The Symposium On Urban Popular Culture in Modern China: MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

Front. Hist.
China 2008, 3(4): 499532

DOI 10.1007/s11462-008-0022-3
RESEARCH ARTICLE
MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao
The symposium on urban popular culture in

modern China
Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag 2008
Abstract The studies of urban popular culture in modern China in recent years
have attracted wide attention from scholars in China and abroad. The symposium,
which is composed by Ma Mins Injecting vitality into the studies of urban
cultural history, Jiang Jins Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in
modern China, Wang Dis The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective
and methodology of studying urban popular culture from the case of teahouses in
Chengdu, Joseph W. Eshericks Remaking the Chinese city: Urban space and
urban culture and Lu Hanchaos From elites to common people: The
downward trend in the studies of Chinese urban history in the United States,
provide valuable insights on the perspective, trend, and methodology of the
studies.
Four articles of the symposium are translated by Yang Kai-chien and Jin Xueqin from Shixue
Yuekan (Journal of Historical Science), 2008, (5): 519; Joseph W. Esherick
provides the English version of his article.
MA Min ( )
Institute of Modern Chinese History, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China
E-mail: mamin@mail.ccnu.edu.cn
JIANG Jin ( )
Department of History; Institute of Modern Chinese Thoughts and Culture, East China Normal
University, Shanghai 200241, China
E-mail: jjiang@history.ecnu.edu.cn
WANG Di ( )
Department of History, Texas A & M University, Texas 77843, USA
E-mail: diwanghistory@yahoo.com
Joseph W. ESHERICK ( )
Department of History, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093, USA
E-mail: jesherick@ucsd.edu
LU Hanchao ( )
Department of History, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia 30332, USA
E-mail: hanchao.lu@hts.gatech.edu
500
Keywords modern China, urban popular culture, symposium

MA Min
Injecting vitality into the studies of urban cultural

history
Following the studies of urban political, economic, and social histories, urban
cultural history is now moving to the focus of historical research both at home and
abroad. The Second International Conference on the History of Popular Culture of
Modern Chinese Cities held in Chengdu 2007, one of Chinas most vigorous
inland cities, provided valuable discussions on urban space and popular culture
and made a great contribution to the scholarship of urban cultural history.
Indeed, quite a few scholars presented their insightful research papers at the
conference, including Liang Yuanshengs Writing about the Five Dimensional
Urban Space the geographical space, the cultural space, the power space, the
living space, and the divine space; Wang Dis description of the teahouses and
urban streets; and Li Deying and Cheng Baomeis discussion of urban public
space such as parks, theatres and cinemas. All these studies, as far as I can see,
point to the same effort to broaden the scope of research on urban cultural history
and to inject vitality into this field of learning.
Then, by what means can we inject vitality into the research on urban cultural
history? Personally, I believe that we must first of all broaden our horizon,
transform our traditional methods of historical research and description, and pay
attention to those details in urban cultural history that have normally been
neglected. Recently some scholars have been advocating the importance of
feeling in historical research, or, in other words, the sensationism in
historical study.1 Actually, the application of the idea of feeling to the study of
urban cultural history does point to a possible direction of historical research.
1
Yang Nianqun, Lei Tian, 2007, No. 8.
The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China
501
Coming to my mind at this moment is Jiang Wens shooting of movies. As the

