Citizens of Beauty: Drawing Democratic Dreams in Republican China 9780295747026, 9780295747019, 9780295747033, 0295747021

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: New Times, New Space, New Beauties
Chapter 1. Liberating the Female Hand
Chapter 2. A Modern-Footed Person Claiming Public Space
Chapter 3. Weathering the Elements, Experiencing the
Chapter 4. One Wife for One Husband, One Mother for the Children
Chapter 5. From Confucian Virtue to a New Democratic Morality
Chapter 6. New Consumers, New Audiences
Conclusion: Drawing Popular Sovereignty
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Citizens of Be au t y

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Citizens of Beaut y DRAWING DEMOCRATIC DREAMS IN REPUBLICAN CHINA

L o u i s e E d wa r d s

University of Washington Press Seattle

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Citizens of Beauty was made possible in part by grants from the Samuel and Althea Stroum Endowed Book Fund and the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales.

Copyright © 2020 by the University of Washington Press Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach 24 23 22 21 20  5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. U n i v ersit y of Washington Pr ess uwapress.uw.edu Libr a ry of Congr ess Cata loging-in-Pu blication Data on file ISBN 978-0-295-74702-6 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-295-74701-9 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-295-74703-3 (ebook) Cover illustration: An agile woman citizen. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 2:23. The paper used in this publication is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, a nsi z39.48–1984.∞

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For Chris and Alex

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CON T E N T S

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: New Times, New Space, New Beauties  3 CH A P T ER 1. Liberating the Female Hand  43 CH A P T ER 2. A Modern-Footed Person Claiming Public Space  68 CH A P T ER 3. Weathering the Elements, Experiencing the

New Nation’s Geography  93 CH A P T ER 4. One Wife for One Husband, One Mother for

the Children  111 CH A P T ER 5. From Confucian Virtue to a New Democratic Morality  131 CH A P T ER 6. New Consumers, New Audiences  155

Conclusion: Drawing Popular Sovereignty  172

Notes 177 Bibliography 191 Index 203

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A CK NO W L E DGM E N T S

This project began with a chance find of the four small volumes of Zhong­ hua Library’s 1917 “old and new beauties” in the University of Hong Kong’s Fung Ping Shan Library. Zhonghua’s collection invited readers to look back at the past and forward into the future. It encouraged them to ponder the tensions between citizenship and subjecthood, the foreign and the Chinese, the modern and the traditional. It was both commercially and politically astute. The creation of a new society was not only a task for politicians. Artists, too, had their role in supporting China’s transition to a republic filled with active, engaged, and equal citizens. This book pays homage to their talent and insight. I owe debts of gratitude to many institutions and individuals. Librarians at the University of Hong Kong, Chicago University, Cornell University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Melbourne University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the University of New South Wales have provided invaluable support. Staff at the Shanghai Library, Academia Sinica’s Fu Sinian Memorial Library, and the National Library of Australia were also crucial to its completion. The project had its first outing at the 2013 Asian Studies Association Meeting in San Diego, where I joined a stimulating panel led by Kate Merkel-Hess with Robert Culp, Janet Chen, and Prasenjit Duara. The 2017 AAS-in-Asia meeting held in Seoul gave the modern beauties another outing, alongside my enthusiastic copanelists Gao Ruchen, Zhang Yun, and Cui Wendong. Over subsequent years, while the work was in progress, colleagues around the world provided valuable feedback in seminars at Heidelberg University, Academia Sinica, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Toronto, and University of Hong Kong. Colleagues from my much-treasured HKU clan who warrant special thanks include Wu Cuncun, Yang Binbin, John Wong, Kendall Johnson, Kangsoon Lee, Staci Ford, Xu Guoqi, Chen Fong-fong, Cai Qing, Zhang Mei, Zhang Yun, Selena Orly, Anna Costa, and Christine Cui Tao. Anne McLaren, Adelyn Lim, Johanna ix

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Hood, Zora Simic, Bronwyn Neil, Yu Chien-ming, Lien Ling-ling, Fang Xiaoping, Noa N ­ ahmias, Paola Zamperini, Harriet Zurndorfer, Barbara Mittler, and Joan Judge all helped in a variety of ways to keep the project alive. Lorri Hagman, Mike Baccam, Elizabeth Berg, M’Bilia Meekers, ­Margaret Sullivan, and the superb team at University of Washington Press have been wonderful advisers and outstanding editors. Paddlers at FFB Dragon Boat Club lifted my spirits with many adventures on and off the water. One of the most joyful moments of the project was making contact with Dan Duyu’s daughter, Judy Dan Woo, and his granddaughter, Becky Woo. They have generously given permission to reproduce Dan’s images in this book. Finally, thanks to my extended families in New Zealand and Australia for their support over many years—with special gratitude to my partner, Kam, and my children, Chris and Alex. IMAGE SOURCES

Thanks to the following individuals and institutions for assistance with or permission to reprint images: Judy Dan Woo and the Harvard-Yenching Library, for Dan Duyu, Duyu baimeitu zhengxu ji (1924 Xinmin Tushuguan edition); Melbourne University, for Ding Song, Baimei tu waiji (2004 Wenlian edition); National Library of Australia and Guangwen Shuju, Taiwan, for Ding Song, Shanghai shizhuang baimei tuyong (1968 Guangwen edition); University of Hong Kong Library newspaper collection, for Ding Song, images from Xianshi leyuan ribao; Hong Kong University Library and Chicago University Library, for Ding Song and Qiu Shouping, Gujin baimei tuyong (1917 Zhonghua Tushuguan edition); National Library of Australia for Wu Youru, Gujin baimeitu (1909 Biyuanhui She edition) and from University of New South Wales Library (1977 Nam San edition).

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Citizens of Be au t y

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IN T RODUC T IO N New Times, New Space, New Beauties

In 1922 Chinese book bu yers were treated to an image of a woman swinging from a set of gymnastics rings in a tantalizing pictorial book titled Duyu’s One Hundred Beauties in the Latest Fashion (Shizhuang Duyu baimei tu). Dan Duyu’s bare-armed athlete is caught in motion, fully stretched in the air (fig. I.1). Her arms above her head, hands firmly gripping the rings, she wears a dramatically striped knee-length skirt and sleeveless shirt. Her unbound feet, crossed at the ankles, are covered in flat slipper-like shoes. As she swings, she looks over a tall wall—a view afforded by the height of her arc. The caption for the image reads, “Wow! Female citizens are really agile!” Two decades earlier such an image with such a caption would have been unthinkable. Dan sketched his “Latest Fashion” citizens in direct comparison to collections of “Old Fashion” beauties that circulated among literati from as early as the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and through the Qing (1644–1911). Prior to the twentieth century, the One Hundred Beauties genre was a stock product depicting famous women from China’s ancient past, illustrating age-old values such as unending loyalty to husbands and fathers or unyielding chastity and forbearance. The traditional beauties waited for the return of absent husbands or lovers—variously patient, modest, or sick, but always depending on a man to prompt action. They were heralded for acts of extreme sacrifice and depicted as committing suicide in defense of their chastity or suffering stoically as brides to distant nomadic tribes. The citizen gymnast, in contrast to this dependency and self-sacrifice, propels herself in a display of independent, physical skill and autonomous, democratic subjectivity. Yaoniang, an imperial concubine from the Southern Tang dynasty (930– 976), is typical of pre-twentieth-century beauties. Yaoniang bound her feet 3

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I.1. An agile woman citizen. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 2:23.

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I.2. Yaoniang dancing for her lord. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:46.

in white silk before dancing for the emperor, and so delicate were her steps and so graceful her moves that for the following ten centuries, Chinese women bound their feet as a marker of feminine grace, charm, and virtue.1 Qiu Shouping’s 1887 depiction of her dance shows a body draped in yards of cloth, swaying atop a plinth decorated as a lotus (fig. I.2). She is viewed by her lord and master as he sits in repose admiring the private performance of her graceful dance. Yaoniang’s famous feet are paradoxically so small that they are invisible beneath the flowing gowns and yet simultaneously so large in their purported impact on centuries of custom, fashion, and morality. That Qiu Shouping still had a market for his drawing of a Tang dynasty beauty in 1887, nearly a millennium after Yaoniang first appeared, tells of the power and longevity of the gendered moral, social, and political ideals she represented. Equally important is her absence from the collections of modern One Hundred Beauties, sketched only three decades after Qiu’s was published—such as Dan Duyu’s from 1922. Prominent commercial artists, like Dan, created a world where a line between the old and the new was literally being sketched. The values presented to twentieth-century consumers

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of this long-standing artistic genre had fundamentally altered. Citizens of Beauty explores the shifts in foundational values organizing Chinese society at the turn of the twentieth century through a comparison of the commercial art produced in the One Hundred Beauties genre between the late 1880s and the early 1920s. The analysis delves into the commercial artists’ presentation of readers’ hopes, dreams, desires, and anxieties as people negotiated their new positions in a rapidly changing society. Some of these changes were propelled by institutional shifts as China moved from a monarchy to a republic. Others were generated by technological advances, such as the arrival of the telephone and tram. Yet others emerged from the deepening interactions ordinary people had with the outside world, prompting changes in dress, hair, and accessories. But there is also a deeper level of “consciousness change” that occurred as a result of the formation of the Republic of China in 1912, which instantly promised citizenship to millions of people living within the geographic borders of that nation. No longer were Chinese the subjects of an emperor. The artists, writers, journalists, and filmmakers of these years helped make this shift in status from subject to citizen meaningful and concrete for their audiences, on an immediately personal level. What did it mean to be a citizen rather than a subject? How did one conduct oneself in this new role? MODERN SOCIET Y, DEMOCR ATIC CITIZENRY

Between the late 1880s and the early 1920s China’s population watched askance as the once-mighty Qing Empire crumbled. Weakened during the 1840s and 1850s by defeats in the Opium Wars, the Qing tried in vain to stop the country from being flooded with opium smuggled by British and American traders. The Qing’s coffers were gouged, as war reparations and unfavorable trade terms followed the defeats. The fifteen-year Taiping Rebellion (1850–64), which left 20–30 million dead, was crushed only with the help of those same Western powers, and the next three emperors were children when they ascended the throne: Tongzhi at sixteen, Guangxu at four, and Xuantong at three. By 1895, the Qing’s humiliation was almost complete when the small island nation of Japan defeated China in a naval battle. But this previously unthinkable occurrence was soon followed by the debacle of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The Boxers, a group of proQing rebels, were inspired by dreams of kung-fu magic when they targeted foreigners by attacking churches, railroads, and ultimately the foreign

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diplomatic quarters in Beijing—only to be crushed by a multinational armed force of leading Western powers and, for the first time, Japan. The Qing dynasty had lost its mandate to rule and its capacity to govern. China’s reformers moved rapidly to promote new models of government that empowered the people through their elected representatives. First attempts to establish a democratic base for a constitutional monarchy soon gave way to a full-blown republic with the abolition of the emperors, the court, and the empire. If China was to survive as a nation, it needed a political system that could better respond to the new domestic and international contexts. Ordinary people, once subjects of the emperors, became citizens of Asia’s first republic and were charged with forging a new modern China while embodying individual rights and duties in relation to that republic. For late Qing and early Republican reformers, building a consciousness of citizenship was paramount; they hoped that once ordinary people had grasped the concept of citizenship, internal political divisions would be remedied and external threats could be repelled. The reformers sought to change the way people conceived of their relation to society by identifying new forms of civic action, which stood in direct contrast to old, ingrained patterns from the Qing.2 This new civic spirit encapsulated ideas of an individual’s responsibility to work for the benefit of society as a whole, rather than the narrow interests of family and clan; a citizen’s duty to participate actively in public life, rather than being passive recipients of instruction from on high; the broadening of responsibility to all members of society, rather than the scholar-literati elite; and the reorientation of people’s loyalty to a geographically bounded nation-state, rather than to the emperor as a Son of Heaven through Confucian moral order.3 These attributes brought responsibility for civic action down to the level of the individual Chinese person, and they removed hierarchies of sex and class that had previously absolved women and nonliterati men from responsibility for the country’s progress but also denied them the right to active participation in public affairs. Responsibility for public service had been generalized to “people of the nation” (guomin) and “people of the public” (gongmin) who were “members of a horizontal interconnected and bounded national community.” These people were entitled to civic rights but were also conceived as being engaged with the community in a very public fashion.4 Citizens of Beauty shows how leading commercial artists responded to this call to create citizens from subjects through their One Hundred Beauties collections, which contrasted old qualities with new qualities. The

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contrast was achieved both explicitly, by publishing ancient and modern beauties together in the one collection, and implicitly by using titles such as “New Fashion One Hundred Beauties” or “Latest-Style One Hundred Beauties.” Consumers of these images were drawn to make the comparisons between the imperial values of subjecthood and those of civic action required of Republican citizens. Throughout this book, I use the terms “democratic” or “democratic consciousness” to refer to the values that underpinned the production of “citizens as new kinds of social and political agents.”5 This democratic spirit refers to the idea of broad-based popular par­ ticipation in the formation of a national society, including the participation of groups that had previously been ignored—women, farmers, workers— rather than a process of voting or casting of ballots.6 These values were clearly in the minds of the leading commercial artists of the early Republic, and the fame and popularity that these artists commanded shows that they tapped into the concerns of readers and book buyers too. Ding Song’s 1918 drawing of a mother teaching her son about the national flag on Double Tenth National Day exemplifies this promotion of democratic consciousness (fig. I.3). As the son in his Western-style long socks, shorts, and shirt is taught about the national flag by his beautiful mother, so too are readers. Two flags are hung with a ceremonial wreath at their center, adding to the formality of the scene. Ding published a similar image in Sincere Department Store’s daily newspaper, The Eden (Xianshi leyuan ribao), in 1918. It shows a young servant dressed in three-quarter-length trousers, standing on a ladder to decorate a wall upon which two national flags are hung. She holds a wreath ready to further adorn the display.7 Similarly, Shen Bochen’s 1913 image of a woman sewing a flag brings the feminine virtue of needlecraft into building nation-state loyalty (fig. I.4). Readers learn that the seamstress has been laboring deep into the night, stitching the Republic’s Five-Colored Flag with the agility and strength of a valiant warrior and athlete. Dedication to the national symbol requires a citizen’s resolve. The speed and success of the promotion of democratic consciousness caught some people by surprise. Yuan Shikai, president of the Republic of China from 1912 to 1915, underestimated the extent to which ordinary people’s attitudes about their connection to the nation-state had shifted when he proclaimed himself emperor in 1915. Fierce protests broke out around the nation following his coronation, revealing that many ordinary people had already embraced a host of new social values and fresh conceptions of

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I.3. A mother teaching her son about the national flag. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 56.

the appropriate relationship between the people and their leaders.8 To men and women who perceived themselves as individual political beings with an equal citizen’s aspirations rather than a subject’s obedience, the return of any monarchy only five years after the fall of the Qing dynasty was unthinkable.9 People felt quite differently about their social and political roles in 1905 than they did in 1915. They hastily left the past behind, categorizing habits and clothing commonplace only five years earlier as “old” to contrast them with the “new” world of speed, republicanism, and technology. Popular sovereignty became the overarching political spirit of the years immediately following the 1911 Revolution. However, the modern constitutional and governmental concepts that supported this new ethos were not established through careful institutional design, but rather emerged from passionate debates that took place in newspapers, demonstrations, and meetings where speeches were delivered and pamphlets distributed.10 The commercial art scene was part of this influential media that made popular sovereignty and a democratic consciousness comprehensible to the ordinary urbanite. The artists, even when producing apparently trivial drawings of

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I.4. A citizen of beauty sewing the national flag. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 83.

beautiful women for leisure viewing, contributed to the deep shift in political consciousness that made popular sovereignty understandable to ordinary people. How does one become a civic-minded person in one’s daily life? What would more equal social relationships look like on an everyday basis? The commercial artists’ depictions of new forms of beauty provided answers to these questions. Ding Song’s depiction of a woman delivering a speech exemplifies the new ways of being a politically active citizen of the Republic (fig. I.5). The speaker warns her audience about the dangers of false freedom and loudly proclaims the importance of “waking” their compatriots.11 Explicitly invoking Rousseau, the text places the new Republic in a global context in which political theories are debated and explained. The national flag is draped behind the speaker, who stands confidently holding her notes in front of a row of women wearing an array of hairstyles, including pigtails, buns, and single braids; her audience comprises a variety of ages and classes. In this

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I.5. A political philosopher delivering a lecture. Ding Song, 1916. ­SSZBMTY, 83.

picture of “beauties,” Ding tells readers not only that women citizens are legitimate leaders in philosophical debates about the role of individuals in the nation, but also that many types of women can participate in the conversation too. To assert the veracity of this scene, Ding has written along the side that he saw it with his own eyes. The commercial artists producing illustrations for the myriad magazines, newspapers, and advertisements that flourished at this time helped bring forth the modern citizenry of the Republic of China from the subjecthood they lost with the collapse of the Qing.12 In explicitly producing collections called “new-style” or “latest-fashion” One Hundred Beauties, leading Republican-era artists invited readers to make comparisons with the “oldstyle” or “ancient” One Hundred Beauties illustrations that had flourished in the late Qing. The myriad differences between citizens and subjects were depicted in readily accessible drawings that could stand alone amid the text of newspapers and magazines or be gathered together in book-length volumes. By modernizing an enduring genre, the Republican artists prompted reflection among their audiences about their newfound circumstances in Asia’s first republic. They provided an anchor marking the past and created,

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in visual form, pictures of life as a modern Chinese citizen. As Zhang Danfu (1868–1937), artist, writer, and newspaper editor, declared in his preface for one Republican-era collection, the illustrated beauties invite readers to “explore the mysteries of the Chinese and the foreign, the past and the present” and to ponder “the tendencies to separate or converge, to go far or stay near.”13 The artists, publishers, and editors in this world of commercial art were advocates for the Republic—a new nation that was situated in a fresh relationship with its past and its geographic sovereignty in a rapidly changing globe. BEING CHINESE AND BEING MODERN

