Journal of Modern Chinese History
VOLUME 4 MUMBER 1 JULY 2010
CONTENTS
Articles
The Shanghai Bund in myth and history: an essay through textual and visual sources
Christian Henriot
The sound of images: peddlers’ calls and tunes in Republican Peking
Feng Yi
National identity, nation and race: Wang Jingwei’s early revolutionary ideas, 1905-1911
So Wai Chor
Review Essay
Shanghai, sweet and sour: a critique of three important books on a rapidly changing city
Niv Horesh
Commentary
Thirty years of modern Chinese history studies: past experiences and prospective trends
Xie Wei
Book Reviews
Notes on Contributors
The Shanghai Bund in myth and history: an essay through textual and visual sources
Christian Henriot
Institut d’Asie Orientale (CNRS), University of Lyon, Lyon
The Bund ranks first in any introduction to Shanghai in contemporary guides as a ‘‘must see’’ place where one can go to discover the wonders of Shanghai and its now sanitized and non-controversial past. Current accounts usually point to the bizarre architectural heritage that the municipal government has lately chosen to turn into a tourist attraction for domestic and foreign consumption alike. The present paper intends to unveil a much more complex and multi-layered history. It relies on a large body of materials, especially visual sources, to document the transformation of an undistinguished space – a riverfront – into a central place of political, social and architectural juxtaposition. This exploration will start from the earliest visual records of the city, made by Chinese or Western residents and travelers and move into the late 1940s. This paper weaves different threads to highlight the various layers of discourse that ‘‘made the Bund’’ while at the same time blending textual and visual sources to illustrate its changing nature over time, from a commercial entrepot to a cityscape devoted to finance and leisure.
The sound of images: peddlers’ calls and tunes in Republican Peking
Feng Yi
Institut d’Asie Orientale (CNRS), University of Lyon, Lyon
Street peddlers were a common feature of city life in China well into the twentieth century. The presence of these small-scale, often single-good merchants can be traced back to earlier centuries. That they survived until after WWII reflects in part the state of economic development of China, where recent immigrants were prepared to take up the meanest, lowest-paid jobs to make a living. In Peking, thousands of peddlers roamed the streets, and more particularly, the hutongs where most of the population lived. They ceaselessly offered their goods and services to the residents, day and night. In order to attract customers and to entice them out of their walled houses and courtyards, peddlers uttered musical vocal phrases, sometimes in elaborate form, and more interestingly, they sometimes used musical instruments. In this paper I examine who they were, how they operated and what they represented to Peking’s urban society. From this sketchy social portrait, I will move into a study of how the peddlers were represented in various settings of the pictorial records. Finally, I argue that peddlers were an integral part of a kind of street theater. This is not just a metaphor. Through their calls, songs, and music, peddlers created a constant flow of live entertainment in the street.
National identity, nation and race: Wang Jingwei’s early revolutionary ideas, 1905–1911
So Wai Chor
School of Arts and Social Sciences, Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
This article examines Wang Jingwei’s ideas on nation and race before the 1911 Revolution. It has often been agreed by scholars that there was a strong current of anti-Manchuism among the revolutionaries and as a result, on the eve of the 1911 Revolution, the revolutionaries remained divided as to whether the new Republic should inherit all the territories ruled by the Manchu dynasty and whether it should include the Manchus into the nation. It was only in the reformist camp led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao that the Manchus were unambiguously regarded as part of the Chinese nation. This article suggests that in the revolutionary camp before the 1911 Revolution, it was Wang Jingwei who broke new ground in mapping out a place for the Manchus after the revolution. He stood out among the revolutionaries in the clear formulation of the idea that the new Chinese nation should be composed of different nationalities including the Manchus. This article also suggests that although Sun Yat-sen had an influence upon Wang Jingwei’s political thinking during the Tongmenghui (Revolutionary Alliance) times, Wang’s intellectual talents and resources enabled him to outgrow Sun’s framework and develop his own ideas. His concepts on race and nation and perceptions of Han–Manchu relations owed a considerable debt to the Swiss legal scholar, Johann Kaspar Bluntschli. Wang Jingwei has been a much reviled political figure in twentieth century Chinese history. His contribution to the formulation of a racial identity for the new Chinese nation has long been underrated, and this article attempts to throw light upon this aspect of his political thought.
Thirty years of modern Chinese history studies: past experiences and prospective trends
Xie Wei
Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing
This paper presents an overview of and comments on a symposium concerning modern Chinese history held in Beijing, China in October 2009. It is composed of four parts: first, the paradigm issues of modern Chinese historical studies; second, indigenous reorientation and the study of regional social history; third, the relationship between social history and regional social history; fourth, the history of scholarship on the Chinese revolution. All the conference participants were prestigious scholars in the fields of modern Chinese history and Ming–Qing historical studies in Mainland China. The attending scholars provided in-depth and well considered views about the macro issues of this discipline. Furthermore, the discussion was very active and productive. This paper reflects the latest trends in the field of modern Chinese historical studies in Mainland China.
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