director of Yangguang canlan de rizi (Those sunny days), and the more recent
Taiyang Zhaochang shengqi (The sun rises as usual), Jiang Wen pursues his
movie-shooting idea of following ones own feeling. One could find in his
movies the unforgettable flavor and sound of his early experience: the smell of
asphalt and acetylene on the road of his hometown in Tangshan, and the loud,
monotonous sound of a trumpet; one could find the inerasable impressions from
his early years: a pair of feet, and a piece of sandy field; tractors emerging out of
the fog; camels carrying women slowly walking into an orange background, then
everything turning into a blank of orange. Feeling those sounds, those odors and
those impressions, Jiang Wen is able to shoot wonderful movies, movies that are
as natural as the flowing water. As he once said, Only when I am able to smell
the flavor of each detail in the story can I shoot a successful movie, and only in
that way can I be confident that I can do it better than anyone else, because they
can not get the smell that I have got.2 Indeed, researching on urban cultural
history is very much similar to Jiang Wens movie-shooting in that the scholar
must merge into the city to smell its flavor, to hear its sound, to see its form and,
above all, to grasp its spirit. In one word, only by feeling about the city can a
scholar produce vivid writing of urban cultural history, for as passion serves as the
yeast to ferment feeling, ones vivid feeling is the prerequisite to good writing.
The flavor of the city
Every city has its unique flavor, which denotes both a physical odor and a kind of
special cultural charm. The air of seaport cities is a wet and salty odor of the
sea, produced by the breath of the great ocean. In the port areas of cities on
great rivers, one can usually detect the smell of diesel oil, and together with the
hooting of sirens now and then, it naturally reminds one of ships of various sizes
and shapes and the busy transportation on the river. And of course, from the city
air one can always expect to catch the flavor of delicious dishes from restaurants,
the faint scent of tea from teahouses, and the fragrance of flowers from gardens
and parks. All these flavor and scent and fragrance may vary from time to time,
from place to place, and may be different from person to person, evoking sweet
memories of the past or fanciful reveries about the future.
The flavor of the city is also of diachronic nature, for cities of different times
call to mind different memories. A small town in the era of agriculture is
associated with the odor of firewood, and a city in the early stage of
industrialization may have the smell of coal and smoke filling its air, whereas in
a highly developed modern city, the odor that impresses one most is probably
2
Li Zongtao, No. 24, Sep. 21, 2001.
502
that of exhaust from automobiles on the roads. These different odors may serve
as symbols for cities at different stages of evolution. Why do we have deep
memories of the odor of asphalt roads in the 1950s and 1960s? It is because the
asphalt of poor quality made in our country had such a bad strong smell and
easily became sticky in the summer sun, although the newly-built asphalt roads
did help lend the cities a new look by transforming the rough and uneven roads
with puddles here and there. I remember we used to walk on asphalt road, as a
writer recorded, And in summer, the road became soft, and each step would
leave a pit on it. But in no time, you were sure to find peoples shoes glued with
black asphalt.3 This is a memory of a generation, a collective memory of city
cultural life in a given time. My personal memory of the asphalt road at that time
is associated with a special game of my boyhood. It was played by boys in
summer. Each boy had a thin bamboo pole in his hand, with soft sticky asphalt
glued on one of its ends. Following the chirping of a cicada we would climb up a
tree with the pole, and as soon as we located the cicada we would suddenly
caught it with the sticky end of pole. Indeed, no cicada could escape from being
caught. This trick was also effective in catching dragonflies of various color
resting on lotus leaves. The only regret was that it always ended up with the
smell of asphalt all over us, and sometimes even with our clothes stained with
asphalt, which would certainly lead to a scolding from parents back home.
The sound of the city
The city and the country have different sounds. The country is tranquil even
when there is sound, whereas the city is in motion even when there is no sound.
With a raising moon in the evening sky, with a lotus pond filled with flowers
stretching wide and far, and with the croaks of frogs going on like a chorus, the
country is in a noisy tranquility, which you can never enjoy in a city with noisy
streets and busy transportation. The symphony of a city is the mixing and
magnifying of all types of sounds, and even at night when most kinds of sounds
have disappeared, one can still feel the puffing of the city, a blind impulse of
action hidden in darkness. Ye Shengtao, a modern Chinese writer, describe the
city in autumn night, As autumn comes, our memories tell us: those autumn
insects are going to sing their songs of sadness again. But they never bothered us.
You may hear a baby crying and people talking in the neighbors house, or the
sound of music and singing from outside even at midnight, or the running of
wheels on the street, or the ever growing of different sounds in the early morning.
But you can never catch a slightest trace of sound from any autumn insect,
however hard you may listen, lying absolutely still on the pillow or even putting
3
Fang Fang, 2002.
503
your ear to the wall.4 As the city is a world of sounds, it is also a place that
does not allow any room for autumn insects.
The sound of the city is lifelike, and is culturally and historically unique. For
example, ancient cities carry with them a unique and long-lasting appeal, which
can be felt by any careful observer. From the Temple of Hanshan beyond the city
walls of Suzhou, the toll of midnight clock reaches the travelers boat on the river.
This reminds us of the sound from the ancient city of Suzhou, whereas in ancient
city of Hangzhou on the bank of West Lake, Listening to the spring rain drizzling
at night, you are expected to see people selling apricot flowers the next morning;
and in Changan, the capital city of the Tang Dynasty, A moon is in the evening
sky over Changan, you can hear the sound of thousands of households washing
clothes against stones. Cities of the ancient times, although they did produce some
sound, were far from being noisy, because at that time there was no distinct border
between what may be called urban and rural areas. City and country were
integrated together, with the element of city in the country and vice versa.
Since history entered the modern time, the speed of urbanization has been on
the increase, and the city has become the symbol of a noisy and restless human
settlement. With numerous railway stations, bus stops, ports, streets, factories
and construction cites, the city has naturally been a source of different sound and
noise. And cinemas and theatres, ballrooms, teahouses and taverns, and open
markets and department stores spider-web the city, only to magnify the noise and
excitement there. In a twentieth-century Chinese city, one would never fail to
encounter a mixture of different noise: the roaring of engines from factories, the
rhythmic clicking of train wheels on the rails, the unrestrained sounding of horns
from automobiles on the streets, the broadcasting of loudspeakers from various
work units, and yelling of peddlers in the market places. If this mixture of sound
and noise is the typical urban symphony of the twentieth century China, then
today in the twenty-first century Chinese city we have quite a different
symphony: the rolling of streams of vehicles on superhighways, the sound of
singing, dancing and music from magnificent hotels, the hubbub of crowds of
shoppers from supermarkets, and the continual ringing of cell phones here and
there from morning to midnight. All these sound and noise mix together and
constitute the unique symphony of Chinas cities today. One has to move far away
from the city into the suburbs if he wants to hear the sound of nature, the dialogue
between wind and water, and the singing of insects in grass. Or he has to choose to
live in solitude, so that he can hear the voice from the inmost depth of his heart.
Figuratively, the sound of the city marks the steps of the city in its growth as
well as reflects the complex sentiments of city residents: too much solitude
generates loneliness, whereas too much noise gives us annoyance. It is really
4
Ye Shengtao, No. 86, Aug. 31, 1923.
504
hard to find a balance between these two extremes.
The form and soul of the city
Besides flavor and sound, the city has its own form and soul, which are almost
indistinguishable, although not naturally integrated. The form of city refers to its
design and the shape it takes; the skyline of its constructions and the architectural
style. Some cities may be renowned for palaces and pavilions of antiquity; others
may be characterized by modern skyscrapers. However, the Modern spirit or
the charm of a city does not consist in its form, namely, the visible things such
as the urban constructions, the public facilities, and the transportation, but
consists in its soul, that is, the cultural tradition invisible to the human eye.
The soul of a city is its cultural tradition inherited from history, and the
cultural tastes it demonstrates, or, in other words, the cultural and spiritual
essence of the city. A city without special cultural appeal or spiritual essence of
its own is therefore a soulless city, a city of no personality and no characteristics.
A building, however magnificent it may be, does not in itself constitute
architecture unless it is instilled with cultural significance. Likewise, a
representative construction of a city is not necessarily the tallest, the biggest or
the most up-to-date one; it is the building that reflects the style of the city and
gives expression to its cultural and spiritual essence. What Eiffel Tower is to
Paris, or London Bridge to London, or The Imperial Palace to Tokyo, or The
Rostrum of Heavenly Peace to Beijing is more of the cultural sign represented by
the construction and less of the construction itself. Only when a building well
embodies the cultural essence of a city can it acknowledged as a representative
construction.
The soul of a city is its unique charm. Many Chinese cities have their special
appeal: Beijing is known for its magnificence, and Shanghai for its elegance,
Guangzhou for its vigor, Xian for its power, Suzhou for its exquisiteness,
Hangzhou for its beauty, Wuhan for its vastness, Chengdu for its grace,
Chongqing for its generosity, and Dalian for its gorgeousness. The special
cultural charm of a city is not formed in one day, but has been passed down to us,
with collective memory as the medium. Taking the city of Wuhan for example,
we can see its association with vastness comes both from its historical and
cultural heritage and from its special geographical position beside the great
Yangtze River. As the famous Tang poet Cui Hao described in his poem The
Yellow Crane Tower: Gone are the angels mounted on the yellow crane, Here
idly stands but the Yellow Crane Tower. Oh gone forever gone is the yellow
crane, The clouds for a thousand years vainly hover. Li Bais well-known lines
His lessening sail is lost in the boundless blue sky, Where I see but endless
Yangtze River rolling by also help contribute to constructing Wuhans image of
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vastness by describing a great city situated on the bank of a great river, watching
its waters rolling to the east. Is this not the spiritual essence and unique character
of the Wuhan city, with the great Yangtze rolling by and a bridge connecting the
two parts of the city on the Southern and Northern banks? Wuhan is indeed a
magnificent city deserving the efforts of scholars on urban cultural studies.
Therefore, it is obvious to see that there are many approaches by which we can
conduct our research on urban cultural history. Indeed, researchers can start their
studies on various aspects and look at urban culture from many perspectives.
Different scholars, based on individual memories of the citys flaovor and sound,
and its form and soul, may produce different cultural histories of the same city.
And only in this way can they produce valid and vivid descriptions of urban
cultural history.
Taking the following our feeling approach to urban cultural history, I believe
two major subjects, among others, especially deserve our attention: one is the
history of gatherings and demonstrations, and the other is that of exhibition
industry. The former is interwoven with the political history of the city while the
latter is mainly connected with the growth of economy. The theme of research on
both fields is, of course, the evolution of urban culture.
Contemporary Chinese urbanization has witnessed great social transformations,
among which are the political changes and movements. In the last 200 years,
China experienced dramatic political transformation, from the late Qing Dynasty
to the Republic of China, and to the Peoples Republic of China. During this
period, there have been numerous political movements on the streets of cities,
protest demonstrations and as well as festival celebrations. These mass
movements of various sizes, from hundreds of participants to hundreds of
thousands, have been characteristic of Chinese cities for the last 150 years. A
typical example of these is the one that happened in Beijing on June 10, 1925,
when millions of urban residents there walked to the streets in support of The
May 30th Movement that broke out 11 days ago in Canton. According to some
descriptions made at that time, a violent wind was howling, and the city was
having the most terrible thunderstorm. The downpour had caused a flood on the
streets. Tens of thousands of people marched forward in the stormy rain, with
water almost covering their knees. They were wet all over with water running
down their clothes. Yet not even one of them was talking privately, or
complaining, and nobody was laughing. Those spectators on both sides of the
streets stood in awe and even moved into tears. Some young demonstrators even
went down on their knees to beg those taking shelter from the rain to join in the
parade. It was really a moving scene. 5 Here we are not interested in the
historical background and the purpose of each demonstration, or how it was
5
Beijingshi zhengxie, Vol. 31, 106109.
506
organized, which are the tasks of political studies. As for us experts who study
urban culture, our perspective is cultural, and our major concern is to uncover
how these mass movements have contributed to the cultural tradition of a certain
city, and how they have influenced the urban residents in this city and even the
nation as a whole. We are interested in true sentiments of people in such great
historical moments, the impact of political events on the formation of character
and personality of the urban people, or even how they have helped people change
their route of life. Writing on these subjects must be based on detailed and
reliable data, including historical accounts, pictures and video materials, which
are sometimes difficult to obtain.
The development of exhibition industry in Chinas cities also constitutes a
flowing panorama. There have been various kinds of exhibitions, including those
of commodities, of flowers and gardening, of agricultural produce, of movies, of
photos and other works of art as well as of park designing. The exhibitions of
national products held during the period of The Republic of China (19111949)
alone amounted to about 250, among which 2 exhibitions that were held
respectively in Shanghai and Hangzhou were really grand gatherings of
unprecedented scale. The first one was Chinas National Products Exhibition held
in Shanghai in 1928, which lasted 64 days and attracted more than 1.3 million
visitors. More than 200, 000 items from 22 provinces of China were exhibited.
The second one, The West Lake Exhibition held in Hangzhou in 1929, was of
even larger scale. About 150, 000 items of products were shown off, the
exhibition lasted 128 days and attracted nearly 2 millions visitors. These grand
gatherings, by demonstrating the best products of China, encouraged people to
buy national products, thus helping national industries to compete against foreign
enterprises at the time of national crisis. There was no doubt that exhibitions of
this kind had had tremendous impact on the urban residents at that time. It is a
startling scene that really moves people, as recorded by witnesses of the
occasion. One days presence at the exhibition gives more than ten years of
schooling. Indeed, this summarized the universal feeling of those who had been
at the scene. If we experts of urban culture can look at these historical events
from a cultural perspective, and, by uncovering the detailed information of these
occasions as well as their impact on participators and spectators, and by
extracting the cultural essence they have helped to convey, we will be able to
better represent the evolution of urban culture and its various forms.
These are some of my considerations on how to conduct research on urban
cultural history from the following-our-feeling approach. There are, indeed, quite
a few gaps to be filled in our studies of either urban elite culture or urban popular
culture. The series of studies by Wang Di and other experts focusing on urban
public space like the streets, teahouses, parks, theatres, cinemas and other leisure
areas in the suburbs are just a beginning, and there is much room in this big field of
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urban culture studies. The city has left us virtually boundless memories as well as
endless subjects for our quest, but we need to be open-minded and well-prepared to
start our research from the seemingly unobserved details.
JIANG Jin
Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in