The new citizens of China emerged from within a European model of government through a republican constitution—but it was a Chinese republic, nonetheless. How does a republic make itself Chinese? What aspects of past culture would be retained in the reconfiguration of the modern Chinese citizen’s consciousness? In the first decades of the twentieth century, people created their modern Chineseness through a panoply of everyday decisions that sometimes positioned “things foreign” as “new” and “things Chinese” as “old.” Choices about clothing, hairstyles, hobbies, transport, communication, and socializing became performances of one’s level of modernity. Decisions about marriage partners, education pathways, and careers became critical junctures in the achievement of modernity. And the spread of new technologies like trams, electricity, gramophones, and cameras presented China’s urbanites with daily scope for adding a bit of the modern to their lives. The intermingling of Chinese and foreign clothes, ideas, and technologies in these years of transition created no shortage of anxiety about the authenticity and success of cultural intermingling. Pithy phrases like “neither Chinese nor Western” (bu Zhong bu Xi) reflect this anxiety and could be attached derisively to any person at any time.14 But over the course of the first decades of the twentieth century the rigid idea that “being modern meant being foreign” gave way to a modern Chineseness. In a gradual process of incorporating the novel and the foreign into everyday Chinese life, a new national Chinese material culture was built.15 And the explicit conversation between the international and the Chinese in the material world helped produce a new Republican national political culture. By combining old and new, the artists of the One Hundred Beauties were also achieving their commercial goals by meeting popular demand for

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novelty as well as achieving their reformist goals for cultural and political revival.16 The artists provided scope for the reinvigoration of Chinese c­ ulture along modern lines. The new-style One Hundred Beauties provided precisely that mixture of a well-recognized local form with deep cultural roots and the exciting new world of possibilities arriving via the treaty ports and in the trunks of overseas travelers. That world was one in which “the powerful West” loomed large. The consciousness of “modern, powerful, foreign” in turn created new possibilities for conceptualizing what it meant to be Chinese—an exploration that would produce the pluralism that came to mark Chinese modernity.17 A new form of Chineseness was performed from within the everyday choices of people living in this rapidly modernizing world. It was a world in which the movement of goods and people between China and other nations was more common. A modern China was being created in reference to distant lands as well as the imperial past. The transformation of the clock from an exotic, foreign object is one example of the way barriers between these cultural spaces were collapsing. By the turn of the twentieth century, the clock displayed in various businesses around the cities ceased being foreign and instead served to distinguish new Chinese lifestyles from old Chinese ones.18 Modern clocks feature regularly in the new-style One Hundred Beauties pictures. For example, Shen Bochen’s 1913 beauty adjusting a grandfather clock reminds audiences that staying alert to the passage of time with timekeeping technologies was a cultivated, teachable, and desirable attribute worthy of transmission to children (fig. I.6). In the accompanying text, the precision of the new device is linked to the “whirl of good times and beautiful scenery.” The mother is dressed in clothing of the Han elite, but the boy wears a European-style uniform of shorts and knee socks, similar to the boy learning about National Day (fig. I.3). Images like these, with their mixture of Chinese and foreign clothing, confirm the clock as a modern Chinese object in which the rapid pace of change is being calibrated. The clock symbolizes the passage of time, as the past gives way to the present and future. In 1918 Ding Song depicts a servant on a ladder adjusting a wall clock, and this image, too, reveals the happy merger of the foreign and the local (fig. I.7). The maid is adjusting the clock to prevent it from chiming. The accompanying text explains that a banquet ended during “the third watch” (between 9:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m.), so she is silencing the clock lest it disturb the residents, now asleep. She is agile in her control of modern time technologies. Ding’s inclusion of the traditional timekeeping marker “the third

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I.6. A mother adjusting a clock with her son. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 110.

watch” directly connects the Chinese past with the modern Chinese future.19 On the adjacent wall a Western-style landscape painting further illustrates the household’s embrace of foreign aesthetics, while the woman’s clothing and hair remain firmly in the Chinese mode. Time was progressing rapidly as modern clocks ticktocked the pace of social change in workplaces, public squares, and family homes.20 And people from all walks of life combined the old and the new, the foreign and the local, to produce a modern Chinese notion of time. During the late Qing, new conceptions of “civilized time” emerging from Japan, Europe, and America were reflected in neologisms that would resonate through the upcoming decades—“new” (xin) and “modern” (modeng, xiandai). To advance their commercial interests, many of the new books took trendy titles. For example, descriptors like “brand new” (xinxin) or “latest up-to-date fashions” (zuixin shizhuang) demarcated publications from that now-discernible period called “the past” and drew readers’ attention to the book’s currency and future-looking aspira­ tions. The emergence of conceptions of the new, modern “present” meant

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I.7. A beauty on a ladder silencing the clock chimes. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 73.

the commercial publishers of the early Republic were able to make use of a freshly positioned “past” to market their new-style illustrated books of beauties. Not all material objects collapse the boundaries between the foreign and the Chinese and the new and old times as easily as the clock. Different material objects carry different burdens of cultural representation. Clothing, for example, carries far richer layers of cultural inscription, and the foreign form is less smoothly incorporated into a new cultural lexicon as “ours.” Long-standing sartorial rules, be they imposed by sumptuary regulations, fashion, or morality, make dress a powerful differentiating code between the old, the new, the foreign, and the Chinese. In the new-style One Hundred Beauties images, various forms of clearly identifiable Chinese dress dominate numerically, even while the beauties are performing remarkably modern activities that mark their independence, strength, and self-direction. The Chinese clothing used in the images serves as a bridge between the Chinese and the modern. Were the beauties predominantly depicted in foreign dress, the Chineseness of the modern actions being performed would be less apparent. The Republic becomes a Chinese democratic space when a

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woman wearing a Han shirt and pleated skirt is honoring the new national flag—as evident in figure I.3. Her son wears a Western-style sailor suit, but the mother-beauty is wearing recognizably Chinese clothing of the era. Similarly, as we will see in the chapters to follow, playing tennis becomes a modern Chinese game when a beautiful woman wearing a Chinese smock and pants is depicted enjoying it. And traveling solo on a tram to visit one’s friends becomes a Chinese activity when the woman undertaking the journey sports a high-collared, narrow three-quarter-sleeved shirt and long skirt. That is not to say that Chinese clothing did not evolve during the first decades of the century. In fact, new clothing styles emerged so quickly that clothing from 1900 would be displayed in museums in the 1930s.21 The qipao emerged in 1921 as a new style of women’s dress that was at once modern and Chinese—and by the 1930s was archetypally modern.22 But up to the middle of the 1920s, Chineseness was still largely marked by long skirts and high-necked shirts for mistresses and narrow-legged trousers and narrowsleeved tops for servants. Examples of both are displayed in Shen’s and Ding’s pictures of the clocks (figs I.6 and I.7).23 In the latest of the images, those of Dan Duyu, the uniquely modern Chinese style of the qipao makes its appearance. But Ding and Shen used identifiably late-Qing women’s clothing as a bridge to turn the practices and technologies of modernity into something Chinese. Even though the modern beauty of the early Republic wears Chinese shirts, skirts, and pants more often than she wears foreign styles, readers would have been very attuned to the fact that her body had changed beneath the clothing: large natural feet, rather than the tiny bound feet, are always apparent within the cloth or leather of her shoes. See, for example, the highheeled leather shoes on the mother instructing her son about the national flag, and the natural feet in cloth slippers on the servant climbing the ladder to adjust the clock (figs. I.3 and I.7). The Republican-era enthusiasm for the foot and its natural display is a clear rupture with the aesthetic and moral world of the imperial times, when even beauties renowned for their dancing and the beauty of their feet, such as Yaoniang (fig. I.2), never revealed their feet or shoes. Such dramatic shifts demonstrate in the starkest of terms the malleability of the value placed on body parts or material objects like shoes, especially the natural foot, which enables women to climb, swing, and walk independently, regardless of whether they are adjusting a clock’s time, exercising on

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I.8. (left) “Latest Western-Style Women’s Shoes.” Ding Song, 1919. The Eden (Xianshi leyuan ribao), July 30, 2. I.9. (right) “Latest Chinese-Style Women’s Shoes.” Ding Song, 1919. The Eden (Xianshi leyuan ribao), August 5, 2.

gymnastic rings, or raising children. Natural feet in new-style shoes, under recognizably Han clothing, were consistent markers of the modern. The new-style shoes could be either Chinese or foreign in style, but the foot within the shoe was always a natural foot rather than a crippled, bound one. In 1919, Sincere Department Store’s daily newspaper, The Eden, included a series of Ding Song’s illustrations-cum-advertisements about the latest hats, skirts, and shoes (both Chinese and Western), instructing readers on what to wear and how to wear them (figs. I.8 and I.9)—and noted that they were available for purchase at Sincere.24 Footbinding and the accompanying culture of shoemaking were deeply embedded in moral norms as well as fashion practices, making the transition to natural feet necessarily a gradual process that extended from the 1880s to the 1930s.25 While in real people’s lives, the contestation between old-style and new-style feet was occurring, in the imaginary modern world created by commercial artists in their One Hundred Beauties between 1913 and 1923, there was no lingering in the past—the modern beauty appears

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I.10. A drummer spurring on the troops. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 153.

consistently with natural feet proudly displayed in modern shoes, or even in bare feet. Regardless of whether they are shod in leather, cloth, boots, or heels, the visual display of natural feet was a nonnegotiable trait for the artists creating the Republican citizen. This complete embrace of modern feet and footwear reflects the explicit connections between the strength of the nation and women’s natural feet made in the anti-footbinding campaigns waged at the end of the Qing. The crippling of women made them dependent, parasites on their family, and a major source of China’s weakness relative to other nations. 26 China’s national revival was so intimately linked to natural feet in the mind of China’s progressives that even though bound feet had been regarded for centuries as central to female beauty and class status, they were explicitly

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I.11. A soldier guarding the Republican camp. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 3:2.

eradicated from the Republican citizen of beauty. These modern women propelled themselves through space on their own feet and legs using their own physical strength and with their own purpose—just as the architects of China’s new citizen consciousness imagined they should. China’s women citizens would need to be able to walk around their new school grounds on their own feet and, moreover, their curriculum would also include military marching and physical education.27 Women citizens required a new martial orientation and the clothing to go with it. Shen Bochen’s bespectacled military drummer marches forward, in a full-length skirt with buttoned front flaps for greater mobility, rousing support for the troops.28 The background includes recognizably Chinese architecture, showing that the drummer and her troops are marching for China (fig. I.10). Ding Song’s soldier is dressed in a recognizably Western military uniform with sword raised in salute before a series of tents interspersed beneath three Republican flags (fig. I.11). The text accompanying Ding’s image tells us that heroic women fought in the battles, heading north with “tongues, swords, lips, and guns,” thus reminding readers of their allure as women and their power as soldiers.

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Nothing in Chinese women’s dress connoted the same level of national weakness as footbinding, so while skirts, shirts, and trousers remained markers of Chineseness, the natural foot in modern shoes assumed a key symbolic significance. Clothing was at once a bridge between the familiar culture of China’s imperial subjects and a newly emerging culture of the sure-footed Republican citizen. But, as the instances of shoes and feet reveal, dress was also the point of radical break. Just as dynasties in imperial times stipulated sumptuary laws that outlined the clothing style permissible for different classes of people, the Republican government of 1912 set its own regulations for clothing. Significantly, their regulations for official government attire presented a gendered division between foreign and Chinese styles. Men were permitted to wear Western morning suits and top hats or Chinese changpao (long gowns), but women were to remain in the Qing style of the elite Han—a long, pleated skirt and an embroidered silk jacket—identical to that which they had worn for decades.29 Moreover, men could combine a bowler hat with a changpao and regularly did, as photographs of the time show. Real women faced some difficult choices as a result. Should they wear the government-dictated clothes, which had “inconvenient long jackets and full-length skirts with only a few concessions to Western fashions, such as leather shoes or handbags? Or should they begin to follow Western fashion dictates as an expression of modernity?”30 The women depicted by Ding, Shen, and to a lesser extent Dan had no such conflict—they remained westernized in foot shape and sometimes footwear but Chinese in almost all other clothing. By depicting women in this mode, the Republican artists positioned their beauties in startling new frames in relation to the Chinese past and in relation to the new social formations that shaped their world. This new form of modern Chinese culture was a capacious urban form where Chinese civilization could include the latest technology, international connections, national mobility, and a reconfiguration of moral and social boundaries.31 NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR MODERN CITIZENS

What, then, was the impact of the modern objects that were transformed into “modern Chinese objects” by the bridge provided by women’s clothing in the imaginary world of the Republican One Hundred Beauties? These technologies were more than simply material things that enabled people to

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travel farther or faster, communicate at distance, or read and sew after dark. These things became, in the deft hands of the artists, tools for becoming citizens, mechanisms for creating new modes of social interaction, weapons for smashing rules that had produced the passive imperial subjects of old. Each of the new technologies changed relationships, altered hierarchies, ruptured ritual behaviors, and moved daily activities along with far greater rapidity. In some cases, as with the car or the plane, wealth hierarchies were reaffirmed by the new machines. But in other cases, barriers were broken that had hitherto been impenetrable. Women, previously restricted in their social interactions by customs of cloistering within the home, could communicate with friends (and lovers) by telephone without leaving the house. For people from all walks of life, the journeys between work, shops, school, and home became faster because of public trams and buses. This left more time for leisure activities like skating or walking in the new public parks. As the rail network expanded, the distances it was possible to travel meant richer commercial and social interactions and spurred a sense of the geographic modernity of the Republic. The modern nation that citizens would build was made comprehensible as more and more people traveled across the geographic space separating strangers and recognized themselves as responsible for territory beyond their native place. One of Shen Bochen’s beauties teaches her daughter, and the readers, with a map of China (see fig. 4.3). Cartographic representations, coupled with mechanized public transport, combine to create the sense of the Republic as a bordered nation, owned by all its citizens. All manner of mechanized transport spread through China during the first decades of the twentieth century: steamships were common along the main riverways and coastal ports, while paved roads that could support cars, buses, and trucks expanded in the urban areas and would eventually connect major transport hubs over the course of the 1920s. Bicycles became increasingly popular after their introduction in the 1890s, moving from a risqué curiosity to a convenient mode of transport within two decades. In the first decade of the century, literary depictions of women riding bikes were replete with erotic overtones, as courtesans were among the early adopters, but the bicycle quickly became a marker of more general progress and modernity.32 The full potential of that modernity placed the liberating impact of this modern machine alongside its allure—one of Shen Bochen’s 1913 beauties (see fig. 2.14) is depicted getting on her bicycle, nicknamed at

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the time the “freedom vehicle” (ziyou che). Individuals, including women, could propel themselves rapidly across space with their own physical energy, balance, and skill—liberated from dependence upon others. The rickshaw was the other main form of transport in urban China during these decades. Introduced from Japan in the 1870s, its absence from the drawings of the new-style beauties is startling because of its prevalence on the streets of urban China—the very places where our artists lived and worked. Only one picture from among the hundreds of new-style beauties depicts a woman sitting in a rickshaw (the puller is noticeably absent from Shen’s frame), while dozens show beauties using the actually rarer, modern forms of transport.33 The earlier mode of transport, a traditional sedan chair carried on the shoulders of at least two men, is completely absent from the collections. The commercial artists presented an imagined world of the new citizen in which movement was mechanized or self-propelled rather than depending on another human’s strength and sweat. The dream of an autonomous, self-directed, independent citizen necessarily banished the rickshaw and sedan chair. Many of the machines depicted are driven, piloted, or steered by the beauties themselves. Independent and self-propelled women are paraded in image after image—whereas in real life most women of this era made regular use of rickshaw pullers’ labor, and few would have traveled in a car, let alone known how to drive one. The symbolic significance of the rickshaw was changing rapidly during the first decades of the twentieth century. From the 1910s local governments with modernizing agendas regarded the presence of rickshaws as incompatible with modern forms of transport like buses, trams, or cars. Social activists saw rickshaw pullers as connoting exploitative labor relations and soon made them targets of welfare programs and police attention as a result of their frequent grinding poverty and suspected links to gangsters.34 Rickshaws were, in effect, deemed not to be modern anymore. Like bound feet, rickshaws are ignored in the visual record of the One Hundred Beauties, which was romancing the modern, even though this mode of transport prevailed in reality. At the other end of the transportation market was the private car—a marker of prestige and extreme wealth. Cars appeared around the first decade of the twentieth century, but the cost of both vehicle and fuel, ­coupled with high taxes and poor roads, meant that as late as the close of the 1920s most people in the nation had never seen a real car. In 1899 the US consulgeneral reported that “roads are proverbially and actually bad. . . . Wheeled vehicles are confined almost exclusively to the wheelbarrow. . . . Wagon

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roads are few and bad, and wagon transportation therefore is seldom under­ taken.”35 Confirming the slow pace of road and automobile development, in 1920 Anson Phelps Stokes wrote of his trip to the river city of Changsha, then a town of 300,000, that “there is a complete absence of automobiles, carriages, and bicycles, although there are a few jinrickshas.”36 The scarcity of cars did not reduce their power to symbolize modernity—and in the One Hundred Beauty drawings they mark both the status of their woman driver and her modern autonomy (see, e.g., figs. 2.21, 2.22). Automobiles were a fantasy of the imagined modernity of speed, mechanization, and autonomy, their presence in the pictures made even more remarkable by the absence of rickshaws and sedan chairs. Trains and trams feature frequently in the new One Hundred Beauties collections, as both their publicness and their mechanized power connoted a republic of modernity. There had not always been this positive reception of trains; the Qing government had regarded them with considerable suspicion. The first train line, a mere ten miles, was built in China in 1876, but the Qing court’s anxiety about railway building in an era of well-founded mistrust of foreign interests led it to be dismantled and shipped to Taiwan only a year later.37 From this point, the expansion of the railways across China was a matter of contestation during the Qing. Debates about profitability and foreign investment collided with resistance from farmers, whose arable land and ancestral graves were at risk from the expanding network, not to mention those businesses invested in the existing horse-and-cart, canal, and coastal transport systems. By the advent of the Republic, national leaders like Sun Yat-sen considered railroads necessary and an inevitable foundation for the nation’s economic prosperity. The debates about their impact on China’s economy took place all while for ordinary citizens trains symbolized a new form of fast-paced, public movement around the nation that their ever-changing, fractious leaders sought to govern. By 1894, at the outbreak of the first Sino-Japanese War, China had a mere 320 miles of rail­ roads, but between the formation of the Republic in 1912 and 1927 nearly 3,000 miles were built.38 The Republic was the era in which China embraced the railroad as a national project, and the beauty played her part in promoting its romance as desirably modern. Tramways were exclusively an urban phenomenon, and they reached their apex in seaboard cities like Shanghai. An American report of 1899 announced a call by the city of Shanghai for the building of twenty-three miles of track, in the first instance with the tender awarding a thirty-, forty-, or fifty-year

