Common People and the Artist in Republican China: Visual Documents and Historical Narrative

Organizer: Christian Henriot, Lumière Lyon 2 University, France

Chair and Discussant: Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California, Berkeley

The present panel addresses the issue of using visual sources per se in the construction of a historical narrative in Chinese social history. The focus is not the image itself, as in art history, but its content and how this content can be harnessed into a discourse that intertwines words and images. The four contributions explore various visual corpora: ‘common people in the Jiangnan area’, ‘new women and actresses in Shanghai’ as well as ‘female impersonator Mei Lanfang’. The papers presented are all part of larger project – "Common people & the artist in Republican China" -- that aims at confronting methods, approaches and interpretations of visual documents within the same relational database. The study is based on coherent sets of documents, mostly photography but also movies, that were produced either by individual photographers, or under orders by an artist or a company, or from sets of periodicals. Some were produced over a short span of time, while others cover two or three decades in the 1920-1940 period. Some are centered in one place like Shanghai, while others extend into the Jiangnan area or even abroad. The case studies to be presented cover a broad range of possibilities for the elaboration of intellectual journeys into the realm of everyday life and artists’ life in Republican China.

Catherine V. Yeh, University of Heidelberg, Germany

The photographs of Peking opera star Mei Lanfang in the role of the female impersonator have been well selected and edited by the cultural authorities in PRC China during the 1990s. They present the story of a Chinese cultural envoy who with his art, personal beauty and public dignity was representing the best of Chinese culture. If, however, we look at photographs and illustrated images left out of this official picture or arranged in a different context, a different story emerges.

Through the database of the Common People and Artist, this project sets out to juxtapose photographs and graphic art found in Japanese, US and USSR publications about Mei Lanfang's visits and performances there with those reproduced in PRC publications. It will argue that Mei’s visits at different historical junctures were perceived quite differently in these countries. They had images of China as their underlying concern that have little in common with the present-day PRC presentations. Mei’s image in these countries articulated through the medium of his theater art what they wanted China to be in relation to their own stature and image.

Barbara Mittler, University of Heidelberg, Germany

In China as elsewhere, particular products are advertised in particular ways: parfumes and nappies with images of women, encyclopedias and cameras with images of men, gramophones with images of families. But do these stereotypical attributions always remain the same? When and how do they change and why? Are they in fact the same in China as elsewhere? What happens to foreign products being advertised in China? And is it perhaps possible to write an alternative history to the gender revolution through advertising? Does advertising copy change, for example, when it moves from one medium (a women’s magazine) to another (a daily newspaper)?

It is the purpose of this paper to investigate the continuities and fissures in gendered advertising through illustration since the inauguration of illustrated advertising in the late 19^th century and into the late days of the 20^th century. For this purpose, the paper explores advertising copy from daily newspapers, as well as lifestyle, women’s, family and men’s magazines. In taking seriously image, text and medium context, and the relationship between all of these factors, this paper attempts an alternative reading to gender stereotyping.

Anne Kerlan-Stephens, CNRS, France

Between 1930 and 1937, Lianhua Film Company was one of the major studio in China, and, by many ways, a symbol of modernity. The politic of the Company towards its staff, specifically its actors, was quite new and contributed to the creation of a new social status for a group, the actors, which encountered tremendous transformation in the 1920’s and 1930’s. We will focus on female stars (Ruan Lingyu, Chen Yanyan, Li Lili, Wang Renmei) who worked for Lianhua Film Company. Through a detailed analysis of feature films produced by the Company, as well as articles and photos published in its magazine, we will first study how Lianhua transformed these women into professional actresses: how they were hired and trained, what type of role they were asked to play in the movies. Then, we will see how these actresses became also modern female public figures. Their image was created by the entanglement of three spheres: the private life, the public life and fiction lives played on screen. We will consider the sometimes conflicting relationships between these spheres by confronting different types of material: photos taken from 1930’s publications, Lianhua’s feature films, written documents. This confrontation of images and text documents produced with different purposes will underline the complexity and the ambiguity of a process understood by Lianhua Film Company not only as the making of professional actresses but also as the creation of a new, modern, Chinese woman.

The crafts of peasant-boatmen along the Grand CanalThe topic of this paper takes its source in the discovery of an hitherto unknown collection of 4000 photographs taken by the Jesuit, Joseph de Reviers de Mauny, in 1932. As an amateur photographer, the Jesuit father concentrated on a China that is usually hidden from view. Shanghai's hinterland, the Jiangnan region, was the place of his forays into Chinese rural life. The Jiangnan area is an amphibious zone where the distinction between peasants and fishermen became blurred. This was due to the interpenetration between farmland and the river network that was the very condition of the existence of the floating population. The essential subject of his pictures was these "water peasants " whose daily activities are studied with all the minute attention to detail that the explorer would bring to it. The use of such visual records allows us to review or at least compare with the textual sources that often evoke a poverty-stricken rural population and to offer an alternative reading. In this paper, I shall examine more specifically the various crafts that were associated with life on or around the canals among these ‘water peasants’, including the place of women who played an essential role as boatswains.

Christine Cornet, Lumiere Lyon 2 University, France

The photographs of Jiangnan floating population taken in 1932-33 by Father Joseph de Reviers de Mauny show us a rural China that is usually hidden from view. The originality of these holdings lies in their homogeneity. Shanghai’s hinterland, the Jiangnan region had been chosen since 1842 as an area of evangelization. Located in an amphibious zone that was a meeting point between rural and river population, it was one of China’s richest agricultural regions. Here, the distinction between peasants and fishermen became blurred because the interpenetration between farmland and the river network was the very condition of the existence of this floating population. For historians who make use of visual records here is a source that will allow to them to review, or at least compare, the written sources, which often evoke a famished and poverty-stricken rural population, with the alternative reading offered by the photographic sources. This paper will argue that confrontation of images and texts documents produced with different purposes will give us a new image of rural China in the Jiangnan area during the thirties.