modern China
Why should the studies of urban popular culture be promoted in the field of
modern Chinese history? The first reason is that popular culture studies have
long been ignored both in China and overseas. In fact, as a scholarship originally
developed abroad, the inquiry of popular culture can be traced back to the 1970s;
now it has become an important topic in many disciplines of humanities and
social sciences, such as literature, cultural anthropology, history, and media
studies. In the field of history outside of China, the French Annales School first
proposed to explore history from environmental, social, and psychological
perspectives. Targeting at the problem of ignoring common people in traditional
political and intellectual histories, it proposed a research of cultural history
focusing on the history of mentalities. Research of popular culture originated
from England presents Marxist standpoint that people are the creator of history,
opposite to the conception of history as determined by heroes. Its representative
work is The Making of the English Working Class by a British Marxist historian,
E. P. Thompson.6 After the 1980s, the studies of popular culture became the
mainstream of historical research in the West. In China, however, research of
popular culture from a historical perspective has just begun, yet, developed with
fast speed. At the end of 2005, the History Department of East China Normal
University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the Editorial Office of
Lishi yanjiu held the first international conference of the history of urban popular
culture in modern China. In July, 2007, Sichuan University, East China Normal
University, and the Editorial Office of Lishi yanjiu held the second international
conference on the same topic in Chengdu. These two conferences attracted a
group of famous scholars and young researchers from China and overseas. If
there is no unexpected problem, the third conference will be held in Wuhan in
2009. A new field of inquiry is in forming.
The second reason of promoting the research of popular culture is that it is an
important subject. We can say that through studies of popular culture in cities we
attempt to reconstruct modern Chinese history. Of course, my statement is related
6
E. P. Thompson, 1964.
508
to the new Marxist theory of the Frankfurt School which emphasizes that
knowledge is attained by construction, and there are many power relations
working in such a process. Traditional Chinese historiography has its own
explanation of modern Chinese history. Yet, this explanation does not include the
sources, perspectives, and methodology relating to studies of popular culture.
The result of this explanation is the history of how intellectuals led peasant
revolution to fulfill modernization. If we switch the perspective and look at
Chinese history through popular culture in cities, what kind of modern Chinese
history will be constructed? If we include the cities of bourgeoisies and their
residents, society, and culture in our inquiries, what kind of fresh pictures will we
see? What is the difference between these new, fresh pictures and the pictures
depicted by traditional history of modern China? I believe that the new historical
sources and new research perspectives will enrich our understanding of modern
Chinese history and bring us new inspiration and possibly subversion to the old
historiography.
Here, I would like to discuss the question of terminology. Why do I use the
term dazhong? First of all, I use this word as the translation of the English term
popular. There are a few possible translations for the term popular, such as
tongsu, dazhong, and liuxing. There is also a question of translating
Chinese into English. The audience would be confused if they do not know the
equivalence of a term. Some friends ask me whether the English term, mass
culture, is a proper translation of dazhong wenhua. In other words, what is the
proper term that we should use when translating the Chinese term dazhong?
We can use mass, popular, or folk. Professor Wang Di argues that mass
culture is not appropriate for the translation of dazhong wenhua because
mass carries the meaning of class, with an emphasis on the opposite
relationship between mass and elite. In fact, behind each term is a theoretical
background. When discussing the issue of popular culture in different occasions,
individual scholar should define the usage of terms. Standardized translation
might not be possible and necessary.
More specifically speaking, my colleagues in East China Normal University
believe that researching popular culture of cities in the field of modern Chinese
history should be promoted for the content of cultural history in China is
basically history of thoughts and intellectual history. Scholars who are familiar
with the academic publications in China all know that most works are about
history of thoughts and intellectual history; very few are about history of popular
culture. Traditional cultural history includes two traditions. One is the Confucian
tradition. Confucian tradition is an older tradition in China. From ancient times to
modern era, the questioning of Confucianism, the Doubting Antiquity Movement,
and the appearance of Neo-Confucianism are all continuation of intellectual
history and history of thoughts within the scope of Confucianism.
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The second tradition is the new tradition of history of thoughts, namely the left
wing tradition of revolutionary culture formulated after the May Fourth. Such a
tradition of revolutionary culture was also a modern cultural movement led by
intellectual and political elite. If we look at this tradition from the perspectives of
who created this culture and who participated in its creation, it is still a kind of
elite cultural history. In recent years, the flourishing of social history becomes a
new trend in China. There are famous tradition of researching social history in
Nankai University, Lingnan School, and the rise of new social history in Beijing
Normal University. The content of Lingnan Schools historical anthropology
often relates to social customs and culture and is mainly researches of structure
of traditional society in rural villages and their culture. Researches of popular
culture in cities are still very few. Therefore, I believe that it is necessary to
promote studies of popular culture in cities because without researching
development in modern cities, it is impossible that we will have a more thorough
and deep understanding for modern Chinese history. Entering the 21st century,
China is experiencing an urban transformation of larger scale. More thorough
researches and understanding of the process of urban transformation in modern
Chinese history is needed, and popular culture in cities is undoubtedly an
important part.
Finally, research of popular culture in cities also brings new challenges to the
traditional methodology of history. The first challenge is the issue of perspectives.
Because scholars have the background of intellectual elite and receive elite
education, naturally, it is easy for them to look at and research popular culture
from an elite perspective. I think we should reflect on our own standpoint,
consciously switch our viewpoint from an outsider one to an insider one, place
ourselves among populace and society, and investigate popular culture from an
bottom-up angle. Unlike in the past when we only investigated the elite influence
to popular culture, we should also research the mentality and identity of populace
and their attitude toward elite culture. In order to understand the mutual influence
between popular and elite culture, it is also important to investigate elite culture
from the perspective of populace. In other words, the main focus of research on
popular culture should be populace itself. We should not take populace as only
recipient of elite culture. I take my own research on female Yue drama as an
example. I argue that the female actresses and female audience are the main body
of Yue drama which is a format of popular culture. Together, they created a
phenomenon of popular culture. Therefore, when I was doing research on Yue
drama, I attempted to apply their perspective to investigate how they created
their own culture by the interaction with elite culture and how they influenced
the formation of modern Chinese culture.
The second challenge is interdisciplinary inquiry. This is an important issue.
On the one hand, the emergence of a cultural phenomenon must have its social
510
origin and closely connection with the interaction between different classes. On
the other hand, the interpretations of cultural phenomenon are usually multi-facet
and products of specific context. Therefore, when studying a certain cultural
phenomenon, the concern of history will undoubtedly overlap with the
disciplines of literature, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, and economics
because the division of modern academic disciplines reflects different
perspectives and methodologies; but not the truth of the subject itself. We should
reflect on such divisions and should not take them as restriction to our ideas and
researches. In a conference held in December of 2005, Professor Sang Bin
pointed out that we divided the fields of studies into subjects that were too small.
He mainly spoke of the divisions in the fields of history of thoughts, economic
history, political history, and historiography. In fact, the divisions of the
disciplines of history, literature, and philosophy are products of our time. They
are means of constructing knowledge and are not definite rules. We should
promote studies of popular culture because traditional cultural history basically
ignored the emotions of populace and their appearance in artistic performances.
In order to open up this new field of research, we will have to challenge the
traditional division colored by elite culture, develop new methodology, new
perpectives, and new materials, and break the limitation of traditional studies. In
other words, research of popular culture should not restrict itself within the scope
of traditional field of studies. Rather, we should take the topic of any inquiry as
the center and develop a new approach which integrates methodologies in
different disciplines.
The third challenge is gender studies and feminist history. The protagonists in
traditional history are all males. Most elites in history are also males as well.
Such is a fact which even the most radical feminist can not deny. History as
mens history becomes undeniable reality. The issue here is how we should deal
with this reality. If we only debate over theories within the frame of traditional
elite historiography, no meaningful result can be reached. However, if we
broaden our viewpoints, we will discover that traditional history only deals with
a very small part of human life; or more specifically speaking; it only deals with
the activities of a very small group of people. However, the subject of social
history and history of popular culture is the general populace of which half is
female. In other words, if we say what social history and history of popular
culture concern about is the experience of populace, half of this concern should
be placed on females history. Without exploring females life and historical
experiences, there will be no satisfactory research on history of popular culture.
Gender studies and feminist historiography has become an important part of the
disciplines of history and humanities in the West, Taiwan and Hong Kong of
China, and Korea. However, there is still no such development in China. How to
inquire into and understand females roles and functions in the process of
511
constructing culture is one of the most important issues for studies of popular
culture.
The final challenge is the question of historical sources. When researching
different subjects, as the methodology, angles, and purpose change, the historical
sources applied will also be different. We should look beyond historical sources
emphasized by traditional history of institution, thoughts, and politics. Here, I do
not mean that we should discard historical sources; they are still quite important.
However, other sources should also be considered as reasonable, legitimate and
supplemental materials for studies of popular culture. For instance, oral history
should be considered as a kind of good, supplemental material; even in many
occasions, information from oral history is often independent from the research
topic itself. We should be careful about this characteristic of oral history.
Another good example of supplemental sources is printing culture. What is
printing culture? When we are doing research about history of institution, we
take printing culture as lifeless material of words and look at what kind of
information it records. However, within new frame of methodology, we can see
that it is more than a media of recording information; it also has the function of
producing knowledge. Taking the materials of artistic performance as another
example, how can we understand the cultural history of modern China without
inquiring into Chinese drama for it was the most important format of
entertainment for Chinese people before 1980s? Therefore, performance becomes
one kind of historical source which also includes movies, visual arts, and sounds.
I believe that these should be considered as reasonable, legitimate materials.
How to use these materials is an issue that we should explore together.
WANG Di
The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective