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franchise. The rationale behind the tender was as follows: “Present methods of locomotion are too slow and expensive to enable the clerk with an average salary to live beyond walking distance from his work. The population here is sufficient to support a tramway system. . . . At present the ordinary convey­ ance is the two-wheeled jinrikisha, of which there are about 7,000 now in use in this city, drawn by coolies. The fare is 15 cents Mexican per hour. The passenger is carried directly to his destination and landed at the curb or doorstep, instead of in the middle of a possibly muddy street.”39 The tram tender aimed to undercut the rickshaws by capping first-class fares at ten cents and second-class at five. Yet, for most Chinese, these modern forms of transport were only ever seen in pictorial form, in images like the new-style One Hundred Beauties. And the spread of pictures around the country was facilitated by yet another technological import—modern lithography. Color lithography and photolithography would enter China via Japanese experts in 1905, and by the foundation of the Republic in 1912 it was commonplace for newspapers to include photographs of scenery, people, and objects in their daily releases. Many of the modern objects and new behaviors that underpinned the creation of modern citizens with a democratic consciousness were spread around China in advertisements or images in magazines and papers. Commercial artists gained fame and profit from the graphic revolution spurred by the arrival of color lithography and the diverse machinery of print capitalism, which took publishing in China from craft to a form of commercial “industry carried on by machinery.”40 From the mid-1890s China’s machine makers, based in Shanghai, “sinicized” the printing presses and other machines, spreading them around the nation as they did so.41 The materials streaming off these presses spread new dreams and new models for a future China, as print technology enabled ideas and products to be disseminated and marketed at previously unimaginable speed. The Republic of China in effect emerged from the ink of the printing press, and the citizens of the Republic learned about their new roles and status through the text and images reproduced therein. Illustrated texts and prints have a long history in China, but they were comparatively expensive to produce and stayed largely among the elites until the late Qing.42 The introduction to China of moveable-type print and lithography, over the course of the 1800s, meant illustrated texts could move rapidly into mass reproduction and commercial sale. In 1877 Ernest Major, founder of the newspaper Shen Bao, opened the Touchstone Studio (Dianshizhai) and brought lithography to new commercial heights in Shanghai.43

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In the process of creating huge profits, the studio also trained a significant cohort of artists in new drawing and printing techniques.44 As the technology of the printing press improved, so too did the range and variety of books, magazines, and pictorials.45 This mass-oriented commercial technology expanded the market for leisure reading, fueling a new demand for illustrations of leisure activities.46 The new-style One Hundred Beauties, depicted at sports or shopping, reflected popular dreams of entertainment rather than literati refinement. With this new lithographic technology, images like the sketches of the One Hundred Beauties were simple to reproduce in any size as independent pieces or embedded within text on large pages. And the evolution of their form marked the emergence of new ideas about civic consciousness among reading individuals that differed from earlier elite, literati consumers of images of beauties. Women citizens became authors, commentators, and journalists for the new newspapers and magazines that emerged from these printing presses.47 One of Shen Bochen’s beauties is depicted selecting character blocks from large racks of printing fonts; her employment as a typesetter embodies modernity.48 Old-style beauties are adept with the calligraphy brush for the production of one-off pieces, but the new female citizen produces her text ready for broader communication via mass printing and mass readership. Awareness of the technology of the typewriter in China presented another opportunity for the development of a Republican Chinese citizen’s consciousness of the nation. Typewriters, until the mid to late 1930s, were associated primarily with foreign languages and foreign writing; these machines resisted sinicization more than many other print technologies. China’s character-based, rather than alphabetic, language presented enormous challenges for global typewriter companies like Remington and Olivetti, who could find no way to incorporate their existing technology into the Chinese language world, despite rapid growth in other markets from the late 1880s.49 It was not until 1915 that Japanese inventors created a character-based machine for their own market, and this only transferred to China in the 1930s.50 Chinese inventors explored “common use” character typewriters in the same years—making it unlikely that our beauties had access to a Chinese typewriter and suggesting that readers had been introduced only to the foreign alphabetic ones.51 As a text technology, typewriters were difficult to indigenize, and their appearance in the visual presentation of modernity (fig. I.12) represents not only the curiosity of a Chinese woman operating a new machine but also her mastery of a foreign script. China’s

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I.12. A beauty at a typewriter. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 37.

cultural distance from this foreign techno-linguistic realm is established in the image, while a Chinese woman has the capacity to control it: she can communicate beyond China’s borders. The content of her text and the language in which she is tapping away are a mystery that readers must ponder. She sits at a foreign-style desk with a bank of drawers on the side, facing a glass window, with a day calendar hung on the wall to remind readers of the passage of modern time. Shen’s image of a text-producing woman contrasts starkly with Wu ­Youru’s 1895 vision of the renowned calligrapher from the Eastern Jin, Lady Wei (272–349; fig. I.13). Lady Wei established the core rules for a specific cal­ ligraphic style that became famous through her student, the so-called Sage of Calligraphy, Wang Xizhi (303–361). For centuries Lady Wei has encapsulated reverence for the artistic expression of the written word and civility. Wu draws her surrounded by the symbols of scholarship. Brushes, paper,

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I.13. Lady Wei at her desk. Wu Youru, 1895. GJBMT, 69.

inkstones, and books rest in preparation on her desk, which sits between a decorative screen and ornate shelving holding potted plants. Alongside, her servant prepares the ink-mixing water as he grinds the block on stone.52 Shen’s new typewriting beauty is accompanied by markers of modern time, international reach, and unknown content in her foreign words. Wu’s Lady Wei symbolizes a known set of timeless but old values, attributes, and texts, a consolidation of scholarship and artistic acumen recognizable instantly to his readers in the 1890s. Wu’s readers are encouraged to model from the past rather than ponder the mysteries of the unknown present and future, as would Shen’s early Republican readers—but both operate within a reading space redolent with respect for the written word and textual expression. The new-style One Hundred Beauties genre is replete with images of women moving adroitly between new and old print and script technologies. Shen’s beautiful bank clerk holds a fountain pen and works on an angled desk with an electric light and a fan whirring above her head (fig. I.14).

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I.14. A bank accountant. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 117.

Electricity had arrived in Shanghai in the early 1880s, and the large seaboard cities had illumination and power for appliances like fans in major buildings by the start of the Republic. Electrification in private households and farther out in the country would expand apace through the 1920s and 1930s.53 But not all ink-wielding modern beauties needed electrification to feature in Shen’s collections. Another of his beauties displays her classical skills, poised with a calligraphy brush ready to paint a scroll without any of these modern accoutrements (fig. I.15). However, the text accompanying the image comments that the artist is drawing a picture of an artist drawing a picture—a celebration of the modern artist citizen as the creator of her new cultural identity.54

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I.15. An artist drawing an artist. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 143.

The modern beauty made active use of modern technology and in the process often produced these items as a form of Chinese modernity. She demonstrated her acumen with global technologies and languages as she moved around urban spaces in trams that took her to newly created public spaces in which women attended school or took employment. The modern beauty was never averse to being at ease with friends in public; modern technology helped produce new moral meanings for public and private spaces. MODERN SPACE AND MODERN MOR A LIT Y

Women, rather than men, were the embodiment of China’s spatial modernity. China’s commercial artists presented their readers with myriad images of beautiful women moving about in public and in the process increasingly

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made the once-alluring image of a woman in public merely mundane. Beauties are frequently seen in school or in modern public parks walking at leisure. They travel across town for tea parties and lectures and for shopping and visiting friends and relatives. In part, the dominance of women in the imagined modern space emerges from the shock of the increasing acceptance of women’s public visibility in real life. Although women from good families were increasingly leaving their courtyards, it was still comparatively novel: the appearance of respectable women in the public sphere attracted attention. It also generated anxiety. Traditional moral codes held that a good woman should be rarely, if at all, seen in public. Modernity, by contrast, demanded that all citizens join the public sphere in order to participate in the civic life of the Republic. New, mechanized forms of public transport, such as trams, were literally vehicles for women’s entrance into the public realm. These technologies, by their very novelty, were free of traditional moral overlays. Instead, they were fast and fashionable, creating the possibility of a real world in which women did leave the confines of the family home for their own purposes. Modern schooling also legitimized the appearance of women from good families in previously prohibited public spaces. Ding captures this spectacle in his vision of a young woman walking into the Chongde Girls’ School, a book tucked under her arm (fig. I.16). As schooling outside the home expanded for women and girls from the first decade of the century, so too did the presence of female students on the streets.55 When women first ventured out of their homes in 1907 to go to the new public schools, authorities were concerned about the potential unrest their presence would cause as they moved through the streets. In 1910 the government made explicit rulings on school uniforms to ensure that women did not wear Western or Japanese clothes “so as to avoid ridicule,” nor clothing made of silk, nor cosmetics, lest they conjure up images of courtesans and diminish the respectability of education.56 Courtesans were known for their fashionable dress in the late Qing, so it was deemed important for maintaining public morality that women students not be confused with the demimonde.57 The debates about the lack of a clear “uniformity of appearance” among women continued to cause anxious comment in media and government despite the 1910 regulations.58 The slippage between students and prostitutes was amplified when prostitutes dressed as students to advance their trade, and students were sometimes mistaken for prostitutes when walking unescorted in public space.59

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I.16. A student entering Chongde Girls’ School. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 3:21.

Women’s presence in public schools was initially justified in terms of the benefit it would bring to the new nation—that is, the reputational risk of having good women appear in public alongside courtesans was vital for national progress. Women embraced these new opportunities for public recognition, building a new consciousness of their collective political power, with neologisms like nüjie (women’s world) emerging in response.60 At the turn of the century schooling for women was argued through the logic that

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educated women were likely to produce better sons who would make stronger, more productive citizens. However, women were clearly taking the opportunity to appear more actively in public in service of the nation by the eve of the 1911 Revolution, when women students joined the rallies, protests, and strikes against the Qing. The Beiyang Women’s Normal School rallied nearly two hundred women students in February 1912 to parade, bearing the five-striped national flag and singing patriotic songs.61 Such risqué behavior of female students in their various political and educational ventures meant they became objects of intense public curiosity—at once dangerous and desirable. But the disquiet about female students was “equally focused on women in general as increasing numbers became visible in public workplaces and places of leisure (e.g., factories, theatres and teahouses).”62 The “new” public sphere was a mixed-sex public, political sphere. Space was suddenly being democratized and liberalized. The pictorial world of publishing was also becoming a mixed-class public sphere. Famous courtesans had featured in pictorial magazines from the late nineteenth century, when publishers, armed with the latest print technology, found they were able to meet a new consumer demand for books of photographs of such previously “inaccessible women.” But these books used new technology to market women who were already prostituted. The more far-reaching social shift would come later, when images of “good” Republican ladies began to appear in women’s magazines. The inclusion of photographs of women from prominent families in the new magazines and newspapers created a new, modern sense of respectability that completely altered class boundaries around the public visibility of the female form.63 The Republican-era One Hundred Beauties illustrations include a wide range of women—servants, mistresses, courtesans, mothers, professionals, farmers, and schoolgirls. In the new public sphere, all sorts of women were presented as equally beautiful. The appearance of respectable women in the visual media of the new Republic was integral to the emergence of a new republican spirit of egalitarianism. Courtesans were elevated by the advent of images of respectable women, and previously cloistered women gained access to the public sphere, which had earlier been the preserve of their fathers and brothers. Stories of women from respectable families burning their poetry and destroying their artwork lest they be circulated outside of the family were legion in the late Qing. The circulation of images of their faces and form in the new technology of the photograph rent asunder these old moralities. Modern Chinese

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women did not lose their moral standing by appearing in public as had their sisters of only a decade earlier. New forms of publishing technology and the commercial circulation of print materials created a new public sphere that included women. The commercial artists of the new-style One Hundred Beauties were part of this liberating trend in their depiction of women engaged in all manner of activities—from schooling to public speaking, to shopping and stargazing. HISTORICA L ONE HUNDRED BE AUTIES : MAPPING CHANGING A ESTHETICS

The One Hundred Beauties template is particularly useful for tracking changes in not only aesthetic tastes but also desired social norms. The genre’s deep roots in Chinese culture ensure that the addition of modern technology and Western styles into the images and accompanying texts would amplify the possibility of creating a modern Chinese world. Readers of Republican beauties’ pictures would experience the process of viewing the beauties as a distinctly Chinese act—and in this awareness likely enjoyed the disjunction from modern or foreign elements. The genre has a long tradition of depicting admired women, stretching back to the late Ming dynasty, a time when literati were enthusiastic promoters of women’s talents.64 Their standard format had a calligraphic poem outlining the key features of their lives sitting alongside the image, either on a separate page or within the frame itself. Three subgenres circulated among literati: the One Hundred Beauties celebrated women’s beautiful appearance (se); the Lienü, women’s virtue (de); and the Xianyuan, women’s talent (cai).65 The women were situated in set scenes that connoted their specific attributes while evoking cultural refinement and desirability.66 Real and fictional women intermingled in tales that were variously dramatic, titillating, or idealized portraits of idealized qualities.67 The qualities that made the women exemplary consolidated a hierarchical and patrilineal social order suited to a patriarchal empire in which family stability mirrored imperial stability.68 There is considerable similarity in the lists of women selected for various editions of One Hundred Beauties in the pre-twentieth-century collections. Stock figures of virtue appear repeatedly in the genre to remind readers that virtue and beauty often exist in concert. Dedicated wives, concubines, and chaste widows, noble empresses, princesses, and consorts are included alongside filial self-sacrificing daughters and daughters-in-law. Talented

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women also appear, such as poets and calligraphers, musicians and artists. These virtuous figures sit in volumes that also include noted courtesans and other women of the demimonde. By way of counterpoint, women of notoriety also feature, such as beauties who destroy kingdoms and femmes fatales who prompt their lovers’ decline. The books in the pre-twentiethcentury One Hundred Beauties genre were a mixture of orthodox Confucian literati morality and romanticized and eroticized diversion.69 The genre thrived with the arrival of new printing technologies and adjusted to meet the changing tastes of consumers. Commercial artists for hire were at the forefront of responding to these changes, but some artists were caught unprepared for the rapidity of the shifts. Wei Xiyuan’s 1908 Illustrated Biographies of Exceptional Women, Past and Present (Xiuxiang gujin xiannü zhuan) did not achieve its anticipated commercial success despite building on Yan Xiyuan’s famous 1787 One Hundred Beauties in New Poems and Pictures (Baimei xin yongtu zhuan), with its centuries of sustained readership.70 Wei had not kept current with book buyers’ changing tastes. New schools for women, with new curricula and new expectations of education, sought textbooks imbued with an international perspective rather than the Confucian classics. Biographies increasingly included tales of European and American women leaders and revolutionaries, such as Jeanne d’Arc.71 The speed at which attitudes changed regarding China’s position relative to the West is reflected in the fact that in the 1880s Chinese scholars traveling in Europe and America wrote of the superiority of Chinese women. Yet by 1898, Chinese women came to symbolize all that was backward about China. By the early twentieth century, biographies of foreign women were presented as models for Chinese women.72 Books that had been commercial successes in the last years of the nineteenth century lost market appeal in the twentieth because they lacked the global orientation and novelty that readers sought. A new generation of commercial artists stepped in to meet the new readership and the changing tastes of the old readers. Pictorials that invoked traditional themes, such as female beauty and virtue, were given a new life and international flare. The modern world came into dynamic conversation with classical texts and classical morality.73 Modern-style One Hundred Beauties appeared from the first decade of the twentieth century onward, and some played on the contrast with the predecessor’s style in compilations that included “old- and new-style” beauties. But new forms soon dominated as artists’ interest in traditional aesthetics waned in the late Qing and early

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Republic. Discussions of traditional techniques for drawing beauties declined in art manuals and were replaced with modern techniques, models, and formats for the idealization of beauty.74 Not all artists were pleased about this shift away from the link between female propriety and female beauty in depictions of women. Some, like Ye Jiuru (b. ca. 1871) made appeals to fellow artists to compare new forms with traditional styles by calling on them distinguish “who is elegant and who is vulgar” among the illustrated beauties.75 These “new and old” bodies, as depicted in art manuals, reflected the artists’ and art buyers’ engagement with new notions of time, morality, and desirability. THE COLLECTIONS OF HUNDREDS OF BE AUTIES — OLD AND NEW

The six collections of One Hundred Beauties examined here include nearly nine hundred different images. The illustrations themselves were created between the 1870s and 1923—but all were published or republished between 1913 and 1923, in the first few years of the Republic. The twentieth-century images of new-style beauties often appeared in newspapers and magazines prior to being gathered together in single volumes for book sale, as the artists frequently worked freelance for multiple publishers simultaneously.76 It is not always clear where a particular image first appeared, because copying or imitating of popular themes was common.77 Readers were encouraged to collect the images as they appeared daily or weekly in different magazines as a series—notionally “One Hundred.” Readers could cut out the pictures from the original publication to paste them in personalized scrapbooks or opt for the more expensive option of buying the complete set once it was available. The influence of artist techniques and production layout from Europe, America, and Japan increases through the late Qing and early Republic to produce a particularly dynamic flavor in this inherently Chinese genre.78 The Shanghai Style, which dominated commercial art from the late Qing, was marked by the speed of the artists’ production and the briskness of their style.79 They presented detailed interiors with expert use of perspective on objets d’art, furniture, and plants. They demonstrated their flair by drawing images that incorporated the bifocal view of mirrors, the twin insides and outsides of glass windows, and scenes that gave readers views through diaphanous cloth or semitransparent screens. Readers were not only invited to admire new forms of beauty, but they also became directly involved in

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pondering the multiplicity of possible perspectives on life through these artistic devices. They had to look through, beyond, around, and on both sides of the materials decorating the beauty’s world. The famous commercial artist Wu Youru (Wu Jiaoyou, ca. 1850–1893) from Touchstone Studio was a prolific artist in the new commercial publishing space. Wu’s illustrations of beauties are the first “modernization” of this ancient genre, but despite their new drawing and printing techniques, they followed the Confucian protocols established in the Ming in the exemplary women depicted. His One Hundred Beauties Past and Present (Gujin baimeitu; GJBMT) first appeared posthumously as a set around 1895 under the titles On Beauties of the Boudoirs (Shuo guiyan) and Paintings of Beautiful Women from Shanghai (Huzhuang shinü). They were then republished as part of a compendium of images titled Treasury of Wu Youru’s Art (Wu Youru huabao) and included volumes on one hundred birds, one hundred animals, and one hundred men, as well as customs, trades, and scenes. The Treasury appears to have been first published in 1908 by Wenruilou and again in 1909 and 1916 by Biyuanhui Publishing—both in Shanghai. Another section of Wu’s treasuries, One Hundred Amoureuse of Shanghai (Haishang baiyantu), depicted late-Qing urbanites and demimonde figures. Published in 1893, it became instantly popular for its fresh style and modern content. This collection is not a “beauties” (baimei) book, and as such provides instructive comparisons of changing ideas of respectability, maternalism, and housewifery. The One Hundred Beauties, in contrast to the Amoureuse, presents its exemplars of everyday modern women rather than the demimonde. But the ideas of the “modern” would change quickly in fin de siècle China, and by the close of the first decade of the twentieth century Wu’s daring, modern Shanghai urban women were republished to mark “the past”—they marked the end of the past and allowed a new set of ideas of a newer new Shanghai to emerge. Wu Youru was one of the late Qing’s most prominent and prolific illustrators. He was an early adopter of the new style of lithographic printing methods and worked primarily in Touchstone Studio in Shanghai. His drawings represent the new style of late Qing lithographic art and the ­introduction of European commercial reading practices, and he was conscious of this historic role. Wu wrote that the illustrated magazine is intended to “foster appreciation of [illustrate] the strange and mark the new [lingyi biaoxin] so as to broaden [readers’] knowledge and help in warning and exhorting.”80 After leaving Touchstone, Wu opened his own studio, Fleeting Shadow Studio (Feiying Ge), in November 1890. Fleeting Shadow

