty percent of males remained single. As a result, underclass bare branches turned to less socially accepted marriage practices. And if they were still unable to find a suitable marriage partner, they would turn to prostitutes, adultery with married women, or might even resort to sexual assault. Humiliated by their social status, bare branches tended to drift away from their hometowns and form brotherhoods, secret societies, bandit gangs and even military groups, posing a real threat to social stability. In extreme cases, they engaged in armed conflict, taking over government offices, clashing with government forces, destroying social infrastructure, and helping to topple dynastic regimes. Such extreme violence and disorder led to the reduction of local populations by the thousands or even millions, creating a subsequent negative effect on social development.
By looking at one particular case, this study determines what resources were available to local governments in order to finance local economic development in the reform era. It finds that although local finance expanded tremendously in this era, and extra-budgetary revenue also increased, those two things did not produce much financial surplus for capital construction and fixed investment. The only source at the local government’s disposal was cheap land expropriated from local peasants. Land thus becomes the key to understanding local finance during the reform era.
Chinese local gazetteers (difangzhi) have been long recognized as an important primary source for the study of local history. Since the 1990s, in addition to projects to publish provincial, city, and county gazetteers, local gazetteers for villages, city districts, and city neighborhoods and streets (jiedao) have also been compiled. This paper focuses on one particular genre of these newly emerged local gazetteers, the city sub-district gazetteer or street gazetteers (jiedaozhi). We track their development, and discuss their characteristics and their research value for Chinese studies. We show that jiedaozhi open windows into grassroots society in urban areas, which may stimulate new research directions in Chinese studies.