and methodology of studying urban popular
culture from the case of teahouses in Chengdu
Public space and public life are important expressions of local culture. They are
the center of Chinese urban life and provide a stage for city residents to
participate in social and political affairs. Western scholars of urban history have
produced insightful works on caf, pubs, and saloons. Strangers gathered
together at these places to exchange information and partook in public life
beyond their own circle of families and friends. At these places, people from
every corner of the city, especially those from the bottom class, engaged in all
kinds of daily activities. Although these public arenas are excellent spaces for
observing social relations, public life in Chinese cities has long been ignored by
512
scholars of urban history. Therefore, it is my hope to reveal peoples relations

with street life, public space, and public life by examining the teahouses in
Chengdu in the first half of the 20th century.
Since the 1990s, the scope of my research has gradually been narrowed down,
from the Upper Yangtze River area, 7 to street culture, and further to the
teahouses in Chengdu. In my book, Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space,
Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 18701930,8 I use street culture to
present all kinds of activities and cultural phenomena on the street, such as the
store decoration, banners, performance of folk artists, festivals, and how people
made a living on the street. Now I switch my focus from general public space to
a smaller, more specific one, namely, the public life and teahouses of Chengdu in
the 20th century. The first volume of this project, The teahouses: Small business,
everyday culture, and public politics in Chengdu, 19001950, looks at the
vicissitude of economy, society, politics, and culture through the investigation of
teahouses in Chengdu in the first half of the 20th century. In this short essay, I
attempt to place my study of teahouses in a broader context of Chinese urban
history and to discuss the perspective and methodology of the studying urban
popular culture. This essay can also be regarded as a continuation of my
discussion in the forum of Shixue yuekan, Duoyuan wenhua shiye xia de
Zhongguo jindai shehuishi yanjiu (Researches of modern Chinese social history
under the perspective of multi-culture).9
Observing the urban society through a microscope
Although teahouse life is an important medium to understand the development of

Chinese society, culture, and politics, no book-length study on this subject,
neither in English or Chinese, has ever been published yet. The understanding of
the social, cultural, and political roles of teahouses can help us understand not
only Chengdu from a micro perspective, but also the relations between Chinese
cities, urban life, and politics. In my study of teahouses, I attempt to answer why
teahouses could survive and continue flourishing in a difficult environment when
most traditional ways of life and entertainment gradually disappeared? In order
to answer this question, I investigate teahouses history, their economic functions,
the role as a center of community, and the rich daily and political culture
embedded in them.
Teahouses provide an important space for the activities of commoners from the
bottom of the society, where we can investigate the details of their daily life,
7
Wang Di, 1993.

Chinese translation by Li Deying, Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2006.
9
Wang Di, 2006, No. 5.
8
513
regardless how trivial these details are. The methodology of micro history can
lead us into the internal world of a city and to observe common people. In some
areas, such as Europe, the study of micro history in the field of social and
cultural history has attained significant progress; yet, no important work of micro
history has appeared in the field of Chinese history. The inquiry of teahouses
offers an opportunity for us to research Chinese urban society through a
microscope. Although it is difficult for us to inquire into a specific case through
systematic materials, such as how Carol Ginzburg uses archives of the
Inquisition for his case study of a sixteenth-century miller,10 I still try to explore
all kinds of records about teahousesone of the most basic elements in peoples
daily lifeand reconstruct the history of peoples daily and public life in the past
by description as detailed as possible.
In fact, in the early 20th century Chengdu, no institution had ever closely
connected with peoples daily life as teahouses had. Moreover, in China, no city
had as many teahouses as Chengdu did. From the late Qing to the mid-20th
century, the number of teahouses in Chengdu remained between 500 and 800,
while Shanghai, the largest city in China at that time, had only about 200
teahouses. In my study of teahouses, I point out that teahouses in Chengdu were
more than places for leisure activities, which were only the surface of the social
life in Chengdu. Teahouses were not only the space for people to engage in
conversation, relaxation, and entertainment, but were also multi-functional places
for people to make a living and participate in local politics. Public spaces for
peoples daily life were quiet limited but teahouses were important part of them.
Even after modern places for leisure activities appear, teahouses were still the
most popular public spaces for common people, where people played public roles
and created rich culture of teahouses.
If we take teahouses as a cell of urban society, the analysis of this cell through
a microscope will no doubt deepen our understanding of urban society. In order
to thoroughly examine teahouses as organisms, I undertake researches of the
management, employment, and occupational guild of teahouses, life in teahouses,
and teahouse politics; entertainments provided in teahouses and governmental
polices about teahouses are also included in my exploration. I also attempt to
unfold how teahouses, as a traditional commercial enterprise, connected with the
daily life in city and their unique vitality and culture. My project has three
purposes: the first is to investigate teahouses as economic institutions; the second
is to examine their leisure functions in peoples daily life; the third is to reveal
their political roles.
First of all, I emphasize that small business was an important economic sector in
late-Qing and Republican Chengdu. No other business could have such
10
Carol Ginzburg, 1982.
514
significantly close relation with peoples daily life as teahouses did. Teahouses not
only presented a unique way of business management; they also created rich,
colorful culture of daily life. I also point out the internal and external problems that
teahouses encountered and inquire into their relations with customers and local
government. I analyze the roles of teahouse guild and union of teahouse workers
and explore how teahouses become an agency between local government and guild
and also local government and labor union as well.
Secondly, I investigate the roles teahouses played in peoples social life in
community and neighborhood. All kinds of social groups used teahouses for their
participations in economic, social, and cultural activities. They took teahouses as
a market and engaged in small and large business deals; they also took teahouses
as stages for providing and receiving entertainments. I explore how different
social groups, professions, and gender used teahouses for different purposes.
Finally, through the analysis of conflicts, controls, and power struggles in
teahouses, I want to reveal how politics was displayed in teahouses. The changes
of national politics could be observed in details in teahouses. When teahouses
were used as political stages, they became weather vane of national and local
politics. The government was concerned about public order and promulgated
regulations to regulate teahouses, such as the number of teahouses, their business
hours, sanitary condition, and customers public behaviors there. During the War
of Resistance and the following civil war, the state and other social forces used
teahouses for their political goals and promoted the development of teahouse
politics to an unprecedented level. Moreover, many other political elements also
affected teahouses life. The deterioration of economic, social, and political
conditions and the states intensified control of the country all reflected in
teahouses, especially in peoples conversations there. As a result, teahouse politics
became the miniature of greater political change in the world outside of it.
Entering the bottom of the city
The examination of teahouses is to open a new window to understand Chinese

cities. In recent years, my studies of urban history have focus on inland, the
bottom of society, streets, neighborhoods, the basic units of social life, and public
politics. It is my hope that my studies will increase our understanding of modern
Chinese cities, social change, and cultural continuity there. My work of
teahouses proved that public space and public life were the most significant
presentations of Chengdu culture. In teahouses, I see the reshaping of peoples
public roles, the redefinition of relations between populace, elite, and the nation,
and how the dramatic change of society in the early 20th century resulted in the
reconstruction of public space in the city. Peoples daily life closely connected
with teahouses on the street, and Chengdu residents created and enjoyed the rich
515
teahouse culture. People, especially poor people, engaged in activities of commerce,