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published a pictorial newspaper titled Fleeting Shadow Studio Pictorial (Feiying ge huabao), which appeared every ten days, and numerous reprinted collections of Wu’s work.81 After his death, his colleague and fellow Touchstone illustrator, Zhou Muqiao (1868–1922), continued Fleeting Shadow and in 1908 republished Wu’s Amoureuse and in 1916 his One Hundred Beauties Past and Present.82 The second collection of 150 illustrations, Odes and Pictures of One Hundred Beauties Past and Present (Gujin baimei tuyong; QD-GJBMTY), was published in 1917 by Zhonghua Tushuguan. The four-volume set includes Qing illustrations by Suzhou-born Qiu Shouping (Qiu Shouyan, b. ca. 1875)83 and their Republican counterpoints by Ding Song (1891–1969).84 Qiu’s illustrations from 1887 occupy two volumes, and Ding’s pictures from 1914 another two. Qiu’s illustrations were published by Shanghai Shuju as Newly Expanded Illustrated One Hundred Beauties (Xinzeng baimei tushuo), the title suggesting there was also an earlier version.85 Qiu was famous for his skill in depicting slender beauties in elaborate, flowing clothing; his images owed a great debt to Yan Xiyuan’s because of the similarity in content and text.86 The lineage continued, with Qiu’s 1887 volume serving as inspiration for Wu Youru’s aforementioned beauties.87 The two Ding volumes carry a subtitle, “Modern Dress Volumes” (Shizhuang), self-consciously asserting their modern aspirations. Ding’s friend, the popular author Chen Xu (1879–?), writing under the penname Diexian, composed the poems for the drawings, while celebrity satirical essayist and calligrapher Wang Dungen (Wang Hui, 1888–1951) wrote the preface. Trained in European art techniques at the Jesuits’ Tushuwan Painting Studio,88 Ding would go on to teach at a key institute for the promotion of new forms of visual imagery, Shanghai Art Academy (Shanghai Meishu Zhuanmen Xuexiao). The school specialized in teaching “Western painting techniques, Western photography, and copperplate art” and met the burgeoning demand for commercial artists, as well as the need for teachers of art spurred by the new school curriculums.89 He also worked for the English American Tobacco Company designing calendar posters. Ding’s works featured in myriad advertisements and in magazines like Saturday (Libai liu) and Shanghai Cartoons (Shanghai manhua). His reputation as an outstanding illustrator of modern beauties furthered his broadly recognized fame and commercial success.90 Ding Song also provides us with the third and fourth collections under discussion: his 1916 Illustrations and Odes on One Hundred Fashionable

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Beauties of Shanghai (Shanghai shizhuang baimei tuyong; SSZBMTY)91 and his 1918 Supplement to Ding Song’s One Hundred Beauties Illustrated (Ding Song baimeitu waiji). The Supplement, originally published by Communications Library (Jiaotong Tushuguan), was reissued in an elegant format in 2004 under the title One Hundred Beauties of the Republic Style (Minguo fengqing baimeitu; MGFQBMT) with the back cover noting that the first volume was no longer in circulation.92 It is possible that the 1916 Illustrations and Odes is this first volume to the Supplement. The illustrations are unique to each, and the dates assigned to the images suggest this as a possibility. Wang Dungen provided the calligraphy for both volumes and wrote the preface for Illustrations and Odes. Chen Xu’s son, working under the penname Xiao Die, contributed calligraphy for the Supplement. The networks of artists were tight, and collaboration frequent. The fifth set of images belongs to Shen Bochen (1889–1919 or 1920?), whose fame is unparalleled among the commercial artists of the early twentieth century.93 His Brand New One Hundred Beauties (Xinxin baimeitu; XXBMT) was the earliest of the new-style beauties to be published, appearing with Shanghai’s Guoxue Shushi in 1913. The collection was distributed by the progressive, reformist newspaper Great Republic Daily (Da gonghe ribao), showing Shen’s artistic, political, and commercial alignment with the Republican push. The collection was supplemented by two new editions in 1915 and 1917, attesting to the popularity and profitability of the genre and Shen’s work. The influential publisher, editor, and commentator Zhang Danfu (1868–1937) provided the poetic inscriptions for Shen’s volume and the preface for Ding Song’s 1918 Supplement. These collections drew together Shen’s female beauties serialized in newspapers and magazines in earlier months and years. He worked for a wide range of outlets, including the major leisure newspaper Crystal (Jingbao); the largest news daily, Shen bao; groundbreaking mass pictorials like Great Republic Pictorial (Dagonghe hua­ bao); and the leading commercially successful women’s periodical Women’s Eastern Times (Funü shibao).94 In the year before his death, Shen Bochen produced four editions of one of China’s earliest comic magazines, the bilingual English/Chinese Shanghai Puck (Bochen huaji huabao).95 Like Ding, Shen also taught at Shanghai Art Academy, and his publication of beauties earned him a reputation as an artist of “soft and delicate pen strokes and fashionable themes.”96 The sixth collection is Dan Duyu’s four-volume Duyu’s One Hundred Beauties in the Latest Fashion with two volumes in the first (zheng) set from

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1922 and another two in the supplement (xu), released in 1923 by Shanghai’s New Citizen Library (Xinmin Tushuguan). The popularity of these sets is clear, given that only a year later New Citizen Library republished the four volumes as a set titled Complete Collection of Duyu’s One Hundred Beauties (Duyu baimeitu zhengxu ji; DYBMT) in 1924. The text accompanying the images was provided by Xu Shiyan. Dan (1897–1972) was from a family of modest means in Jiangxi and entered the commercial art world after studying at the Shanghai Art Academy. He worked as a commercial artist before starting a film company, the Shanghai Yingxi Company, in 1920. Dan gained fame as a film director in Shanghai and later Hong Kong through the 1920s and 1930s. His 1921 film Sea Oath (Haishi) was one of China’s first feature-length films and starred his wife, Yin Mingzhu (Pearl Ing, 1904–1989).97 Pearl was nicknamed “Miss FF” or “Miss Foreign Fashion” for her famous wardrobe.98 His commercial art publishing continued alongside his film career. The latest of the collections discussed, Dan’s includes nudes and women in semiclad states in each of his four volumes. His beauties are more explicitly coquettish and sexualized than those of his predecessors, Shen and Ding, manifesting the emergence of publicly displayed sexuality as a modern aesthetic.99 However, in 1922 the depiction of nudes still needed explaining. The cofounder of the Mingxing Film Company, Zhou Jianyun (1883–1967), declared in the preface to Dan’s first volume that Duyu was displaying his technical skills and artistry in natural and lifelike styles rather than coarsely painting pictures that would incite lewdness: “We recognize women are more beautiful than men, so painting beauties is more difficult than painting men”; “The most difficult things to depict are bones, muscle, skin with all the tones of shading, dips and hollows and complicated changing hues.”100 Zhou positions Dan’s illustrations in the genealogy of Shen Bochen and Ding Song and continues, “But the world evolves every day and human affairs are constantly innovating, so now Duyu has concentrated his efforts and has also produced a collection of One Hundred Beauties.”101 In the final preface to Dan Duyu’s book, Shen Shuying wrote that she was given the book to read by her brother and declared that Dan had great ability to both recognize and communicate “the beauty of the world.”102 Within a few years, Shanghai was consumed with debate about the use of nude female models in art schools after the Pictorial Shanghai (Shanghai huabao) printed a photograph of a nude posing for students at the Shanghai Art Academy. The scandal led to a legal battle between the director of the Art Academy, Liu Haisu, and a social morals campaigner, Jiang Huaisu. By the middle of 1926

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the academy was forced to cease using nude female models.103 Dan Duyu’s collection, which includes dozens of nude beauties, was clearly pushing the boundaries of public art. All of these collections, circulated during the early Republic, were commercially oriented publications that modernized a traditional genre. They formed an important and explicit conversation between the old and the new, the Chinese and the global, regarding the aesthetics of the human form that was taking place in the early Republic among Shanghai’s artists and commercial publishers. A new linear consciousness of time and history was emerging in conjunction with the new appreciation of the modern. The print media and reformist agendas established the past (gu) and present (jin) as signifying dramatically contrasting values and convincingly privileged the present.104 While these volumes comprise hundreds of pictures of individuals and scenes that their creators deemed to be aesthetically appealing, their commercial and artistic choices reveal much about the way ­people’s consciousness had changed in China and how they perceived their past, present, and future. A comparison of Qing dynasty illustrations with their Republican era counterparts reveals a number of significant themes that alert us to deep shifts in perceptions of the particular attributes deemed desirable and beautiful. The nature of the particular qualities to be admired and desired reveals a deep change in attitudes and not just a preferred style of clothing and technological accessories. China’s Republican citizens were adopting and adapting new ideas of democratic consciousness, new ideals of personhood, new values, and new ways of engaging with the world and society. SK ETCHING THE NEW CITIZEN WITH NEW CONSCIOUSNESS

Each of the modern phenomena featured in these illustrations created the possibility for a transition to a citizen’s democratic consciousness among the reading public. In the case of particular body parts, for example, contrast between the “old and new” depictions of the hands of the beauties marks a shift in the Republican era toward valuing productive labor and the individual’s capacity to contribute to society as a self-sufficient individual. The new-style beauties’ illustrations revealed the female hand actively building the modern, national community and simultaneously exposed the unbound female foot. Movement, rather than stasis, became a marker of the desirable person. Beautiful women propel themselves through space by their

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own strength and willpower and manifest a democratic consciousness through their independence, competence, and mastery of modern machinery. Their earlier imperial sisters with veiled hands and limbs had servants as decorative markers of high status. They were dependent upon others for movement of their bodies and personal effects and relied upon a social hierarchy to manage daily life. The importance of the modern beauty’s claim to public space is revealed as she strides confidently through all manner of geographic environments. Resilience to weather and enthusiasm for public space are defining features of the modern beauty’s attributes compared to her traditional sister. Where the latter remained sheltered from the elements and unaware of geography, modern beauties walk about in inclement weather bedecked with umbrellas, parasols, scarves, and muffs, experiencing the geographic space of the Repub­lican nation-state. They contemplate the breadth of the Republic’s territory with binoculars and telescopes, looking far beyond the boudoirs and verandahs that contained their old-style sisters. With the rise of the nuclear family, the beauty becomes a competent and independent wife and mother with no need for servants or the extended family. The modern citizen mother is a teacher of democratic self-sufficiency to her children, a hygienic and caring wife, and an independent household manager. The old-style beauties were rarely in a familial or maternal frame, and if they were, their household activities were always as part of a group. The modern family has no concubines, and the modern wife and mother stands as an individual prepared to build the modern nation. The illustrations show how modern beauties were freed from the constraints of Confucian codes of virtue that formed the core of the genre for their “ancient” sisters. Their old-style counterparts were exemplars of highly gendered Confucian values such as filial piety, chastity, and loyalty—which for a woman meant subservience not only to her own parents but also to her husband’s parents, as well as to her husband or her lord and master. All the old-style beauties are well-known figures with rich backstories and multiple, almost identical, renditions of their lives and fates. In contrast, the modern beauties represent the anonymous everywoman. In this modernization of the genre, the ordinary woman can be an exemplar of beauty, and her virtue rests in her display of a citizen’s publicly oriented consciousness, independence, self-sufficiency, and mastery of modern technology. The modern artists, with their new mass-printing technologies and commercial motivations, could reach a wider reading public than their Ming

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and Qing dynasty counterparts. The images welcome a wider range of viewers with more diverse interests. Old-style beauties were framed as being “owned” by either an in-frame or out-of-frame man whose connection with the beauty is steeped in well-known narratives—as her father, lover, husband, lord, or emperor. Readers of the old images knew that the beauty was owned by a more powerful man. In contrast, readers of the modern images can project themselves into the frame as a common citizen with proprietorial rights equal to any other reader. Moreover, modern beauties appeal to a female viewing audience—in many instances depicted as women viewing other women or themselves in mirrors and artwork. The potential for samesex desire is presented in all its modern forms. The independence of the beautiful citizen makes her available to ordinary men and women audiences, in a radical shift from the old-style beauties, who were trapped by the weight of historical narrative and the dominance of the literati’s prior claim. The appearance of new body parts, their placement in new contexts, and their deployment for new ends in this popular and widely circulated genre reflected Republican Chinese urbanites’ imagining of a new social order—a new citizen’s consciousness. These commercial artworks reveal a major shift in Republican readers’ desires. Instead of gazing into the past, yearning for the perfection of the ancients and their beautiful women, Republican readers are peeking into the future, into a world where beautiful women drive cars, fly planes, and travel around the country carrying their own luggage. The democratic consciousness of a publicly oriented, independent, productive, and adventuresome citizen is manifest in the illustrations of the newstyle One Hundred Beauties, revealing the advent of the modern Chinese citizen as the illustrations bade farewell to the Confucian-inspired imperial subject of the recent past. New dreams were possible for every person in this new Republic should they embrace the challenges of citizenhood.

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L IB E R AT ING T H E F E M A L E H A N D

The liber ation and modernization of the female foot in the late Qing and early Republic is a widely recognized phenomenon. But few, if any, have explored the liberation of the female hand and its “modern” presentation for public view. One of the most striking contrasts between traditional Qing pictures and those drawn in the Republican period is the routine appearance of firm, lifelike female hands in the latter. In the Qing pictures, a beauty’s hands are commonly modestly draped in yards of cloth. The presentation of working hands for readers to view is a particularly modern phenomenon. The revelation of the female hand, and the contexts in which it is depicted, reflect the new civic spirit emerging in the Republic through the celebration of productive labor and the self-sufficient individual responsible for building a successful society.1 In presenting women with visible hands, the act of “doing” is amplified: beautiful people are people who actively change their homes and societies through physical action. They are not cloistered from the mundane chores that sustain their lifestyles nor are they dependent upon servants. The desirable, exemplary person is capable of doing things for herself. The beauties presented for readers to admire are drawn from a wider range of the Republic’s citizenry: farmers, servants, workers, teachers, soldiers, and shoppers. They are all actively participating in the new Republic, displaying their hands as they manipulate the myriad tools of their trades: buckets, hoes, binoculars, bells, guns, cameras, or pens. The visibility of the lifelike hand in Republican images symbolizes a shift in consciousness toward a democratic notion of citizenship where individuals are active in doing. Social change is made manifest through a display of manual dexterity. By contrast, the old drawings most commonly drape the beauty’s hand in lengthy sleeves. “Delicate hands” (xian shou) were key markers of feminine 43

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beauty in the Qing, and the covering of these fragile digits was integral to the beauty’s allure. Even where she is holding an object, her hands are often covered in cloth, obscured from view. In the instances where Qing drawings reveal the beauty’s hands, they are small and featherlike and their appearance must be “explained”—usually as displaying the beauty’s virtue and cultivation. Visible Qing hands are contained within the moral and social worlds of literati elites, who valued a limited set of cultivated arts or ritual acts. The virtue of cultivated talent may include a featherlike hand painting, writing, or strumming, while the display of ethical value may show a hand worshipping or transferring a gift. Wu Youru’s modernized old-style beauties reveal the hands more often than Qiu’s more orthodox ones, but primarily the classic beauty’s hands, arms, and wrists are hidden unless vital to draw attention to a specific aspect of her virtue or cultivation. Readers of the Republican images would have immediately appreciated that the appearance of the beauty’s lifelike hand holding an object for productive labor rather than moral or artistic cultivation was a performance of modernity. The capacity to do something for oneself—handle a telescope or a tool, carry a bag, or push a cart—becomes a citizen’s virtue. The value attributed to the performance of moral or cultivated talent that typifies the Qing beauties shifts to an appreciation of action, production, and selfsufficiency. In the Republican images, the objects and accessories may or may not be new technologies; if they are, the ideological effect of connoting modernity through their display is magnified. But the depiction of the fully formed hand taking action is already a modern form of beauty. The productive, active hand is a modern phenomenon worthy of readers’ appreciation. The new citizen of modern China took independent action as “delicate hands” gave way to “productive hands.” VA LUING L A BOR : THE BE AUT Y WHO CONTRIBUTES TO SOCIET Y

Unlike Qing beauties, where servants were frequent accessories highlighting a life of luxury, the Republican beauty was not a parasite on another’s labor. Ding, Shen, and Du extended their type of beauty to include laboring people: rural workers and domestic servants of no particular account. The democratization of the fantasy space of the One Hundred Beauties genre is evident in this shift. Gone are the beauties whose aesthetic status required their isolation from the world of chores and menial tasks. In the Republican pictures, female servants and working people become a subject of beauty

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1.1. A farmer hoeing. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 3:2.

and an object of admiration in and of themselves. Ordinary women warrant depiction, collection, and command of a reader’s gaze. People viewing these images were confronted with the potential of the “serving classes” from ordinary households to represent the beauty of individuality and autonomy. They are engrossed in their work and emerge from the pages as confident, self-directed, capable women. They stand in direct contrast to the passive, helpless, and wistful beauties of the past.2 Physical work and productive labor, both inside and outside the house, become a desirable display in the Republican era, and the depiction of a lifelike hand is central to this new view of a person’s connection to her society. Ding Song sketches a woman hoeing soil prior to planting (fig. 1.1), another sweeping the floor, and yet another drawing water from a well.3 Dan Duyu shows a young woman repotting a plant with her tools arrayed and presents another standing on tiptoe, pulling water from the well with her life­like hands firmly gripping the rope (fig. 1.2). Not only were servants or peasants performing menial labor common features of the imagined beautiful world of the Republic, but new types of work appeared within the One Hundred Beauties’ frames. New professions

