Reading Shenbao: Nationalism, Consumerism and Individuality in China 1919-37

ISBN-13: 9780230019829 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 249 str.

Weipin Tsai

Opis

Reading Shenbao investigates ideas of nationalism, consumerism and individuality through the study of the most popular commercial daily newspaper in China during the first half of the twentieth century. Based on a study of Shenbao's readership, Tsai picks up themes deeply interwoven in readers' daily lives: the relationship between advertising, modern lifestyles and changing social attitudes; the introduction and growth of modern banking and personal savings; the changing role of women, particularly as consumers; the interaction between commercial publisher, newspaper readers, writers and intellectuals; and the role of newspapers in the development of national consciousness. The book also looks in depth for the first time at who Shenbao's readers were in this period and challenges past assumptions about readership and social class. Overall we are offered a fresh perspective on how Chinese modernization was constructed, in part with Western influence but within a Chinese context.

Recenzje

'Tsai shows convincingly that Shenbao reached out toward many different social groups and - for commercial reasons among others - sought to extend its audience to include ever new groups: by changing existing columns, such as the Random Talk to "May Fourth Spirit," for example (chapter 5) and by creating new columns (such as Spring and Autumn) not to lose old readerships either (and thus to preserve the type of literature that would be condemned by May Fourth protagonists as "mandarin duck and butterfly literature")... Tsai's book makes an important contribution by showing that the Shenbao reader was indeed much more diverse in class (and gender) background than is generally assumed.'

- The Journal of the China Quarterly, Barbara Mittler

Spis treści

Table of Figures Acknowledgements Glossary Introduction Patriotism and Gracious Living in Tobacco Advertising Saving for Happiness - Individual Banking Accounts Advertisements The Modern Housewife - A New Kind of Shanghai Woman Shame, Guilt, and National Products Ziyoutan Revisited – The Literature Supplement and Its Writers Re-defining Shenbao's Readership Postscript: On ambivalent individualities Bibliography References

O autorze

WEIPIN TSAI is a historian of modern China, specializing in political, regional trading and socio-economic interests from the late Qing to the Republican period, including globalization and colonial influence in China, and consumerism in daily life. She is currently a lecturer in the History Department of Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.