entertainment, and celebrations in teahouses. However, when social reformers
influenced by the West sought to regulate the activities in teahouses, people had no
choice but to struggle to maintain their rights of using this public arena.
The existing studies of modern Chinese politics are almost all on elite
activities and elite impact on the movements of reformation and revolution. My
exploration of teahouses employs a different approach. In the early 20th century,
when Chinese cities experienced political transformation, the influence of
national politics on Chengdu reached an unprecedented point. My study
investigates how the reformist and revolutionary movements drew populace and
teahouses into their political orbit and how teahouse culture became teahouse
politics. Moreover, through studying the conflicts between the state and populace
and between elite and the state, I also attempt to understand how common people
and elites gained new public roles. From my studies, we can see that in this
period although life in teahouses proceeded normally, teahouses were no longer
just places for daily life, leisure activities, and for people to make a living. As
teahouses became stages of political conflicts, common people also involved in
the struggle of local politics.
The focus of studying Chinese history is often placed on how elite ideas
influenced politics. Nonetheless, the study of teahouses provides a new
perspective to observe the popular culture, its relations with local politics, and
social development. The irregular vicissitude of politics resulted in the
deterioration of public order and affected the stability in neighborhoods and
communities. The conflicts between classes, groups, and gender in the city
became consequently intensified. However, we should be aware of how political
development opened up an isolated area and brought new social, economic, and
cultural elements into it. Chengdu in the post-1911 revolution is an excellent
example for understanding how politics impacted daily life. It also reflects the
importance of discussing political issues when studying popular culture.
A few remarks
When attempting to conduct micro investigation of urban popular culture,

scholars will encounter many difficulties. The first problem is difficulties in
collecting sources and interpreting them. As we know, Chinese history has been
written by elites, and common peoples daily life has been often absent from
local and national histories. In order to overcome this inadequacy, we should
broaden our knowledge of existing historical sources and discover new materials.
A more difficult problem is the application of historical sources. Since elites were
the recorders of history, although our research subject is on common people, we
often observe them and their daily life through the eyes of elites. How to process
516
written materials is a crucial issue for studies of popular culture. Therefore, some
scholars raised the question: Can the subaltern speak?11 Though my answer to
this question is positive, I still think that we should interpret and apply sources
with new ways of thinking. Generally speaking, we should be aware of the nature
of the materials and their limitation for studies of popular culture and lower
classes.12
The second problem emerges from the first issue mentioned above. The
exploration of teahouses will inevitably encounter the question of how to
distinguish popular culture from elite culture. Although historians agree that
these two are different, they have not agreed on their definitions. Western
scholars of Chinese studies point out that the term of popular culture in Chinese
language has a broad meaning, from domestic architecture to millenarian cults,
from irrigation techniques to shadow plays.13 In my studies of street culture and
teahouses, the popular culture I discuss is the culture created by commoners. In
traditional society, for the lack of cultural exchange, the regional and local
features of the culture in a certain place were prominent. Therefore, popular
culture is often connected with folk culture. According to Antonio Gramsci,
there are three kinds of popular songs: composed by the people and for the
people, composed for the people but not by the people, and written neither
by the people nor for the people, but which the people adopt because they
conform to their way of thinking and feeling.14 My study of teahouses belongs
to the first kind. However, as Herbert Gans points out: many popular culture
creators are better educated than their audiences.15 Sometimes, however, I have
to consider the second and third kind of Gramscis categorizations.
The third question that needs to be emphasized here is whether regional or local
studies can offer a general pattern to understand Chinese cities and urban life. The
significance of micro study is to provide case studies which can promote urban
studies to a broader level. They will not only enrich our understanding of Chengdu,
but also our knowledge of other Chinese cities. For the complexity of Chinese
geography, economy, politics, culture, and social characteristic, any similarity and
exception should also be part of our consideration.
The fourth issue that deserves our attention is that when entering the bottom of
a city to study its most basic social unit, researchers should not ignore events
with more general significances. On the one hand, micro history and studies of
the lower classes allow us to observe those unknown phenomenon in the deep
11
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 1988, 217313.

See the introduction of my book, Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban
Commoners, and Local Politics, 18701930.
13
David John-son, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski eds., 1985, x.
14
Antonio Gramsci, 1985, 195.
15
Herbert J. Gans, 1974, 24.
12
517
inside of the society. On the other hand, investigations of important political

events can increase and deepen our comprehensive understanding of politics and
daily life. Therefore, when I focus on urban people, streets, and teahouses in my
studies, elites, state, and political movements are inevitably included in my
discussion. This approach will enable us to notice macro historical events when
studying micro issues.
Joseph W. ESHERICK
Remaking the Chinese city: Urban space and

urban culture
It is a great pleasure to be invited to Chengdu to address this distinguished
audience at the International Conference on Chinese Urban Popular Culture. As
you all know, I am not really an expert on urban history or on popular culture.
The book for which I am best known is on the Boxer Uprising and I have spent
much of my career analyzing rural society and popular uprisings. Several years
ago, however, I had a number of students working on urban history and urban
culture, and it is through them that I was drawn to this topic and edited the
volume on Remaking the Chinese City.16 Here, as in so many respects, much of
what I know I learned from my own students. Anything of value in these
comments certainly came from them and from others (like Prof. Wang Di) whose
work I have read with great pleasure and profit. The shortcomings in my
knowledge and interpretation are of course my own responsibility.
The topic that I would like to address today is the relationship between the
modern transformation of urban space and changes in popular culture. I am
specifically concerned with the early twentieth-century remaking of the city,
from the late Qing (New Policies era) through the republican era. In this period,
Chinese cities were transformed in a number of wayswalls were torn down;
streets were straightened, widened and paved; new public spaces were created in
parks and squares; and new types of buildings emerged. This physical
transformation of urban space is quite well known and well studied. What seems
to me less well understood and in many ways even more interesting is the way in
which these new spaces became associated with new forms of sociability, new
types of human interactions and thus new forms of urban culture.
I might mention here that behind my interest in this topic lies the fact that both
of my parents were architects. I used to have many very interesting conversations
with my father about his workabout how a new hospital must be designed so
that the rooms and infrastructure suit the changing needs of modern medicine;
16
Joseph W. Esherick, ed., 2000.
518
about how a courtyard might be placed in an office building to encourage people