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1.2. A beauty drawing water from a well. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 2:17.

for women provided new scope for the aestheticized display of the useful and productive hand. Women are depicted working as nurses in hospital settings (fig. 1.3), holding pens while calculating rows of figures in their work in banks (see fig. I.14), or picking out lead characters from racks of typeface in a printing firm.4 Dan Duyu’s beauty develops her own photographs (see fig. 6.12), embracing employment opportunities presented by the new technology of photography. The beauty in modern times is not merely the subject of photographs but also can be their creator.5 The modern nurse holds her patient’s breakfast tray, with high-heeled leather shoes beneath her white medical gown—the hygienic modernity of the clinical hospital setting confirming the freshness of the opportunities awaiting women citizens with appropriate training and skill.6 In contrast, the Qing images often cover the beauties’ hands even when manual work is central to the content of her biography. The depiction of Empress Pan (d. 252) of the Three Kingdoms’ state of Wu provides a powerful example of the different ideologies valued by artists and audiences across the two periods. The handicraft of weaving is central to her story, yet neither Qiu’s nor Wu’s images show Empress Pan at work. In both, her hands are

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1.3. A professional nurse. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 109.

covered modestly in luxurious cloth. Although from a good family, on the execution of her father she suffered a slump in status and was sent to work weaving cloth in a workshop that produced fabric for the palace household. Word of her remarkable beauty and skill spread, and Emperor Wu (Sun Quan, 182–252) was captivated at first sight and took her as his concubine.7 She moved to the palace and eventually rose to become empress. Soon after Wu’s death, she was killed, and there is a strong suggestion that the murder was intended to prevent her becoming the empress dowager. Rather than taking the opportunity to depict Pan’s hands at the loom, both Qing artists keep the hands and feet of this empress-to-be modestly covered. Qiu and Wu instead dedicate space to the depiction of the chariot in which she was transported to and from the weaving workshop. Her mobility in social class from noble daughter to loom worker and then back up the social hierarchy to imperial concubine and empress is the key theme

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1.4. Empress Pan at the weavers’ cottage. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:27.

of both images. Her skill as a producer of cloth is sidelined while her social mobility is highlighted—moving from luxury to labor and back again— through the detailed drawing of the wheeled chariot. Social status and connections to the palace are the main story, and her relegation to productive labor reflects her tragic decline. This dramatic story is one of status lost and

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1.5. Empress Pan looking at her chariot. Wu Youru 1895. GJBMT, shang:8b.

recovered; the weaving work marked decline and a role she is to be rescued from, rather than celebrated for performing. This transition in class status and her elevation from manual work are amplified by the presence of servants who function as accessories. In Qiu’s image a servant escorts her from the chariot into the room where the loom awaits. Another woman, also with sleeves covering her hands, stands in greeting (fig. 1.4). In Wu’s version Empress Pan casts her eyes delicately downward, while a maidservant, similarly clothed and equally modest, stands behind her. The servant is depicted as a natural physical extension of the empress’s body, leaning out as if she were an added limb (fig. 1.5). The servants are accessories to beauties rather than beauties themselves, whereas in the Republican images they are subjects central to the drawings, revealing the different value of labor in artistic consciousness in the two periods. Needlework, embroidery, and weaving were all deemed suitable forms of work for women, including elite women, across both eras. These handicrafts connoted feminine domestic virtue and, when paired with the image of men tilling fields, symbolized family harmony and stability. The minimizing of

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women’s hands in weaving or spinning contexts in the Qing illustrations is not a result of its unsuitability as a feminine act; rather work in and of itself is not regarded as beautiful. Women in this era were significant producers of household value through their handicraft labor and not mere passive beneficiaries of others’ labor, but women’s beauty was not enhanced by productivity in this orthodox literati genre.8 Higher social status meant not having to be functionally productive in weaving or tilling. Yet only in the Republican period is productivity, in and of itself, deemed sufficiently beautiful and desirable to warrant inclusion in the One Hundred Beauties genre. Qing beauties did not routinely reveal their hands, since their labor was a vehicle for conveying Confucian morality—filial piety, wifely devotion, or chastity, the preoccupation of leisured literati readers. The late Qing artists constructed labor as antithetical to beauty. Beauty instead was imbued with the valuing of a high social status that erased the beauty of work, and the minimizing or complete covering of hands was central to creating this ideology. The “old” beauty’s hands are barely visible even when this manual craftwork is performed because the real story being depicted narrates prized Confucian morality. Qiu Shouping’s late nineteenth-century drawing of the renowned weaver from the fourth century, Lady Su Hui, at her loom recounts a story of wifely devotion to her husband (fig. 1.6); it is a celebration of chastity and steadfast loyalty to a patriarchal family order. Separated from her sojourning husband, Lady Su Hui reveals her devotion in material form by weaving a poem of over eight hundred characters, of her own composition, into a multicolored brocade cloth. The poem is a palindrome— characters are positioned in such a way that they could be read in multiple directions.9 Her remarkable weaving skills are central to her story, yet Qiu’s image of Lady Su Hui at her loom only minimally references her hands, as the sleeves dominate the view. Manual skill is secondary to the moral message of loyalty and chastity. Similarly, Qiu’s depiction of the “Filial Wife” from the Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan) shows her seated at her spinning wheel, but her hands are hidden beneath her sleeves, minimizing the manual labor of this handicraft (fig. 1.7). The main story concerns her filiality and chastity. The Filial Wife was a young, childless widow who resisted sustained pressure to remarry and instead spent the next twenty-eight years caring for her mother-in-law. In honor of her sacrifice, the local governor awarded her forty catties of gold and the title “Filial Wife.”10 Qiu’s picture shows the

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1.6. Lady Su Hui at her loom. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:41.

mother-in-law seated on the stoop of their simple home; she, like the spinning wheel, is a key prop in the narration of the Filial Wife’s Confucian virtue. In contrast, while modern beauties continue this time-honored tradition of female handicraft, lifelike hands feature prominently in their frames. We see beauties holding needles, pulling thread, and snipping with scissors. In Ding Song’s images the virtuous feminine act of needlework becomes modern with the display of the beauty’s naturally formed hands—and most significantly, the labor itself and the product being created are foregrounded. His woman sewing by lamplight has both hands realistically portrayed in the act of sewing, the tools of her labor arrayed on the table alongside—and to amplify the modernity of the act, a clock is displayed on the wall and a lamp illuminates her work (fig. 1.8). Another image includes a young woman sewing her wedding trousseau in the shade of a leafy arbor, with fully formed hands holding cotton, needle, and cloth (fig. 1.9). This is productive, useful labor, worthy of display.

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1.7. The Filial Wife at her spinning wheel. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 2:12.

Shen Bochen dedicated several of his images to women’s handicraft, both traditional and modern. He depicts in intricate detail the wide variety of Chinese spinning wheels in use at the start of the twentieth century as well as new forms of needle craft: Western-style knitting and crochet.11 In his myriad images, the hardworking natural hands of both servants and

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1.8. A woman sewing by lamplight. Ding Song, 1916. SSZBMTY, 24.

mistresses feature prominently and are foregrounded in the pictures’ compositions. The anonymity of the woman with her hands and wrists in full display also takes ancient Chinese feminine crafts and makes them modern. Every woman can be a productive, working citizen. Shen’s beauty at her spinning wheel is adorned with text that reminds readers of the hours of work she is undertaking: “Day and night diligently spinning yarn, the spinning wheel speeds quickly around” (fig. 1.10). The work itself is virtuous, not the moral tale behind her labor. New and exotic foreign craft skills also

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1.9. A beauty sewing her trousseau. Ding Song, 1917. QD-­GJBMTY, 3:5.

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1.10. A beauty spinning yarn. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 12.

appear as activities suited to modern, productive hands. Shen creates a vision of domestic education in his picture of a mother knitting while instructing her daughter (fig. 1.11). The mother’s skill in knitting is paired with her Chinese clothing, while the daughter sports a smock and leather shoes. Their luxurious Western-style sitting room, adorned with a richly upholstered chair and a paned glass window decorated with long drapes, connects readers simultaneously with Chinese notions of the virtues of female handicrafts and cosmopolitan consciousness. The Chinese “needle goddess” (zhenshen), Xue Yelai (see fig. 2.15), is invoked in the accompanying text to remove any doubt about the Chinese values underpinning this domestic handicraft. In foregrounding the hands undertaking the active “doing” of cloth production, the labor becomes both a personal skill and a fresh form of Chinese modernity.12

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1.11. A mother knitting while instructing her daughter. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 141.

PRIVILEGING THE CEREBR A L OVER THE MANUA L

Qing beauties are frequently exemplars of cultivated refinements of art, music, or literature, but their hands, cloaked or miniscule, are secondary to the ethical principles underpinning this cultivation. The moral and cerebral aspects dominate. The hand is a mere tool of the cultivated heart/mind when it appears. The highlighting of moral and cerebral aspects is over manual skills is clear in the images of famous calligraphers and musicians. The cultural talents of Lady Guan Daosheng (1262–1319) from the Yuan dynasty, famed for her calligraphy, poetry, and painting, and sometimes regarded as the most famous female painter of Chinese history, allow scope for the revelation of her hands in visual depictions of her beauty and talent.13 In both Qiu’s and Wu’s illustrations Lady Guan’s delicate hands are exposed as she

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holds her brush. In both images her prestige and public renown as an artist are marked by the presence of men respectfully watching her work. The hand is a necessary tool for the execution of her literati cultural refinement, but its main compositional function is to direct the readers’ attention to the sheet on which she is painting. Her eyes also gaze down toward the page. The brush poised on the sheet serves as a pointer directing attention to the evidence of her cultivation. The hand holding the brush is a mere tool for the expression of prized cerebral talent.14 The expert calligrapher Lady Wei (see fig. I.13) also has her hands reduced to feathers in Wu’s illustration. Qiu’s drawings of the Tang dynasty poet Xue Tao (768–832) display her hands as she places her paper under a weight prior to commencing writing (fig. 1.12), but Wu Youru keeps her hands covered and her gaze down. Two scrolls cover one hand, and lengthy sleeves the other. Xue Tao achieved fame for her poetry and calligraphy in her hometown of Shu (present-day Chengdu). Recognizing her exceptional talent, the then-governor officially registered Xue Tao as a performer with the specific duty of entertaining officials and guests at public functions through the gifting of her poems and calligraphy. She served for four decades, and a long list of her poems is still extant.15 Despite her public role and fame, both artists depict Xue Tao cloistered in a classic “beauty on a balcony” scene, thus amplifying her goodness and virtue.16 The physicality of the production of calligraphy is subsumed beneath her role representing the civilizing literary and artistic pursuit of poetry and her function as cement for political ties among members of the male elite. In Qing drawings of one of the “Four Great Beauties” of China, the fictional loyal maidservant Diao Chan, neither Wu nor Qiu reveals her hands, despite depicting her performing ritual prayer. The iconic image of Diao Chan shows her praying to the Moon Goddess to rid the country of the evil warlord Dong Zhuo.17 Diao Chan is a classic example of a woman who sacrifices her chastity to save her lord. To assist her lord, Wang Yun, Diao Chan used her beauty to entrap two men, Dong Zhuo and Lü Bu, and then set them against each other. Through this clever use of her charm and beauty, Diao Chan saved the Han empire from attack.18 She sacrificed her physical chastity for her lord’s interests, but her modestly covered hands amplify her inner chastity and virtuous intent. As she kneels in front of an altar bedecked with offerings and incense, her hands remain draped in cloth. The spiritual act of praying is the central feature of the images, while the physical act of

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1.12. Xue Tao in solitude at her desk. Qiu Shou­ ping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 2:38

either placing or lighting the incense occurs offstage. In 1913 Shen Bochen also drew a beauty engaged in burning incense—but his everywoman beauty is depicted lighting it herself, enjoying the evening cool in the peace and quiet of her courtyard.19 The autonomy of the modern beauty, the visibility of the physical act of lighting incense, and the colophon text’s explanation that she is motivated to act out of her own comfort and pleasure celebrate the new, self-directed female citizen of action. Illustrations of the great scholar and chaste widow Ban Zhao (Cao Dajia) (45–114 CE), renowned author of Admonitions for Women (Nüjie), provide further insight into the relative value of the cerebral and the physical. Ban Zhao’s Admonitions would become standard reading for centuries of educated women through the remainder of imperial China’s history as a Con­ fucian benchmark for womanly virtue and deportment. Her erudition is integrated indelibly with her virtue. In Wu’s depiction of Ban Zhao, one visible hand holds a scrolled book, while the other is draped, hidden in

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1.13. Ban Zhao in her library. Wu Youru, 1895. GJBMT, shang:18b.

cloth and resting on her knee (fig. 1.13). But a key feature of this enchanting picture is the presence of her servant in the background. While smaller in stature, the servant is depicted handling the books.20 The servant is the functional hand. Ban Zhao is the brain, and the servant provides the manual labor necessary to produce Ban’s cerebral greatness. In the Qing, the servants become accessories to decorate the set scene or even, as in the earlier image of Empress Pan (fig 1.5), are presented as an extension of her body. The beauty-of-old becomes more desirable because she has servants to do her bidding. In contrast, in the new democratic Republic, servants can be exemplars worthy of illustration. Qiu’s and Wu’s servants were never drawn as individuals in their own right. The menial labor required for the maintenance of the everyday life of the cerebral beauties was never depicted: in the Qing beauty’s world the mundane work underpinning her cultivated lifestyle was not worthy of artistic attention. Rather, the servants depicted perform a function similar to the extensive

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drapery covering a beauty’s hands: they signify the beauty’s privilege of leisure, freedom from life’s petty chores, and distance from manual labor. The presence of the servant ensures that the beauty will not suffer any inconvenience or have to do anything for herself. The beauties of the Qing are typified by their cultivated uselessness; their clothing and accessories, as well as the contexts in which they are depicted, establish that the beauty is not required to labor. Delicate silks, intricate hair decorations, lengthy sleeves, long draping ribbons, extended fingernails, and bound feet, along with the presence of servants, manifest a dependency in which individuals pronounce their superior class status. The servants in the Qing One Hundred Beauties perform simple tasks that any able-bodied individual could do if she felt inclined, so their presence marks the cultivated, practical uselessness of the beauty with cerebral or moral talents. In the early Republic, China’s consumers of visual arts across all sorts of media would suddenly have become aware of the aestheticized physicality and utility of the female hand. China’s Republican “citizens of beauty” were doing things with their hands that beauties of the Qing would have had servants undertake out of frame. If we compare the depiction of the handling of books between the two periods, the democratization of the aesthetic space becomes evident. As symbols of virtue and cultivation, books are important accessories to beauty in both the Qing and Republican drawings. In contrast to Wu’s depiction of Ban Zhao reclining on a lounge while her servant moves the books, the Republican images show women personally selecting and shelving books. The text accompanying Ding Song’s beauty in her library even declares a direct contrast between her household chores and the scholarly promise of her newly purchased books (fig. 1.14). Another of Ding’s sketches shows a woman closing a cabinet of books as she ponders the contemporary devaluation of her Song and Yuan collection.21 Old texts, once highly valued, are depreciating in the modern era. Another has a young woman searching her bookshelves for a dictionary to identify a foreign name. A servant carrying a tray walks into the library, but the beauty herself is busy searching for the “new sideways dictionary”—a foreign language text, which is read from left to right—unable to recognize her own name written in a foreign script on a recently received gift. Literary cultivation is displayed in both the old and new drawings, but in the Republican images, the connection between the beauty and her books is independent and active; it is situated in a global context and differentiates itself from the declining value of old knowledge.22 The treatment of books also marks

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1.14. A beauty at her bookshelf. Ding Song, 1916. SSZBMTY, 20.

the spatial shift that distinguished secluded subjects from public citizens. Where Ding, Shen, and Du regularly depict young women carrying books into school buildings, with their promise of a classroom community (see fig. I.16), the books accompanying Wu’s and Qiu’s Qing beauties are placed on tables in front of a seated female figure secluded within a domestic space. The trend toward public recognition of women’s broader roles expanded with the advent of newspapers, magazines, and schoolbooks for the modern school curriculum. The formation of the new Republic provided commercial artists with an entirely new type of reading format and content for their modern beauties: the new nation’s domestic politics and international relations. Ding’s, Shen’s, and Du’s beauties are positioned as active citizens who inform themselves regarding their nation’s affairs. Beauties in the modern aesthetic time read newspapers about current political affairs, as well as their many books, both foreign and Chinese—and these reading materials are grasped firmly in fully formed, visible hands. Sometimes

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1.15. A beauty reading about national affairs. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 1:26.

national politics is explicitly mentioned, and other times the act of holding and reading a newspaper is simply a modern version of a traditional aesthetic. For example, the caption to Dan Duyu’s young beauty leaning on a table reading the paper is “To say nothing of the young girls in the inner chambers who do not neglect the affairs of state” (fig. 1.15). Whereas in Shen Bochen’s image the accompanying text tells us about the fading of her potted plant with the impending winter weather, the newspaper simply marks the departure of autumn.23 Other times, Shen provides an in-frame advertisement for the newspaper that distributed his book of beauties—the Great Republic Daily—by depicting his beauties folding newspapers into bundles or pushing a delivery cart. A young girl is described as wearing shoes she had made herself as she pushes a large cart labeled “Delivery box for the Great Republic Daily” with “a pair of feet and two wheels” toward the crossroads.24 Ding Song’s newspaper-reading beauties are positioned in public space newly open to educated women, who sit on a verandah overlooking the street with its modern electric light (fig. 1.16). The text accompanying the image tells readers that there are lots of competing

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1.16. A trio reading about competing views in a teahouse. Ding Song, 1916. SSZBMTY, 5.

opinions circulating and that these have already overturned the old norms. The three beauties are positioned as the radical embodiment of that public ideological contestation. Modern women citizens from all walks of life were engaged with the new public culture of newspaper production, dissemination, consumption, and debate. WOMEN IN WA RFA RE AND POLITICS

Some of the ancient beauties are famous for their role in the intensely phys­ ical act of making war. Hua Mulan and Lady Liang have been standard figures of the One Hundred Beauties genre for centuries. These women warriors have their hands revealed in both Qiu’s and Wu’s collections, holding horse reins and drumsticks, respectively. But in both cases, the real story in the images concerns the Confucian virtues of filial piety and loyalty. The women’s participation in warfare emerged as a direct result of their

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dedication to their families—in the case of Mulan to her father, and for Lady Liang, her husband. Lady Liang (Liang Hongyu, d. 1135) was a heroine of the Song dynasty when it faced attack from the Jin. She married a soldier who would later go on to be the great general Han Shizhong. During a naval battle on the Yangzi River in 1130, Lady Liang beat the war drums to spur on her husband’s troops, and her appearances in both Qiu’s and Wu’s volumes show her small hands holding drumsticks.25 Wu’s picture is dominated by the massive boat where she stands, surrounded by troops, in front of a massive drum: her presence rather than her active drumming is the dominant story. In Qiu’s image, her feminine delicacy is amplified: the boat is beached, and her tiny hands appear ineffectual. Her gaze turns to her side rather than toward the drums, further diminishing the power of her beat. Hua Mulan of the Northern Wei (386–534) replaced her ailing father in military service and is revered as a filial daughter for her sacrifice. She disguised herself as a man and fought successfully for a decade before returning home to resume her life behind the loom as a dutiful daughter. Her martial action on behalf of her father allows her hands to be exposed without compromising her virtue.26 In Qiu’s image of Mulan, the horse plays a significant role, akin to the chariot that transported Empress Pan to and from the weaving workshop (fig. 1.17). The horse marks Mulan’s transition from family to battlefield, from female to male and back again.27 The dominance of the horse in the image obscures a hand that holds a riding whip. It could have held a weapon if Qiu had wanted to emphasize her martial prowess rather than her transitions away from femininity and family. The way Hua Mulan is invoked in the Republican images reveals the importance of the active hand as a marker of the new citizen of a democratic republic. Shen Bochen, for example, highlights Mulan’s dexterity with weapons through his modern beauty. She holds a lance firmly with fully formed hands (fig. 1.18). This modern Mulan’s thoughts include not only martial prowess but also her “rush to participate in politics.” She holds her weapon firmly in one hand, while the arm, elbow bent, is propped assertively on her hip. In this stance she commands more space as she ponders the next barrier for women: formal politics. Where the Mulan of old fought for the emperor on behalf of her father and family integrity, the female Mulan of the Republic is confident in her physical skills and then marshals her courage to stride off to claim a voice for women in a democratic world led by a president.28 In this pairing of martial (wu) and civil (wen) power, Shen’s Mulan is breaking

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1.17. (left) Hua Mulan with her horse. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:42. 1.18. (right) A modern Hua Mulan. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 108.

a key social norm in imperial China—both wen and wu attributes were the exclusive preserve of men and underpinned the Confucian patriarchal gender hierarchy.29 In depicting beauties as aspiring to achieve this ultimate pairing of masculine power, Shen is charting a new, more egalitarian civic consciousness. In the Republic, women can aspire to serve the nation alongside men in both the military and civic realms. The display of hands is also evident in drawings focused on women’s engagement in public politics. Shen Bochen depicts a woman standing next to a table and gesturing for emphasis as she speaks fluently at a meeting. The Republican enthusiasm for public speaking, which was central to the creation of a new democratic identity, is revealed here in an appealing female form. The display of her hands, their placement and movement, are integral to the new public voice that modern women were aspiring to embrace. Her hand rests on the table near the bell and simultaneously pronounces her potential command over the audience and her power to speak with an autonomous voice. The accompanying text reminds readers of her delicate

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1.19. A beauty with suitcase and umbrella at a train station. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 136.

charm with the closing phrase “Her bearing is really beautiful.” Clearly, the public-speaking beauty with her theatrical hands is an object of desire.30 Ding Song’s political philosopher (see fig. I.5) similarly holds her notes confidently as she addresses her audience. Female readers saw their new political aspirations legitimized in the visions of beauty the Republican com­ mercial artists created. The exposure of well-defined hands performing productive work presented a new set of desirable attributes for readers of these modern One Hundred Beauties images. The new citizen would be self-made, well informed, and capable of working for him- or herself and participating productively in society and the household. In one of Dan Duyu’s images, a beauty stands respectfully in front of a human-size stone tablet inscribed

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“Constructed by the Engineering Bureau in the 6th Year of the Republic.” The technical and engineering feats of modernity are visually paired with feminine beauty. The power of the newly liberated hand to build a modern society is on display alongside the physical form of the alluring new female. New beauties are accessorized by and become accessories to a new aesthetics of the manual building of a modern nation, a modern family, and a modern civic society.31 And everyone is depicted as participating: the mistress and her maid are both active in this democratic ideal of individual productivity. The artists also presented visions of self-sufficiency and competence in their drawings of beauties embarking upon travel aboard modern trains. Republican beauties routinely hold or carry their own suitcases and umbrellas, such as Shen’s traveler clipping along the platform in high-heeled leather shoes (fig. 1.19). Citizen travelers do not command servants to carry their personal effects, as did their Qing counterparts. In depicting the new-style female traveler, the Republican artists presented independence and strength, self-sufficiency and movement, as new values for their readers to admire. Speedy movement through public space and national geography emerge from their images as central to the Republican spirit. As we see in the next chapter, travel is a central marker of modernity.

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A M ODE R N - F OO T E D P E R S ON CL A IMING P U B L IC S PA CE

T h e Ch i n e se wom a n ’s foot h as been t h e focus of w i deranging commentary for centuries—how it should be adorned, constrained, or liberated. At the turn of the twentieth century, bound feet moved from being objects of desire to become objects of derision. The long-standing literati admiration for the bound foot adorned in delicately embroidered cloth shoes turned to repugnance over only a few decades. Leather shoes on natural feet signaled the now positively appraised attributes of modernity and progress, and the previously admired cloth shoe and bound foot came to be regarded as markers of backwardness and national shame. Bound feet became complete anathema to ideals of modernity. No other aspect of body and dress signified the shift to new civic ideals more clearly than feet. The Republic was imagined as a natural-footed nation where women could participate in its progress and move across its terrain alongside natural-footed men. Modern, natural feet performing modern forms of movement emerge from the pages of the new-style One Hundred Beauties images as startling contrasts to the sedentary beauties of their dynastic predecessors. And these new-style natural feet claim public spaces as their rightful domain. The public nature of the beauty’s movement celebrates the autonomy of the individual within the Republic and the new, positive value placed on the physical strength and capacity of its citizens. The display of feet in the early Republican images and their depictions of movement across space reflected new desires for individual mobility— both social and spatial. The democratic spirit proclaimed a citizen’s right to freedom of movement aided by technological advances in transportation and unconstrained by physical or moral limitations. In their movement, the 68

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Republican beauties helped democratize the public spaces of the new nation, creating visions of women’s access to shops, schools, teahouses, and all manner of new leisure spaces. Public spaces became glamourous and desirable in this early twentieth-century version of One Hundred Beauties, whereas the Qing images had placed prime value on the private realm of boudoirs and balconies and interior spaces secluded from public view. Modern citizens desired movement and imagined themselves traveling and adventuring around the world. New school curriculums promoted physical culture and movement to build the Republic’s power by nurturing strong citizens.1 In contrast, the traditional beauty was contained within garden walls, boudoirs, balconies, or remote natural settings, where the world could not impinge on their serenity. The modern beauty flew airplanes, rode trains, steered boats, and ran races. Movement, or the potential for movement, was central to the new desirability and Republican consciousness. Very few traditional images of beauties show women in action; stillness is preferred.2 But the beauty’s movement through newly prized public space on her natural feet signifies much more than a change of style, technology, or habit. The motivations for activities undertaken and the localities in which they occur trumpet Republican citizens’ claim to rightfully occupy any public spaces and for any purpose they might desire. An individual’s decision to move outside the private realm was a distinctly modern action, particularly for women, since old customs deemed that good women rarely, if ever, appear outside the home. The appearance of good women in public in the One Hundred Beauties amplified the modernity of the new emphasis on public activity. Wu Youru’s 1893 lithographs of courtesans (not beauties) created the first images of a public, urban beauty.3 His public courtesan was a remarkable new aesthetic concept for the late nineteenth century; his depictions of the Shanghai demimonde showed women riding in Westernstyle carriages drawn by horses, or palanquins, carts, and rickshaws carried or pulled by men.4 The orthodox One Hundred Beauties could not occupy public spaces in this way—that is, until the emergence of the new-style One Hundred Beauties. The old-style beauties appeared in courtyards or other enclosed, compartmentalized places. Houses were designed to facilitate the Confucian preference for the separation of the sexes.5 Balconies and courtyards allowed private outdoor places. Only on rare occasions do Ming or Qing artists sketch beauties in public spaces—such as in their depictions of Hua Mulan,

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where her departure from the family home to the battlefield is central to her story of filial piety.6 In placing their One Hundred Beauties in a wide array of public spaces, the Republican artists ruptured more than just an artistic custom; their choices reflected an increasing awareness of the public sphere as a space in which new categories of people intermingled, new technology was displayed, and new ideas circulated. The desire for a new, lively public sphere was manifest in their depiction of beauties with strong feet and legs capable of rapid, self-propelled movement. Republican-era illustrators Ding, Du, and Shen depict women in all forms of public spaces performing myriad social functions: going to the shops or school, or enjoying a range of recreational activities—and using multiple modes of transport. Newly revealed feet create the vision of a self-motivated, fit, powerful, and healthy citizen. The beauty’s use of new vehicles made new technology Chinese, rather than foreign, by depicting technologically skilled, fearless female citizens. A democratic sensibility was created when mobile women became objects of desire, with their natural feet proudly displayed as they claimed the Republic’s new social spaces as their own. The citizen of the democratic Republic needed to be adept, adventuresome, and autonomous in motivation and action. FEET AND LEGS MA K E A VERY MODERN APPE A R ANCE

The appearance of feet, shoes, and legs—trousered, stockinged, or bare— amplifies the mobile agency of the modern beauty and provides a striking contrast with the Qing beauties, whose legs and feet, like their arms and hands, were hidden beneath yards of flowing cloth. The Republican beauties’ legs and feet are explicitly displayed, and they are mostly depicted wearing clothing fashionable for the time: trousers and a long-sleeved shirt. Their legs are covered but clearly defined as operating limbs, and the feet delineated in their natural shape.7 One of Ding Song’s pictures shows a beauty lounging on a rattan couch. While invoking the myriad Qing pictures of reclining and sedentary beauties of old with a balcony and folding screen, it indulges in a very modern prominent display of shoeless, natural feet (fig. 2.1). The text accompanying the image tells readers that the young woman is disconsolate because she is dreaming of distant corners of the earth. These feet are restless, yearning for travel and adventure. The traditional beauty-in-repose had no dreams

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2.1. A young woman lounging barefoot. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 21.

of international walks, and her feet and legs remained covered no matter how deep her sleep. Compare, for example, Ding’s barefoot dreamer with Princess Shouyang from the Northern and Southern dynasties (fig. 2.2). Princess Shouyang, daughter of Emperor Wu (r. 420–423), loved plum blossoms and one day fell asleep beneath a tree. A blossom fell on her forehead and remained pasted there for three days. The pink mark so pleased other palace ladies that they imitated it in their daily toilette, and a new palace fashion was born. Qiu Shouping’s depiction of Princess Shouyang reclining on a balcony, sound asleep, keeps her limbs and feet covered throughout her famous sleep. Readers of the new-style One Hundred Beauties not only view the feet of beauties but also have their attention drawn to the footwear choices modern people make each day. Shen Bochen’s drawing of a woman seated in a chair with her foot on a stool prepares to go out as she replaces her house slippers with leather, heeled shoes (fig. 2.3). The caption reads, “Ever since adopting Western-style feet, it’s been time to don leather high-heeled shoes.” The rest

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2.2. Plum blossom Princess Shouyang. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QDGJBMTY, 1:5.

of her clothing is distinctly Chinese, and the four-section screen in the background confirms the Chinese context for her new-style shoes. Dan Duyu depicts a beauty on the stoop of the house removing her shoes after playing ball in muddy conditions. The shoe-clad foot contrasts with the shoe in her hand, and readers are drawn by her own gaze to the raised bare foot. The erotic appeal of her bare feet and legs collides with the explanation that she has been playing ball on the sports field in the mud; the juxtaposition of the sensual display of feet and their power, strength, and muddiness produces the active female foot as desirable.8 Competitive sport emerges as a new arena in which Republican citizens can display their beauty for public appreciation. Shen Bochen’s picture of

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2.3. (left) A beauty putting heeled shoes on her Western feet. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 175. 2.4. (right) An athletics competition. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 43.

two women in a footrace is a particularly dramatic example of the new Republican ideals for healthy citizens, highlighting competitive individuals who take pride in the public display of strength and speed as they match each other around the track (fig. 2.4). The two women are in black trousers and shoes with high-collared shirts. They lean forward in mid-stride with one natural-footed leg striking the track as the other pushes forward to propel the body. The chest of the frontrunner bears a white star-shaped badge marking her worthiness as a representative of the Republic. The prestige of the competition is illustrated by the bunting decorating the track and the authority of the new Republican state with the five-color striped national flag flying high. The healthy, strong beauty is legitimized by the modern nation-state of the new Republic of China. The text reminds readers that this woman is no freak—rather, she is highly desirable as she runs. It notes that the athletes have been instructed to hold metal sticks in their “delicate female hands” and that their breasts are heaving as their faces change color

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in the exertion of the race. The new national attributes of health and physical strength can still be alluring. Legs and feet also emerge in pictures of a host of public leisure activities that require strength, skill, or speed—like skating, bowling, and playing tennis. Individual pleasure seeking emerges as a newly desirable attribute for the modern citizen, as they display their choice to go where they please and do what they choose. Not only is the modern beauty no longer crippled by footbinding; she is now adept at all manner of sports. Traditional beauties of the Qing collections were not depicted in public recreation mode. They engaged in private, restful leisure or displays of cultivated cerebral ease in which calligraphy was painted, books were read, or musical talents refined. Physical activity was not a leisure choice of the imperial beauty. Nor was public space a desirable location for her leisure activities. In contrast, the phys­ icality of the modern beauty’s recreation, the pitting of individual against indi­vidual in matches of strength, skill, and fitness, created a new form of leisure subjectivity for the Republic’s citizens that elevated the physical over the cerebral. Feet and legs suddenly had a new, positive value as limbs that were central to the health and power of the new Republic that was being built. Commercial artists of the Republican period indigenized the new form of public, physical leisure. For example, Ding Song’s image of two beauties rollerskating invoked the Chinese Goddess of the Luo River. The beauties willingly go out onto the ice with their wheeled boots and care not about who lies below (fig. 2.5). The myth of the Luo River Goddess tells of a princess who drowned in a river but was transformed into a goddess because of her remarkable beauty and goodness. Foreign leisure activities, such as tennis and golf, were favorite themes for Republican commercial artists. The novelty of the activities and their command of new specialist forms of space, such as tennis courts or golf links, amplified the prestige of these new forms of physical leisure.9 Dan Duyu’s picture of a female golfer shows her hitting her way to a prosperous future (fig. 2.6). Sporting short hair and a wide-sleeved striped shirt, the golfer concentrates her gaze on the ball as she swings the club over her shoulder, her two feet firmly planted on the lawn beneath. Shen Bochen’s croquet player presents a more modest image in her long skirt and top with Chinese-style collar and clasps. Her feet only peep out underneath. The accompanying text links the manicured lawn to traditional romantic imagery of enchanting pear blossoms and embroidered skirts.10 The text’s indigenization of this foreign ball game is matched by her occupancy of a

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2.5. Beauties roller-skating on ice. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 16.

new form of public leisure space. The strength of her feet and legs is already modern, but its radical challenge to old forms of sedentary leisure is amplified by the foreign sport she is playing. Tennis games provided another vision of the new value of competitive, physical leisure. Shen sketched a tennis match in progress, with two players facing off, each hitting in turn and “watching for the ball to cross the lines.” The picture evokes tension as the players stand ready for action and the ball soars in midair. The static frame has movement and speed. The players are dressed in Chinese shirts and pants, and one has a single long black braid running down her back.11 Ding’s sketch of a female tennis player has a full body in action, with feet, legs, and arms combining to illustrate the moment before she tosses the ball up to serve (fig. 2.7). The text reminds readers of her beauty, directing their attention to her small waist and flying skirt. The modern, the physical, the competitive, and the sporting are all alluring— just as the old-style restful beauties were in the Ming and Qing pictures. The contrast between the two periods’ illustrations of dancing reveals the change in consciousness from an imperial subject who values quietude and privacy to an autonomous citizen who revels in physical challenge and

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2.6. A beautiful golfer. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 2:16.

public space. The old-style beauties in the Qing collections are overwhelmingly sedentary, but in cases where the women were known for their talent in dance, Wu and Qiu include the physicality of the action in their drawings even though the foot is hidden. The illustrations of these old-style dancing beauties include billowing clouds and lengthy robes to cover their feet and legs. One assumes the unseen feet were bound and their disappearance from view was an amplification of their minuteness and, therefore, beauty. The allure of the hidden foot and the ethereal nature of the dancing depicted minimize its physicality.

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2.7. A graceful tennis player. Ding Song, 1916. SSZBMTY, 17.

The significance of the bound foot as an object of draped desire is amplified in the drawing of Pan Yu’er—favorite imperial concubine of Emperor Xiao Baojuan (483–501). Qiu’s drawing of her alludes to a bound foot, even though her legs are covered with robes and no foot is visible (fig. 2.8). The idea of movement through dance is represented by the flowing robes and ribbons, which also serve to hide her feet and legs. Qiu chose to depict the famous scene where Pan walks on gold lotuses placed on the floor by her lord—the reason bound feet were euphemistically known as “golden lotuses” for centuries afterward. Wu Youru’s depiction of the other beauty known for her bound feet and dancing—the mythical Yaoniang—shows her balancing on a larger golden lotus that the Tang emperor Li Yu (937–78) built to

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2.8. (right) Pan Yu’er dancing. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 2:24. 2.9. (below) Yaoniang dancing. Wu Youru, 1895. GJBMT, shang:10a.