to gather for lunch or coffee; about a school playground that would encourage the
most creative forms of play among children. He also had a great interest in
history, and so we would discuss such topics as when fireplaces became common
in houses, and how that affected the way people gathered together in their own
homes; about when separate bedrooms emerged and how they were related to
new notions of privacy; about flush toilets and sewers and their relation to new
standards of personal hygiene. So my interest in the relationship between the
built environment and human sociability owes a great deal to my own personal
historyand in that sense perhaps I should dedicate this talk to my parents.
So how was the modern Chinese city transformed? How were the physical
spaces in which urban people lived and interacted remade? One of the quite
remarkable things that I discovered while working with my students (and other
American scholars) researching cities across China was the striking uniformity of
some of the most important changes. So let us examine the most obvious changes,
and consider the ways in which each of them might have transformed the nature
of urban culture.
Walls
Almost any history of the traditional Chinese city begins with a discussion of its
walls. The whole conception of a city () was related to its wall (). From
earliest times, Chinese had been surrounding their cities with walls and moats (
17
), and in the Ming dynasty these became particularly grand and prominent.
When Westerners first came to China, they invariably marveled at the grand
walls that surrounded cities, and the majestic gates through which they were
entered. These walls were an important expression of state power and imperial
prestige. They both protected the official yamen within the city and symbolized
the special status of a town that housed a representative of the emperor. But in
the modern era, these walls increasingly came to be regarded as impediments to
commerce and the circulation of goods and people. Especially when the gates
were closed at sunset and opened at dawn, crowds would gather at the gates to
bring their goods to market, and great traffic jams could result. By the late Qing,
most cities had developed substantial commercial centers beyond the walls
(many huiguan were in fact outside city walls), so that the walls not only
separated city and countryside, they divided different sections of the city itself.
This was, of course, especially true in treaty ports like Tianjin or Shanghai or
Canton where the foreign concessions and most commercial activity were outside
the walls, and the old Chinese city was within.
17
Sen-dou Chang, 1977.
519
Thus, one of the common transformations of the republican city was the
tearing down of city walls. The first instance came in Tianjin, when the foreign
powers tore down the city walls after occupying the city during the Boxer
Uprising. But the same thing happened in Shanghai, in Canton, and then in cities
across the country.18 Quite often, the old wall was replaced by a ring road
traversed by a trolley car. In Canton, in fact, the contract to tear down the city
wall was given to the trolley car company in exchange for the right to use the
new street. But in every case the reasons given were the same: to smooth the
flow of commerce, to ease the circulation of goods, to remove the congestion that
used to afflict the old city gates.
The question then arises, how did this rather fundamental transformation of the
Chinese city affect urban life? It obviously reflected a new set of values. The
benefits of commerce were held to be more important than the prestige and
security provided by the city walls. I suspect, as well, that with the advent of
modern artillery, it was felt that the walls no longer supplied much security
against modern armiesthough they could of course be useful in protecting
against ordinary bandits, so smaller towns and villages (especially in areas like
Henan much plagued by bandits) did keep their walls. But commerce and
economic development were so much associated with the requirements of
modernity that they triumphed over the walls. In the modern city, mobility was a
desirable thingnot a sign of chaos or a threat to stability and order.
An interesting question here is the change in the relationship between urban
and rural in the modern era. It would seem that in imperial China, the high walls
would have strictly separated urban and rural realms, but several prominent
American scholars have argued that in imperial China there was in fact no sharp
urban-rural divide.19 In their view, imperial elites may have lived in cities, but
they valued a rural ideal, stressed the importance of agriculture, and themselves
often retired to the life of rural gentry. What then happened in the modern era?
On the one hand, the influence of Western culturein education, entertainment,
clothing, architecture, the place of womenmade cities increasingly distinct
from the countryside, which was now characterized as backward. So in some
respects it would seem that as the physical structures separating city and
countryside came down, new cultural divides emerged in their place.
But even that is too simple if we consider population movements. We all know
that cities grew at a dramatic pace during the twentieth centurymost doubling
and tripling in size. Where did that new population come from? It did not from
the cities themselves. Cities in this era (whether in China or the West) were rather
unhealthy places, and had great difficulty reproducing their population. In
18
19
Shanghais walls were torn down in 1911 to 1912. McPherson, 1990, No. 5.
Frederick Mote, 1977, 102105.
520
addition, in Chinese cities the gender ratio was greatly skewed, with far more
males than females, so ordinary reproduction of the population was very
difficult.20 Cities grew because peasants moved in from the countryside in search
of relief or employment. So in fact, most of the population of these cities was
composed of former peasants. So how should this large formerly rural population
factor into our consideration of the relationship between city and countryside in
the modern Chinese city? How did the great mass of rural migrants influence
urban culture? and how were they affected and changed by urban culture?
2 Streets
A second major transformation of urban space came with the widening,
straightening, paving and lighting of streets. Traditional Chinese cities had been
based on a basic, well-planned checkerboard pattern of rectilinear streets. Over
time, however, houses, storefronts, and especially street vendors encroached on
the streets in a way that offended urban modernizers sense of order. As the
twentieth-century preoccupation with urban governance took hold, one of the
most persistent concerns was bringing a new discipline to urban streets. Chinese
elites often commented on the orderly streets of the foreign concessions, and
sought to emulate this order in their own cities.21 Macadam technology provided
a ready solution to the dusty streets of summer and impassable quagmires of the
rainy season. In the first decades of the twentieth century urban streets across
China were pavedand in the process usually widened and straightened. Trees
were planted as part of the concern for a garden city characteristic of this time.
Often the transformation involved tearing down old shops to create new business
centers, a prominent local example being Chunxi Street in Chengdu, a product of
the warlord Yang Sens urban reforms.22 Finally, street lights were added to
many Chinese cities, making streets safer at night and increasing the amount of
nightlife.
The new paved streets were clearly better for commercial circulation, so they
were related to the same set of motivations that drove the tearing down of city
walls. But they were also related to an effort to bring a healthy order to the urban
environment, building sewers, removing hawkers, and policing the streets. Thus,
20
In 1921, Beijing is 63.5% male and as much as 77% in some districts. The death rate
exceeded the birth rate. Sydney Gamble, 1921, 3031, 99102.
21
Cook, Bridges to Modernity, ch. 6 on Xiamen transformations modeled on the concession
area on the island of Gulangyu. For a common Chinese reformers view of the virtues of
straight streets see Zichen , 1933, No. 4. An excellent discussion of this process and urban
reformist context is in Michael Tsin, Nation, Governance and Modernity, ch. 2, and also his
chapter in Remaking the Chinese City.
22
Kristin Stapleton, 2000.
521
as David Strand has shown in his study of Rickshaw Beijing, modern policing
went hand-in-hand with modern streets.23 Police not only kept order and directed
traffic, they also collected the taxes that made urban modernization possible. The
tax was mostly on shops, which were more willing to pay if the police kept away
the competition of street hawkers and the annoyances of beggars. The police
were also responsible for enforcing new regulations on urban hygiene, inspecting
shops and restaurants for health hazards, punishing those who dumped garbage in
the streets, and enforcing new regulations against public spitting and urination.
Indeed, before the Guomindang-era provisions for municipal governance, the
most important political institution in many Chinese cities was the police
department, and patrolmen in smart military-style uniforms are everywhere
visible in photographs of the republican era city.24
These new, wider paved streets brought a major transformation of urban space,
and were always prominently discussed in the press of the time.25 But what was
their effect on urban life? Most obviously, along with paved streets came the
rickshaw, and in the first decades of the twentieth century it transformed urban
transportation for the middle and upper classes. Soon it was joined by the
streetcar, which allowed an even broader portion of the urban population to move
about the city. These new modes of transportation were associated with the
growth of new commercial centersdowntownswhich had not previously
been characteristic of Chinese cities. In the traditional Chinese city, most
shopping was done in the local neighborhood at vegetable markets or small shops,
around city gates, or in districts where a certain trade was concentrated: a few
streets where most of the bookstores, silk shops, tea shops, antiques, or furniture
shops were located.26 With easier transport, people could get to one central
business district where a wide variety of shops and new department stores were
located. Many of these areas became famous for their new commercial functions,
Nanjing Road in Shanghai, Wangfujing in Beijing. But there were other types of
centers which followed the new transport as well. Dong Yues research on
Beijing shows that the republican era growth of Tianqiao () as a popular
market and entertainment center in Beijing was closely associated with the new
streetcar line that brought Beijing residents to this previously suburban area.27
What, then, were the social effects of this new urban infrastructure? Once
again, this seems to me an area where the issues are particularly important but
the research is less developed. That the state, through its new police force,
became increasingly involved in regulating personal conduct seems clear, and the
23
David Strand, 1989.

Sydney Gamble, 1921, 29, 7585; Kristin Stapleton, 2000, ch. 34, on the police in Chengdu.
25
Peter J Carroll, 2006.
26
Sen-dou Chang and also Skinner, 1977, Urban Social Structure.
27
Madeleine Yue Dong, 2003.
24
522
enforcement of regulations on public hygiene is the clearest example. Guides to

Chinese cities would warn strangers of the consequences of public urination, but
other examples would include specific hours at which one could leave ones
waste for nightsoil collectors, or fines for littering.28 Some of the requirements
were explicitly politicalregulations calling on shops to hang the national flag
on major holidays for example.29 In the Nationalist era, the New Life Movement
brought this sort of state-regulation of public behavior to a new level of
discipline. And to some degree the state seems to have claimed the street from
neighborhood residents, as police tried to keep children from interfering with
traffic with their street games, or drove peddlers and artisans from the
pavement.30
The easing of mobility about the city and the growth of new urban centers in
downtowns and parks probably also tended to diminish the importance of
neighborhoods and perhaps promote a greater sense of urban consciousness.
Certainly people developed new forms of shopping behavior when they forsook
their neighborhood markets and local shopkeepers who knew them by name for
the anonymity of shopping in a downtown department store. Similarly, the
interaction with strangers on streetcars, in department stores, or in movie theaters
was no doubt a more common experience, and would require new forms of urban
sociability. How this changed the way urban residents related to each other seems
to me a particularly profitable area of inquiry.
The lighting of streets and the increase of evening entertainment also changed
the old sense of time. Evening street life became much more common, especially
in contrast to many cities of the imperial era where internal gates were locked
and moving about the city at night was impossible. The full implications of these
new cities without night () seems to me still unexplored, but surely
urban behavior and cultural practices were greatly altered by this change.
Parks, squares and railway stations
During the years of the Republic of China, the desire to replace the culture of
imperial China with a new consciousness of citizenship in the new nation led to
the creation of new public spaces appropriate to the new republic. Parks, civic
plazas, and sports stadiums were particularly important places in the republican
city. In Beijing, imperial temples and gardens were systematically reconfigured
as public parks. Just outside the imperial city, Zhongshan Park became one of the
most important gathering places for public events and casual relaxation. The
28
Ruth Rogaski, 2004.

Henrietta Harrison, 2000.
30
Wang Di, 2006.
29
523
Temple of Heaven () was refurbished and became an important tourist site.