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enhance his viewing pleasure (fig. 2.9). No feet are visible beneath the voluminous robes, but readers would have appreciated their hidden allure through the visual clue of the lotus flower upon which she dances.12 Wu Youru references the feet of another famous dancing beauty, Lijuan, a consort of Emperor Wu (156–87 BCE), with two simple brushstrokes beneath her voluminous gowns. Her hands are clothed, despite their movement in dance, and her gown drapes over her feet as she performs for her lord, who is watching.13 In each of these images of famous dancing beauties, the physicality of the dance is minimized and its ethereality amplified. The private nature of the performance is evident as the women dance within their lord and master’s halls or balconies. Neither is the dance presented as a test of muscular skill; instead it becomes a manifestation of cultural talent. It is certainly not competitive, but neither is it prompted by the beauty’s seeking of leisure. The dancing beauty of old is subject to her lord’s command and is not a citizen able to determine her own actions and leisure. Dancing continues as a significant theme in the Republican images, but this time shoes, feet, and legs are visible. Readers view these modern bodies living in real space and propelling themselves consciously and deliberately by the movements of their limbs. New forms of dance provide scope to revalue dance as personal leisure rather than as a symbol of servitude to a master. Ding sketched an illustration of two young women dancing in European style—cheek to cheek—in decorative trousers that reach to midcalf (fig. 2.10). In depicting them practicing their dance technique at home, the picture shows that modernity in its Western form had to be learned. Each has a pair of flat cloth shoes on natural feet, and they wear fashionable trouser suits in the Chinese style. But the room in which they dance has an electric chandelier, a rectangular, framed European-style painting of a steamship, and curtained glass windows. The dance style is modern, but their surroundings further accentuate the progressive nature of their moving bodies: the potential exists for them to even travel to other ports or countries through the steamship “picture in a picture.” By the late 1920s Western-style dancehalls were prominent in the urban areas of seaboard China, and Shanghai’s nightlife gained fame and infamy for its glamour, wealth, and mixed-sex socializing.14 Ordinary people still regarded Western-style dancing as a performance of modernity through the 1930s, with “good girls” arguing that dancing in moderation should not damage their moral standing.15 But as early as the 1910s dancing limbs had appeared in the popular imaginary as an option for Chinese people through

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2.10. A duo practicing new dance moves. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 5.

illustrations like the One Hundred Beauties. The new-style beauties would practice at home in preparation for their public dancehall debut. Ding sketches a solo dancer raising her three-quarter-length skirt with one hand as she lifts her black-stockinged legs and natural feet to dance (fig. 2.11). This form of leisure might begin at home, but the ultimate goal is public social dancing. Dancing beauties were also able to impart messages about the importance of protecting the new nation’s welfare. Shen’s dancing beauty has a European appearance, with high-heeled leather shoes clearly displayed under the three-quarter-length skirt of the briskly stepping dancer (fig. 2.12).16 The accompanying text invokes a modern nationalistic sentiment as well as an ancient Chinese conception of the dangers of beautiful women. The poem at the top left of the picture refers to the “devilish dance floor” and notes that “the disastrous flood of the West is still not over.” “Disastrous flood” (huoshui) is a metaphor for the dangers presented by the allure of beautiful women who lead men astray and cause the decline of families and empires, as in the old four-character expression “beauties that destroy

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2.11. A solo dancer. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 4:9.

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2.12. A “disastrous flood” from the West. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 165.

kingdoms” (wangguo huoshui).17 The tension between westernization and China’s survival is reflected in a picture of a dancing beauty. The modern Western-style dance, unmediated by Chinese clothing, presents a threatening vision. In a break from the pattern of his other images, Shen included a second colophon to this picture, at the bottom right. In this text, the dangers of the flood are reiterated as he compares the Western-style beauty to Empress Zhao. Zhao Feiyan (32–1 BCE) became empress to Emperor Cheng of the Han dynasty in 16 BCE, after she and her equally beautiful sister, Zhao Hede, successfully unseated the emperor’s then-favorite concubine, Ban Jieyu (ca. 48–6 BCE), in Cheng’s affections. Feiyan was renowned for her dancing skills and her slender form, as well as for her maleficent influence on the state.18 Qiu Shouping’s depiction shows Feiyan in full dancing movement, one arm curled above her head and the other around her waist, with ribbons, sashes, and cloth flying around her slender form (fig. 2.13). Seated on a chair viewing the dance is the emperor and behind him two attendants holding large fans. In the background is a huge pillar with a coiled dragon,

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2.13. Zhao Feiyan dancing for Emperor Cheng. Qiu Shou­ ping, 1887. QD-­GJBMTY, 1:43.

symbolizing imperial masculine sexual power. Both Feiyan and Hede were as beautiful as they were cunning and ruthless. A senior lady-in-waiting would famously call the Zhaos “a disastrous flood.” But for all their destructive power, their legs and feet remained modestly covered in late Qing illustrations.19 The appearance of the foot and the leg was, in and of itself, a modern act, but the activities undertaken by these visible limbs are central to the emergence of the democratic, Republican consciousness of this era. These newly visible legs and feet made claims to public spaces, gave these public spaces glamour and appeal, and celebrated the individual citizen’s right to leisure and duty to be strong, active, and healthy. The advent of mechanized methods for moving people across space would add another dimension to the capacities of the Republic’s citizenry.

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2.14. A beauty on a bicycle. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 52.

TR ANSPORTING THE BODY BE AUTIFUL

Trams, trains, horse-drawn carriages, airplanes, motorcars, sailboats, and bicycles adorn the illustrations of the modern beauty and mark her as living in an era accessorized by science and technology. But more significantly, Republican artists create a world in which Chinese beauties master these foreign machines as they move around in public space. Shen Bochen’s depiction of a female cyclist invokes that Republican spirit of liberty through its novel title “freedom vehicle” (ziyou che; fig. 2.14). The legs and feet of the modern beauty are free to move about as they choose and master any array of transport forms. Even old methods of travel, such as horse riding, take on a different aspect in Republican illustrations. Shen’s drawing of a woman riding a horse shows the daring equestrian looking back at the reader as her horse gallops along, straining at the bit. Her hair ties flap behind her and her legs hold firm in the stirrups as the silk threads from her riding crop flash in the air.

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Her rapid movement away from the viewer is accomplished with a devilmay-care expression. The accompanying text amplifies her confidence as she laughs at other riders and whips the horse into the hills. Her feminine charm is invoked though the use of words like “silk,” “brocade,” and “flower”—all commonly used to elicit a sense of allure in traditional Chinese literature—but her power in controlling the horse is a vibrant challenge to the sedentary beauties of the past.20 Speed takes on new positive values in the modern images, even when horses are the mode of transport. The presentation of new-style beauties moving rapidly through space contrasts dramatically with a traditional beauty known for her travel, Wang Zhaojun. Qiu Shouping’s image of Wang, one of the “Four Great Beauties,” shows her on a horse in an elaborate feathered headpiece as tall as her own body, seated passively with no limbs visible. Two servants walk alongside the horse. Zhaojun was given in a diplomatic marriage to the chief of the Xiongnu nomads to secure peace for the Han dynasty. As she traveled she played her pipa with such sadness that the geese flying above forgot to flap and dropped from the sky.21 Traditional beauties in travel were led and directed by others and were decorated to mark status rather than physical movement. Zhaojun is not riding the horse. Rather, she is seated passively on it as it carries her to her fate, led by a servant.22 Nor was the travel of her own volition or direction. Instead of driving cars, sailing, punting, or steering boats and carriages, Qing beauties sat in carriages drawn or pushed by servants or pulled by animals led by servants. See, for example, the entourage that accompanies the elaborately decorated carriage of Xue Yelai (Xue Lingyun, fl. 220–226) in Qiu’s illustration. Xue is encased in curtains in a canopy that is being pulled by an ox decorated with a dragon and phoenix. She takes no action at all. Xue was the beloved concubine of Emperor Cao Pi of the Three Kingdoms’ Wei dynasty (220–264). Famed for her excellent embroidery, she was known to be able to sew late into the evening and produce clothes for the emperor that appeared to have no seams. She was later venerated as the “needle goddess.”23 One night she visited him and accidentally cut her forehead on a crystal screen. Even after the wound had healed, the scar remained red on her forehead. The mark symbolized her love for her lord and his for her.24 Qiu’s picture depicts her departure from the family home, as she says farewell to her parents and enters the emperor’s harem (fig. 2.15). She typifies the encased and luxurious transport of a sedentary beauty who has no control over her travel and whose passivity in movement is amplified.

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2.15. Xue Yelai traveling in a carriage. Qiu Shou­ping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:14

Equally, Wu Youru’s image of Lady Guo of the Tang depicts her seated on a pony surrounded by three servants on a boardwalk (fig. 2.16). This static equestrian was destined to die in the purges following the execution of her younger sister, Yang Guifei, amid the chaos of the An Lushan rebellion (755–763). She is seated on a slowly moving horse that has to be teased along the timber boardwalk by a servant walking ahead. Two other attendants follow the horse, one carrying a large oval fan to cool her mistress. Lady Guo holds the reins of the horse in one hand and a riding crop in another, but arms, hands, and legs are shrouded in yards of cloth, and the impression is of a passive beauty being carried along by the horse—which is itself rather slow-paced and quiet. Not only are modern women moving their bodies more speedily through space, but they also control their actions as they move. Shen gives modern readers an image of the beauty at the helm of a large ship, where the admired Republic beauty is in command of the machines that move her body through space (fig. 2.17). The accompanying text explains that the helmswoman is

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2.16. (above) Lady Guo on her travels. Wu Youru, 1895. GJBMT, shang:12a. 2.17. (left) A woman steering her ship. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 53.

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2.18. (left) An aviatrix. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 72. 2.19. (below) The flying Hong Xian averts a war. Wu Youru 1895. GJBMT, shang:24a.

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alone on the steering deck and at the wheel. Wearing a naval uniform and with her hair tied back, her courage and capacity for risk are evident, as the text explains that she ponders the bad weather ahead and wonders if the buffeting waves could capsize the boat. The modernity of the risk-taking beauty steering a boat is coupled with the invocation of an ancient Chinese mythical creature, the “flood dragon,” a powerful controller of the waters. The image is at once intensely modern while reaching deep into Chinese water mythology, as if to say, “Modernity is Chinese too.” Similarly, his dramatic image of a woman flying a solo plane, long scarf wrapped around her head to contain her hair as she speeds through the sky, leaves readers in no doubt about who determines the movement of the modern beauty (fig. 2.18). But the accompanying text invokes ancient Chinese poetic images of cranes, heavenly women, flowers, dew, and clouds alongside the “flying vehicle” she commands. This daring pilot is framed within the textual world of classical beauties and birds of the skies. In 1913, when this image first appeared, less than a decade had passed since the Wright brothers introduced powered airplanes, and few Chinese would have ever personally seen one. In 1917, news of the American Katherine Stinson’s fame as the first woman aviator to carry mail by plane circulated widely in China, and her subsequent visit to Shanghai increased popular fascination with modern flying women. China’s Su Yufen performed her own flying feat and attracted universal acclaim only a few years later as an “astonishing Chinese woman,” and another, Zhang Xiahun, was formally honored by the president and the premier in Beijing for her aviation exploits in the north.25 The Republican beauties of Ding, Shen, and Dan capture this rising enthusiasm for adventure as women are depicted in control of boats, planes, bikes, and cars. In some cases, traditional beauties move by magic—that is, they do not use their legs to propel themselves; rather, their magical powers move them effortlessly and gracefully through space. Wu Youru’s depiction of Hong Xian, concubine to a Luzhou governor, shows her flying through the air holding a golden box in her sleeved hand, with flowing robes and ribbons floating out behind her horizontal body (fig. 2.19). She holds a sword in her left hand as she gazes back at the palace ramparts. Hong Xian is a character from the eponymous Tang tale famed for her cultural refinements and her magical ability to fly. This movement through space is integral to her fame as a virtuous woman, but the drawing depicts mobility as effortless and unreal—Hong Xian is magical in her capacity to travel through the air. To avert a war between Luzhou and Weibo, she flew into the Weibo governor’s

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22.20. (left) An intrepid train traveler. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 155. 2.21. (below) A woman driving an opentop automobile. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 62.

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2.22. A driver removing her gloves. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 2:11.

bedroom and stole a gold box from his bedside table. The gold box was duly returned to him the following day but served as a warning of Luzhou’s strength and skill. As a result, Weibo did not attack Luzhou, and Hong Xian entered history as a loyal and clever concubine whose magical skills alleviated her master’s worries and averted war. The magical travel of Hong Xian is depicted as without friction or physical tension. In contrast, modern beauties enjoy the battle with their environment as they move through space. Shen Bochen’s depiction of a woman traveling on a train, for example, has a beauty standing on the back of the carriage and leaning out of the train with her skirt and scarf flapping in the wind. She is “flying up to the skies,” as she holds the train’s railings with two hands (fig. 2.20). Another of Shen’s beauties leans out from the caboose of the train as it “speeds like an arrow toward dusk.”26 One of Ding Song’s beauties is even driving a speeding car with the top folded back to expose herself to the air, as the wheels stir up dust along the road (fig. 2.21). New transport technologies create scope for the beautiful body to experience real speed and friction with the air.

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Legs, feet, and self-consciously directed movement are the hallmarks of the modern beauty. She moves for pleasure, leisure, or work with technical skill and physical strength. Her imperial sisters danced for their lords, reclined in solitude, or were carried or pulled along on chairs and carts. Effortlessness and quietude were central to their lives unless their lords demanded a performance or required some action—but even in these instances, their legs and feet were hidden from view. Dependent and responsive, the beauties of old lacked the self-direction and capacity for risk of their Republican sisters. These modern beautiful bodies move through space with speed as part of a new discourse that advocates building health and physicality for strong, fit citizens. The One Hundred Beauties genre’s depiction of women participating in sports and enjoying a physical type of leisure reflects the public fascination with this new mode of being human in a modern society. It also celebrates the desirability of personal autonomy and individual strength as attributes for a new democratic era. Dependency and frailty no longer dominate the romantic imagination conjured up in the One Hundred Beauties illustrations. New technologies of transport provided scope for China’s desirable citizen-beauties to manifest key attributes of their new society: movement, speed, and adventure. The modern beauty propels herself with either new transport technology or her own muscular strength and conceives of the space across which she moves with a new physical consciousness. And like Dan Duyu’s motorist, who steps out of her car onto the pavement in a European-style streetscape, the modern beauty is “in a rush” and fears being late—as she pulls her driving gloves off and hastens to her appointment (fig. 2.22). The gloves she is removing have protected her skin from the elements as she drove in her car, and it is these climatic impacts that the next chapter explores.

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3

W E AT H E R ING T H E E L E M E N T S , E X P E R IE NCING T H E N E W N AT IO N ’ S GE OGR A P H Y

The modern Republican beauty, in addition to appearing in the public realm and claiming her rightful access to public space as a citizen, is also physically in her environment—striding through rainstorms, swimming in lakes, and bracing against freezing winds. In interacting with her geography, she stands in stark contrast to her Qing counterparts, who transcend their environment to dwell in a weather-free realm of cerebral cultivation. In presenting the modern beauty as an actor in a geographic realm, Republican artists created a new geographic consciousness of their nation. The new Republic is visualized as a nation positioned alongside many other nations on earth. It is contained by borders that can be scoped and mapped. It is bordered by oceans and punctuated by mountains, which provide opportunities and barriers for the modern citizens’ adventures. The Republican artists’ depiction of a geographic consciousness in their drawings targeting adult readers aligned with new textbooks directed at children, where students learned about their communities and the nation’s threatened, bordered territory.1 While weathering the elements, China’s modern beauties create a vision of citizens who occupy this national territory by immersing themselves in its every form and mastering its every environmental challenge. SCOPING THE REPUBLICAN NATION : MODERN PERSPECTIVES

The modern beauties harness an array of new technologies to bring new perspectives to their geographic space: binoculars and periscopes are common 93

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3.1. A stargazer. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 95.

accessories. These props lead readers to consider China’s connection to lands across the seas and even other planets, as the beauties scope the extent of their geography and contemplate its vastness. Technology and geographic consciousness become Chinese and modern through the interaction of text and image as artists show that Chinese citizens are doing the exploring. Shen Bochen’s stargazing beauty peers into the night sky equipped with a tripod and a telescope (fig. 3.1). Her clothing is in the style of the elite Han, and the text makes specific mention of her short-waisted Chinese shirt. She is the epitome of the fashionable Chinese woman and the modern adventurer and scientist who peers through her telescope to see three thousand li into the distance. The text invokes the Chinese myth of the cowherd and the weaving maid as she gazes at Vega and Altair. This much-loved story tells of the pair’s forbidden love and their banishment to opposite ends of the Milky Way, after which they can only meet on the seventh day of the seventh month, when magpies form a connecting bridge.

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3.2. A beauty with her binoculars fogging up. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 192.