The Summer Palace () became a favorite place for relaxing and boating in
the summer time. And of course Tiananmen () was transformed into a
public plaza whose symbolic power attracted student protesters from May 4
onward.31
Elsewhere in China, Manchu garrisons were transformed into pubic spaces. As
Wang Lipings study of Hangzhou shows, the current configuration of the city
with an esplanade, hotels and restaurants scattered along West Lake was only
made possible by the municipal appropriation of the old Manchu garrison.32 A
similar process took place here in Chengdu, much of the old Manchu garrison
became Shaocheng Park, and was soon filled with teahouses and restaurants.
With the promotion of physical exercise for national strengthening, a sports
stadium (or at least a running track) was added in the 1920s.33 These stadiums
were a regular feature of the new republican city and symbolized the new
republics commitment to overcoming Chinas image as the sick man of Asia.
Needless to say, these new parks brought with them a great variety of new
social interactions. Early republican urban elites were anxious to make them sites
for political education, and erected patriotic monuments to martyrs of the
revolution, and displays informing citizens of important events in the nations
past.34 Some parks like Zhongshan Park in Beijing were frequently the site for
political gatheringsnot all sponsored by the state. But most of all parks became
places for people to get out in the fresh air to relax, stroll about, play chess, or sit
and chat over a cup of tea. Families increasingly went together to the park, and of
course parks became places for young couples to date (literarily talk love
).
The full range of activities at these new public places seems to me another
subject worthy of study. We know about the creation of these parks and plazas
and stadiums. We know that the state saw them as necessary to the education,
training and strengthening of a new citizenry. And we know that these public
spaces were often coopted by students and others for political activities critical of
the state. These political uses of the new spaces are quite well known. But what
about their everyday uses? To what degree did they provide a place for
respectable women to appear in public? Did families go together to the park as
much as they do in present times? Short of sports competitions, how much
were parks associated with physical activity on an individual basis? (When did
people start doing taiji in parks?) What did people wear in parks? (Certainly not
31
Madeleine Yue Dong; Shi Mingzheng, 1995.

Wang Liping, Forthcoming.
33
Kristin Stapleton, 2000, ch. 7.
34
More here from Madeleine Yue Dong and Shi Mingzheng.
32
524
the same casual dress that we see today.) Urban elites everywhere always tried to
keep poor people and petty criminals (beggars, pickpockets) out of these public
places. How were parks policed, and what did that do to the class composition of
park visitors? Did factory workers go to parks in any great numbers?
Public buildings: Museums, libraries, department stores
In addition to such open spaces as parks and public squares, republican cities also
saw new types of public buildings: museums, libraries, public reading rooms,
post offices, railway stations. Some private establishments were of similar scale
and also expressed a new urban modernity: banks, department stores, theaters,
cinemas. The early promotion of museums and libraries was very much
associated with the new concern for cultivating public virtues (). Museums,
as everywhere in the world, were designed for public education in a shared
national history and culture; libraries were to provide information for the
educated citizen.35 But they also involved training people in how to behave:
lining up to buy tickets, following prescribed routes to best absorb the logic of an
exhibit, reading labels to understand meanings, maintaining quiet and order.
Joshua Goldstein has written about the new discipline of theaters, and the
contrast to opera-viewing practices in the old teahouses. In teahouses, patrons sat
at square tables, drinking tea and eating snacks while chatting with friends and
waiting for their favorite performance. Servers circulated dispensing tea,
throwing towels, and collecting tips. The operators of the new theaters attempted
to instill a new modern discipline to the organized chaos of the teahouse.
Theatergoers sat in assigned seats, all facing the stage, in a darkened theater, their
attention directed as much as possible to the stagewhich was now lighted with
electric lights to focus their view and enhance the visuality of the performance.
This new discipline of the theater was typical of a disciplining process that was
going on in many aspects of urban life, but which remains still understudied.36
We have mentioned banks and department stores in discussing the new
mobility that came with paved streets, rickshaws and streetcars. Conducting
business at such fixed price establishments was certainly different from the sort
of personal interaction and bargaining that went on at a neighborhood market.
How did one deal with clerks who were strangers? Did the rules change when, by
the 1930s, female clerks began to appear in many stores? Were there any
significant differences in the way in which one behaved in a department store,
bank, or post office?
When we think about new public spaces and public buildings in the modern
35
36
McPherson, 54, on plans for new Shanghais museum, library and city hall.
Joshua Goldstein, 2007.
525
city it is important that we not conflate modernization and Westernization. It is

true that most of the spaces we have mentioned so far were based on Western
models: parks, museums, banks, department stores, theaters, cinemas, sports
arenas. But even these were not entirely Western. Architecturally, it was common
for many of thesemuseums and theaters perhaps more so than banks (a good
question: why?) to have Chinese style roofs to give them a certain local flavor.
And the content of museums was usually the promotion (and construction) of
Chinas national culture. Parks were usually based on some preexisting garden,
temple or structure so that they were commonly Chinese in content even if
Western in form. But there are some popular public institutions in the modern
city that were not Western at allbut which I would argue were relatively new
and which also should be thought of as new urban spaces. The most important of
theseespecially for a talk in Chengduwould be the teahouse.
I should preface these comments by saying that I have done no research of my
own on teahouses, and only visited one a couple times before this conference in
Chengdu. Almost everything I know about Chengdu teahouses I have learned
from Professor Wang Di37though he may well disagree with the argument I am
about to make. What I would like to suggest is that we should consider the
teahouse a modern institutionperhaps not so different from the caf of France
and Western Europe. As I read the evidence, although there are certainly
references to teahouses as early as the Song Dynasty, most of the early references
are to establishments near temples or places that literati visited while touring and
enjoying famous places. Gazetteer and other references to large numbers of
teahouses in ordinary residential neighborhoods seem to me to date mostly from
the late Qing, and the really explosive growth of teahouses seems to come in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I associate them with the growth of
commerce and the need for places to relax, but also to conduct business, mediate
disputes, or recover from tiring work. These are activities associated with a
flourishing commercial societybut perhaps especially with a pre-industrial
form of economic growth.
In any case, by the twentieth century, teahouses became important places for
political organizing to take placesomething certainly seen in the railways
recovery movement of the late Qing. In the mid twentieth century, the gowned
brothers () usually based their operations and conducted their business in
teahouses. During the war, the threat of political organizing or at least grumbling
in teahouses was great enough that the Guomindang had them hang out signs
saying no discussion of national affairs (). In Sichuan and many
places in Jiangnan, teahouses were an important venue for neighborhood
lifenot only socializing, but also learning about current affairs, listening to
37
Wang Di, 2006.
526
storytellers (who might also comment on current events), conducting business,

mediating disputes. In that sense they were certainly as much a part of an
emerging public sphere as were cafs in the West. The teahouse here became a
vital part of modern urban lifeand the fact that it was not Western in origins
like a bank or a museum should not keep us from examining it as an integral part
of the modern urban environment.
There are undoubtedly other similar institutions which are new in the modern
era, but also distinctly Chinese. The new theaters specifically designed for
Peking Opera would seem to be another example, which I have discussed above.
Opium dens are probably a third, though their less savory reputation makes it
more difficult to integrate them into a positive image of Chinese modernity. But
they were a part of urban life in China and should not be ignored. There has been
plenty of research done on prostitution, brothels and dance hallswhich also
played a vital role in new forms of urban sociability. Perhaps we need a similar
attention to gambling and opium dens.
5 Concluding comments
These comments have, inevitably, been extremely broad and general. They lack
the rich detail that comes with the sort of careful empirical research that I so
much valuebut have not myself done on urban change and popular culture. But
I hope they have suggested some of the sorts of topics that I think are worth
examining. What I would particularly urge is more attention to everyday life in
the new urban environment. Many young scholars are attracted to the more
visible aspects of popular cultureto movies, or illustrated magazines (),
cartoons, or drama (both Peking opera and spoken drama ). These are
of course important, and they are easier to research because the texts or scripts or
films survive, and the intellectuals who were involved in them have left memoirs
and recollections. But far more important, it seems to me, are the structures of
everyday life. How did these change in the modern city?
Lu Hanchao has given us a lovely study of everyday life in Shanghai,
especially in the Shikumen () with their apartments divided among many
families and single males cramped in their little T-rooms ().38 We need
more of this sort of study for other cities. How did family life changewith
many living away from the extended lineage so common in villages? How did
child-rearing change, especially if a wife worked and there were no grandparents
around to help? How did diet change, or even the way in which families gathered
to eat? How were friendships formed: at work? among people from the same
native place? among neighbors? All of these are the sorts of human interactions
38
Lu Hanchao, 1999.
527
of daily life that we know were certainly different from life today, and were
presumably also different from life in imperial China. But different in what
ways?
Above all, I would like to see more research on the question I have been
addressing todayhow the physical reorganization of urban space alter human
relations in the cities. It seems to me self-evident that these new spaces provided
more opportunities for strangers to gather together, and thus the need for new
rules governing how strangers should interact in public. This is a topic clearly
relates to discussions popular some years ago about civil society and the public
sphere, But it would approach those issues from the perspective of urban space,
and how new spaces caused or enabled people to interact in new and different
ways. In the contemporary era, we are all very aware of the way in which new
technologiescell phones and the internet are the most obvious examples
have transformed the way in which people interact. It should be useful to think
about the influence of earlier technologies of an earlier era: rickshaws, streetcars
and their impact through the sort of enhanced mobility and changing spaces I
have been discussing today. In any case, I look forward to hearing all of your
contributions to the study of Chinas urban popular culture in the days ahead.
LU Hanchao
From elites to common people: The downward

trend in the studies of Chinese urban history in
the United States
A noticeable trend in recent American studies of Chinese urban history is that the
field has been moving toward what might be called a downward direction; that
is, recently the focus has shifted from the elite upper classes to the grassroots
society. Paralleling this trend is an increasingly interdisciplinary approach. One
may argue that from the very beginning American studies of Chinese urban
history has been an interdisciplinary field. But in particular since the 1990s
studies of Chinese urban history have integrated sociology, political science, and
anthropology. Scholars who apply the downward approach to their research
often have various academic backgrounds. Although most researchers in the field
are historians, scholars from the disciplines of geography, sociology, economy,
anthropology, political science, and Chinese literature and language have been
active in the field and, moreover, have made significant contributions. For
example, G. William Skinner, who produced the most important pioneering
works in the field of Chinese urban history, is an anthropologist; David Strand,
author of the well-known book, Rickshaw Beijing, and Elizabeth Perry, whose
528
research on workers in Shanghai from a new labor history perspective

(emphasizing workers daily life, politics, and culture) is outstanding, are
professors of political science. The interdisciplinary approach in recent years
enriches studies of Chinese urban history. For instance, women history, history of
popular culture, and architectural history have become important components in
the studies of urban history. The French scholar Jacques Gernets book on the
city life in Hangzhou in the late Southern Song Dynasty was published in 1956.
It was translated into English and published by Stanford University in 1962,
which can be seen as the beginning of Americas post-war research on Chinese
city life.
In Chinese culture, cities usually drew negative connotations. Cities were the
places where yamen and government offices were located, where people filed
lawsuits and paid taxes, where merchants and urban commoners gathered. In a
traditional Chinese society that valued scholars rather than merchants and
emphasized governance by the elite rather than the rule of law, phenomena
embodied by the city were what commoners sought to avoid. Whenever famines
and catastrophes occurred, cities became the markets where desperate people
sold their children. Moreover, cities were also gathering places for hooligans,
local ruffians, vagrants, and local tyrants. Sima Qian praised the comfortable life
of the early Han by pointing out evidence that some ordinary people during the
reign of the Emperor Wen had never been to cities by 60 or 70 years of age and
still enjoyed their life like children.39 The 17th-century scholar Gu Yanwu also
said: People will have orderly behaviors when living in the countryside but will
create chaos when gathering in citiesthe way to govern the capital begins with
having people reside in their native places.40 Marx Weber also noticed that from
a legal standpoint Chinese urban residents belonged to their families and native
villages, where their lineage shrines were located and where their hearts
belonged.41 Countryside and small towns were where most lineage shrines and
graves located, where culture and religion originated, and where customs and
popular culture were created. Countryside was the real home and sanctuary. The
Chinese tradition was always to retreat to cities in times of minor small disorder
and to the countryside in times of great chaos. Eventually, with the sprouting of
capitalism and the culture of urban residents flourishing, both the size and
number of cities grew. Moreover, as cities attained better status, the position of
urban residents also rose above rural people. However, only with the appearance
of treaty ports did a true sense of urban superiority develop. Large treaty ports,
such as Shanghai, contributed significantly to promoting this mindset. Nowadays,
39
Sima Qian, juan 25, Lshu disan.

Gu Yanwu, juan 12.
41
Marx Weber, 8182.
40
529
we have the theory of integrating countryside and cities as one. In fact, even in
pre-modern times, the boundaries between Chinese countryside and cities were
rather blurred. This is characteristic of rural-urban relations in Chinese society
and is widely known in the West. No significant modification or challenge to this
perception has appeared thus far. However, the idea does not receive much
attention among Chinese academics.
In the beginning, scholars of popular culture and urban daily life mostly
concentrated on large metropolitan cities, particularly, Shanghai. For example,
Gail Hershatters book, Dangerous Pleasure, was awarded the Joan Kelly
Memorial Prize in Womens history by the American Historical Association in
1997 and Hanchao Lus, Beyond the Neon Lights, was awarded the best book
prize by Urban History Association in 1999. Although works about Shanghai
were most popular in the field during this period, two books of non-Shanghai
history also brought about significant discussion among American historians of
Chinese history. These two books are William Rowes Hankow and David
Strands Rickshaw Beijing. The subject of the latter is lower class laborers.
In the mid-1990s, some American historians of Chinese history began to
question the arguably excessive emphasis placed on Shanghai. In 1996, convened
by Joseph Esherick, a conference named Beyond Shanghai: Imaging the City in
Republican China was held in San Diego, California. Later, a collection of this
conferences papers was published under the title Remaking the Chinese City:
Modernity and National Identity, 1900 to 1950 by the University of Hawaii in
2002. The American studies of Chinese urban history entered a new era in the
21st century. Scholars began to inquire about cities of small and medium sizes.
Accordingly, the downward trend has a double meaning. One is that the
research focus has shifted from studying the elite to studying lower class; the
other is that the subject of inquiry has switched from large cities such as
Shanghai and Beijing to those occupying secondary status in national politics and
economy. For instance, Wang Dis Street Culture in Chengdu delves into popular
culture and daily life in Chengdu of the late Qing and the early 20th century. This
book was awarded the best book prize of non-US urban history by the Urban
History Association in 2005. This is the fourth time that the Urban History
Association gave this prize to a work of Chinese urban history, which reflects the
significance and influence of Chinese urban history in the West.
In addition, among recently published books of Beijings history, Dong Yues
Republican Beijing has the most comprehensive discussion of the society and
culture of Beijing in the first half of the 20th century. Susan Naquins book,
Temples and City Life in Beijing and Richard Belskys work on native place
associations in Beijing are also important books among newly published works
about the capital. Zwia Lipkins new book, Useless to the State: Social
Problems and Social Engineering in Nationalist Nanjing, 19271937, is a
530
detailed study of the city life and politics of Nanjing in the Nanjing decade; it
especially emphasizes on the lower class. Published by the University of
California Press, Ruth Rogaskis Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and
Disease in Treaty Port China, can be regarded as the most avant-garde work of
Chinese urban history in recent years. This book takes Tianjin as its time and
geographical focus and closely connects the city with the theme of hygiene to
develop an insightful discussion about the idea of health, disease, and some
ideas which appeared in the modern era, such as laboratory knowledge, body
hygiene, modernity, imperialism, and nationalism. Moreover, the book
covers the idea of hygiene during the Meiji Restoration and Japanese occupation
of China, biological warfare in WWII, and the patriotic hygienic movement in
the post-liberation period. This book is praised as the best book which inquires
into Eastern Asian history with the transnational perspective of recent years. It
was awarded the Fairbank Prize by the American Historical Association and the
Levenson Prize by the American Association of Asian Studies.
The researches mentioned above reflect the new downward trend in the
American studies of Chinese urban history. However, one problem deserves our
attention. Although provincial cities and cities of small and medium sizes have
begun to receive the scholars attention, no book-length works in English on the
full history of a Chinese county city or a small town under county administration
has yet been published. Nevertheless, anthropologists have produced a number of
important works on this subject. Therefore, the continuation of this downward
trend requires cooperation between history and other disciplines, such as
anthropology.
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Front. Hist.

China 2008, 3(4): 499532

The symposium on urban popular culture in

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

Keywords modern China, urban popular culture, symposium

Injecting vitality into the studies of urban cultural

Yang Nianqun, Lei Tian, 2007, No. 8.

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

Coming to my mind at this moment is Jiang Wens shooting of movies. As the

The flavor of the city

Li Zongtao, No. 24, Sep. 21, 2001.

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

The sound of the city

Fang Fang, 2002.

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

Ye Shengtao, No. 86, Aug. 31, 1923.

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

hard to find a balance between these two extremes.

The form and soul of the city

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

Beijingshi zhengxie, Vol. 31, 106109.

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

scholars of urban history. Therefore, it is my hope to reveal peoples relations

Observing the urban society through a microscope

Although teahouse life is an important medium to understand the development of

Wang Di, 1993.

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

Carol Ginzburg, 1982.

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

Entering the bottom of the city

The examination of teahouses is to open a new window to understand Chinese

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

teahouse culture. People, especially poor people, engaged in activities of commerce,

When attempting to conduct micro investigation of urban popular culture,

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 1988, 217313.

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

inside of the society. On the other hand, investigations of important political

Remaking the Chinese city: Urban space and

Joseph W. Esherick, ed., 2000.

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

about how a courtyard might be placed in an office building to encourage people

Sen-dou Chang, 1977.

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

David Strand, 1989.

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao

enforcement of regulations on public hygiene is the clearest example. Guides to

Parks, squares and railway stations

Ruth Rogaski, 2004.

The symposium on urban popular culture in modern China

Temple of Heaven () was refurbished and became an important tourist site.

Madeleine Yue Dong; Shi Mingzheng, 1995.

MA Min, JIANG Jin, WANG Di, Joseph W. ESHERICK, LU Hanchao