Other times the Chineseness of the modern act of geographic scoping is more subtly presented. Another of Shen’s beauties sits on her balcony looking out across the buffeting seas into the red morning sun. She gazes at a distant ship, worried about the mist fogging her binoculars (fig. 3.2). Described as a heroine, she sits confidently on the balustrade, ignoring the raging tempest, with one knee up to reveal the sole of her shoe. Her clothing, hair, and setting confirm that this is a Chinese location in which one can do very modern things, strike forceful poses even as a woman, and adopt a far-reaching perspective on life and the world. This balcony is not in the quiet, secluded gardens of the old-style beauties. Rather, it is on the edge of the shore confronting a tempest. Other times, Shen reminds readers of the transgressive nature of the woman who looks too far across the oceans. One beauty, in a military-style coat and high, narrow boots, leans on a circular light on the deck of a large ship while pondering the vastness of the ocean. Shen explains that she has had an “improper familiarity” with all things

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3.3. A beauty with binoculars. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 1:12.

maritime from an early age.2 Her disregard for common expectations of female behavior celebrates the adventuresome spirit of the modern citizen, who disregards the old constraints as she stretches the boundaries of the nation and extends connections out into the world.3 Dan Duyu’s “beauty with binoculars” leans against a foreign-style balcony with Grecian urn balusters, while her clothing is distinctly Chinese, with a handkerchief tucked for convenience into a side-opening shirt (fig. 3.3). The accompanying text plays on the themes of old and new, Chinese and foreign, telling readers that this beauty is not using the binoculars to scope the distant skies, but rather it is because she pities the cowherd and the weaving maid. Modern tools can enhance old forms of Chinese romance. E XPERIENCING R ATHER THAN DENYING INCLEMENT WE ATHER

In a radical break with the Qing illustrations, the modern images use weather as a trope to express romantic sentiment. Imperial beauties dwell in balmy, temperate climates where banana palms flourish and the sun

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3.4. The secluded Zhu Shuzhen. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:15.

always shines. The inconveniences of inclement weather never penetrate their cultivated, ethereal world. They float in the air and sit as if hovering above the ground rather than touching its dust or dirt. Qing beauties live in a mystical, transcendent space largely free of the limitations of climate or geography. The modern beauty, by contrast, frequently appears to be battling the elements of her new national geography. The romantic world of the Qing beauty has no need for warm or pro­ tective clothing. There is little or no weather in the imagined world of the imperial beauty. The pictures are visions of literati cultural refinement rather than engagement with the natural elements. Experiencing the natural environment was not part of the idealized, desirable world that artists or consumers valued. The pictorial space of this “aesthetic era” was a refined, largely domestic space, and natural spaces appear as a tamed and cultivated zone of pavilions, platforms, and verandahs. Qiu Shouping’s depiction of the Song poet Zhu Shuzhen (ca. 1063–1106) is typical of the old-style genre in which the surrounding environment is drawn with the goal of creating a sense of peaceful seclusion and enclosure of the feminine (fig. 3.4). Zhu Shuzhen is famous for her unhappy marriage

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to a merchant who did not value her literary skills. In frustration, she embarked upon an adulterous love affair with a man who appreciated her poetry. Because of the shame that exposure of this affair caused for her family, her parents destroyed the bulk of her poems, leaving only a few hundred in circulation. Her story has become a cautionary tale of frustrated talent.4 Despite the torment of her life, Qiu’s image shows Zhu sitting writing in a pavilion, isolated and placid. The natural environment is used to present a vision of isolated quietude. Wu Youru’s depiction of this miserable, misunderstood poet also situates her in balmy conditions. In Wu’s drawing Zhu is seated outside on a rocky outcrop with her books, gazing at a craggy blossom tree as butterflies fly around her head.5 The butterflies symbolize her undying love for her artistic soulmate, and the plum blossoms the strength of her resolve in the face of hardship. While Qing artists made frequent use of insects, birds, plants, and flowers in their illustrations, the weather’s symbolic potential remained untapped until the twentieth century. In the modern images, Republican artists use both climate and geography as devices to reflect the beauty’s emotional state. Dan Duyu depicts a harried beauty striding in heels along a tree-lined path, handbag hanging loosely and scarf flapping as the wind presses her skirt against her legs (fig. 3.5). The accompanying text explains that the weather is central to her sadness: “The west wind blows and smashes the beauty’s heart to pieces.” The cold, blustery weather and the clothing the beauty wears for protection reflect her misery. Even in circumstances where environmental and climatic hardship are integral to a beauty’s story, the Qing illustrators resist their artistic potential. Seclusion and quietude are central to the beauty’s illustrated form, and these attributes are never compromised by depictions of the weather. Cai Yan (Wenji, 176?–early third century) is one of the most famous beauties to be taken from civilized refinement into the wilds of the north. Yet this Han dynasty beauty is sheltered from the weather in both Qiu’s and Wu’s images. A modern beauty would be braving the elements rather than hiding from them. Cai Yan, daughter of the famous scholar Cai Yong (133–192), was a poet and scholar in her own right. Widowed early and destined to a life alone, she was captured in 192 by marauding Xiongnu and taken into the wilderness, where she was married to a tribal chieftain for twelve years. She had two sons from this marriage but was forced to abandon them when the Han general Cao Cao paid a ransom of precious jewels to gain her release. Her

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3.5. A beauty hurrying along a windy path. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 1:28.

freedom bought, she was then married to an army officer, Dong Si, under Cao Cao’s command. Her multiple marriages meant that she was shunned at court as a degraded woman. This outcast status served Dong Si well when, after offending Cao Cao, he was sentenced to death. Cai Yan pleaded for his life by asking Cao Cao if he intended to provide her with yet another husband.6 Dong Si’s life was spared once Cai Yan reminded the court of the extent of her family’s suffering as a result of her multiple marriages. Qiu Shouping and Wu Youru sketch Cai Yan during her time with the Xiongnu, emphasizing her distance from civilization by depicting her seated under a tent canopy. In Wu’s illustration, two men in the forested background blow horns, amplifying the hardship of her nomadic tentdwelling existence (fig. 3.6). Qiu includes a camel to mark the wild, remote surroundings (see fig. 4.2). Weather and the climactic hardship of the outdoor life play no part in the artistic rendition of her story of separation from civilization, despite their repeated mention in her famous poem, “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute.”7 She describes in moving detail the ice, frost, and piercing winds of her life among the barbarians, with their disgusting mutton meals and their felt and fur clothing. Yet the pictures of Cai Yan in the beauties genre protect her from the elements and present her hardship

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3.6. Cai Yan and child sheltering beneath a tent. Wu Youru, 1895. GJBMT, Shang:19a.

through her repose under primitive tents in the company of rough men and large animals. Republican commercial artists depict modern beauties as being of this world and willing to experience its weather as they move around their environment. Braving the elements was not only a chance to display a variety of new-style clothing and accessories; it also invoked the new adventurous spirit of the modern woman and her command of national geographic space, whatever conditions it might present. Umbrellas become symbols of the Republican beauty’s fearless embrace of environmental challenges. Shen Bochen draws one beauty holding an umbrella against the gusting rain and wind as she lifts her skirt to reveal trousered legs and heeled shoes while stepping across wet ground (fig. 3.7). The text explains that she holds her umbrella against the torrent, since there are no vehicles available. She must make the best of it and pick her way through the mud and slush. In another he depicts two women venturing out in inclement weather and sheltering under an umbrella as they walk through the damp (fig. 3.8).

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3.7. (left) An intrepid beauty walking in the rain. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 200. 3.8. (right) Friends venturing out into the rain. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 187.

One is wrapped in a Western-style scarf and holds up her skirt to avoid the muddy ground. The other has a Western-style full-length coat to keep out the cold. The caption explains that the two intrepid women brave the mud and rain without a horse and cart, armed simply with their umbrella for cover. Republican beauties are independent and can make their way in the world without a horse and cart. Nor is inclement weather a barrier to their traverse of public space.8 Where modern women wear head and neck accessories for protection from the elements so that she can go about her business, the imperial ­beauty’s head was adorned with decorative and delicate items that marked her refined and rarified status. The imperial beauty was not equipped for inclement weather; rather she was a decorated object that displayed the wealth of her household. Imperial era beauties wore elaborate hairpins, feathers, and decorative dangling objects on their heads. Their ears were rarely without earrings or their necks without necklaces. The Qing beauty was adorned with accessories that revealed her distance from real-world

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3.9. A beauty crossing a bridge on a windy spring day. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 25.

trials, while the modern person ventures forth prepared to experience any variety of potential hardships. The changeable weather that modernity brought to the aesthetic world meant that hands also needed protection. While in the Qing images hands were most commonly covered with draping cloth, in the Republican illustrations when hands are covered it is by weather-protective accessories such as gloves, muffs, and shawls. The wearer is out and about, braving the elements, and the muff and wrapping shawl amplify the action of traveling into the real world’s public spaces. Typical of the modern beauty’s capacity for braving the weather is Ding Song’s young girl on an early spring walk (fig. 3.9). She goes for a stroll “even though there’s lots of wind.” With a scarf covering her mouth, she adjusts her gloves to warm her hands. The bridge’s electric lamp, her heeled leather shoes, and a fashionable trouser suit amplify the modernity of this Chinese scene. Ding Song’s illustration of a beauty traveling by tram to her fiancé’s home shows a woman wearing a three-quarter-length front-buttoned outer coat over a long skirt, with black leather shoes and stockings and a fur stole around her hands (see fig. 5.7).9 He lives in the west of the city and she in

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3.10. Four women roller-skating. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 81.

the east, but the weather does not deter her from making the trip. Ding also created a more obviously Chinese trouser-suited beauty in flat cloth shoes, walking through a winter scene with a black wumao bonnet, a muff around her hands, and a fringed shawl draped around her shoulders. The bonnet was a style of hat that emerged in the Tang and was worn by the elite; versions of the hat gradually filtered through to be used at all levels of society, even into the early Republic.10 The weather in Republican China also penetrated the beauties’ domestic space. One of Shen’s beauties sits on her verandah looking out at the pelting rain with her qin on the wall, pondering the early arrival of the autumn cool. The ancient art of qin playing, the circular window, and the balustrade pattern combine with the oval fan and the beauty’s dress to make this a powerfully Chinese vision, but the rain outside and its explicit penetration into the beauty’s consciousness makes this a very modern vision as well.11 In the Republican images, leisure activities frequently occur despite the cold or because of the changed geography caused by freezing cold. Ding’s picture of four women roller-skating is accompanied by text that declares they are unafraid of the cold as they roll around the rink (fig. 3.10). Dressed

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3.11. An ice-skater. Dan Duyu, 1923. DYBMT, 3:30.

in scarves and hats as protection from the cold, they propel themselves around this modern leisure space. Shen Bochen depicts a beauty struggling to get her skates to glide on a frozen river. The text tells readers that “people everywhere are becoming accustomed to the sight of skating on ice.” She is dressed in the Chinese style of long skirt and top, but the scarf flowing with the wind and force of movement shows a modern consciousness of fun in the frozen winter elements.12 Dan Duyu’s roller skates are replaced with ice skates in his display of a beauty weathering the freezing conditions as she enjoys her leisure time, wearing a scarf and gloves to stave off the cold (fig. 3.11). The caption invokes the age-old Chinese ideal of female chastity and purity through the term binghu (lit. “ice jar”), further adding to the skater’s allure. The text is distinctly Chinese in sentiment, but the actions of the beauty, her dress, and

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her location are all markedly modern. Republican beauties are comfortable in all elements and venture into the world for romance, business, study, or fun regardless of the weather. BE AUTIES E XPERIENCING A LL DIMENSIONS OF THE NATION’S GEOGR APHY

Modern beauties not only revel in or repel the weather of their modern times; they also move into fresh dimensions of their geographic space in startling new ways. Modern technologies permit the beauties opportunities to experience more diverse dimensions of geographic space, such as the pilot (see fig. 2.18) who soars the skies, looking out on the world below. Neither is water a barrier, as beauties in the modern era begin to swim. Unlike their imperial sisters, modern beauties are at home in water of various depths. Not only do their bodies experience the chill of inclement weather as they splash through puddles and dodge rain, but they are also happy in much deeper watery worlds. Ding Song depicts a woman completely immersed in water, only her capped head and hands visible as she swims (fig. 3.12). Another of his beauties is in a swimsuit standing ankle-deep in water at the beach with legs, neck, and arms all bare as she poses for the reader to admire her form (fig. 3.13). Dan Duyu’s beauty stands in her bathing suit on a small “sacred rock” surrounded by water and contemplates the shallowest spot for her return to shore (fig. 3.14). These women are literally immersing themselves in their environments, undergoing a sensory experience that envelops their bodies. Water becomes a medium in which the modern person can play, pose, and exercise. Their daring displays of aquatic aptitude also speak of modern China’s capacity to venture into the oceans and become expert in the seas, just like the foreigners that were flooding into China’s seaboard cities. For imperial beauties, water is not a welcoming space; it carries danger, and a woman’s presence in water tells another Confucian lesson. Qiu Shou­ ping depicts the filial daughter Cao E (130–143) at the edge of a river, waving her arms in the air moments before she leaps in to retrieve her father’s body and drowns herself in the process (fig. 3.15). Her father was a shaman who drowned accidentally while performing rituals for the Duanwu festival. She searched for three days before drowning herself. Qiu’s and Wu’s pictures show her not in the water but instead on its edges.13 Unlike the modern swimming beauties, Cao E’s aesthetic moment is at the water’s edge. Readers

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3.12. (above left) A beauty swimming fully immersed. Ding Song, 1916. ­SSZBMTY, 13. 3.13. (above right) A beauty posing in her bathing suit at the waterside. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 3:7. 3.14. (right) A beauty in a bathing suit surrounded by water. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 2:21.

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3.15. Cao E moments before she drowns. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:36.

of the imperial images are not drawn to imagine the feel of the water’s chill on the skin, or the buoyancy of the ocean, or the risk of being surrounded by water, or the power of a swimming body. Shen Bochen’s mountain stream beauty explicitly draws readers’ attention to the transgressive act that entering water was for the ancients. His beauty tentatively puts her bare toe into the water, as the caption invokes a saying from ages past: “When entering the mountain spring, the water is clear; but on exiting, the water is muddy.” Invocation of this maxim creates tension as the distinctly Chinese beauty continues into the water despite the boundary between clear and muddy. Water is simply another space in which the modern Chinese women dares to venture—she will not drown.14

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3.16. Descending a rope ladder. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 49.

Modern beauties are also presented as capable of defying gravity through their strength. A number of the modern beauties are depicted climbing ladders to reach trunks or adjust wall clocks (see fig. I.7). Ding Song depicts a beauty midway up a ladder leaning over a large wardrobe. To retrieve a red handkerchief for her mistress, she opens the lid of the trunk that sits atop the wardrobe. The inclusion of a servant climbing sturdily up a ladder reflects the democratic spirit that Republican artists infused throughout the new One Hundred Beauties genre.15 But the most remarkable instance of gravity-defying modern beauties is Shen Bochen’s woman descending the rope ladder from a ship’s mast with wind whipping around her form (fig. 3.16). Few people would ever descend a rope ladder facing outward! In one hand she holds a pair of binoculars. She had climbed the mast to see across the ocean, but her descent, readers are told, shows off her graceful bearing.

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3.17. A beauty climbing down a rope into a dinghy. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 152.

In another of his remarkable images, a beauty is climbing down a rope dangling from a large ship into a small rowboat (fig. 3.17). In her descent, her legs are exposed below the knees as she stretches them along the length of the rope and holds her body weight using the strength of her arms. Her dress has a Western-style sailor collar, and her shoes are heeled black leather. This beauty is not magically defying gravity but holding her body up with her own strength as she descends the rope in a controlled fashion. Physicality, rather than ethereality, pumps out from Republican beauties, as their bodies command space and directly interact with the environment. While some Qing beauties dwell in natural spaces, their environment is merely a backdrop for an activity signifying isolation, quietude, or a moral, cultured state. Their presence is a cerebral one rather than one grounded by

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their bodies acting on the earth, pressing through water, or climbing ladders and ropes. Qing bodies move through mystical space rather than real terrain. The modern beauty traverses physical space and scopes the environment from new perspectives with new technology. Neither is the modern beauty afraid of the elements; instead she dons her warm clothes, carries her umbrella, and forges on into the world. All the while, she is distinctly Republican Chinese. Her clothes, her poetic references, and her built environment all serve to remind readers that this is a Chinese form of modernity, a new Chinese scoping of the world and its natural environs. Her courage, adventuresome spirit, and confidence in mastering the land that is her nation—in all its inclement temperaments—speak of a new citizens’ consciousness. The geographic space that is the Republic of China is capable of being experienced and controlled by all its people, including its womenfolk. The domestic world is not the only realm in which women could act. But as the next chapter shows, the Republican artists were even able to model new ways of being modern in the family home.

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4

ON E W IF E F OR O N E H U S B A N D, ON E M O T H E R F OR T H E CHIL DR E N

A number of dr amatic shifts in Chinese family structure emerged along with the collapse of the imperial order and the rise of the Republican nation-state. The emergence of new marital and familial relationships was integral to the creation of a democratic, Republican consciousness. The new nation required citizens to orient themselves toward the state and its new institutional formations rather than their ancestral line or the emperor. It needed citizens to take pride in self-sufficient management of their own households rather than elevating some notion of refined dependency upon others. In promoting monogamy, progressive reformers delivered hopes of family formation to many more men and dreams of greater equality to many more women. Husbands and wives in these modern “small families” would become partners in building a modern Chinese nation rather than creatures beholden to their family elders. National values, rather than Confucian morals, would underpin the modern family. The new status that the nuclear family acquired during the early Republic marks the state’s desire for greater penetration into the personal lives of its citizens. Dismantling the power of the clan system and gaining access to the energy of previously marginalized groups were key to the creation of citizens who would power the modernization of China with new civic values.1 These significant shifts are manifest in the One Hundred Beauties genre. The small family is referenced frequently in the Republican beauties. Both the housewife and the mother are elevated as desirable figures through depictions of their daily chores: minding children, keeping house, and cooking. In contrast, none of Wu Youru’s or Qiu Shouping’s Qing beauties 111

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is presented performing these menial, everyday household tasks. Spinning and weaving are the only forms of female household labor included in their images of exemplars, and Confucian ideals such as filial piety, rather than productive, self-sufficient labor, were the key messages whenever these tasks were depicted. The twentieth-century focus on motherhood in China differed dramatically from earlier ideals of female virtue, which valued the fidelity of wives rather than the devotion of mothers.2 The One Hundred Beauties pictorials are precursors to the promotion of the modern, urban, nuclear family and scientific maternalism, which would gather speed in the 1920s and 1930s through magazines such as Family Weekly (Jiating xingqi), Elegance (Linglong), and The Young Companion (Liang­you).3 Mainstream print media increasingly extolled the new woman as being a hygienic person capable of cooking nutritious meals for her family— as well as a beautiful, caring wife and mother.4 The model housewife of the modern nuclear family was also produced through the education system, with the rise of domestic science in the burgeoning women’s higher edu­ cation sector.5 Training women to be professional housewives skilled in modern household management became part of the new school curricula for girls and partly justified women’s expanding access to all levels of schooling outside the home.6 From the start of the new Republic, reformers regarded modern parenting and scientific household management as central to the rejuvenation of the nation.7 This shift in the value of domestic chores even impacted the elites. The change in attitude toward the new virtue of “cooking for oneself” is evident in the experience of one of China’s first female medical doctors, Yang Buwei (1889–1981), who would go on to write a recipe book for Chinese food. Yang was born into a prominent, educated Anhui family, and her early view that cooking was servants’ work was common for her era. Women of good breeding did not enter the kitchen.8 The new Republic sought to build a more democratic, scientific ideal of family ­management—one in which citizens aspired to self-sufficiency. In their One Hundred Beauties illustrations, China’s Republican commercial artists promoted the nuclear family’s connection to the new nation and the primacy of womanly domestic virtues in building that connection. Their drawings directly contrasted small families with the old, idealized multigenerational family. Families are noticeably absent from traditional One Hundred Beauties collections, but women and children do appear in Wu Youru’s 1893 depictions of courtesans in One Hundred Amoureuse of Shanghai.9 Readers of that volume observe domestic scenes composed only

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of groups reflecting Qing readers’ expectations that successful families comprised multiple generations and multiple concubines, as well as a wife and many children. Artistic depictions of large family groups in imperial China symbolized prosperity.10 The modern images show a single wife with one or two children. On a few occasions the mother has a single female servant assisting, but the dominant narrative is one where the bond between the mother and her children is unmediated by third parties. Larger groups of women and children are eradicated from the imagined ideal domestic space of the Republic. Republican mother-beauties are self-sufficient in their parenting and wifely duties. This artistic change marks the end of the multigenerational household and the end of the centuries-long tradition of concubinage. The modern ideal removed the allure of the concubine and presented the more equal paired husband-wife bond as fashionable and desirable.11 Conjugal fidelity became the new Republican morality, and reformers increasingly regarded concubinage derisively as a shelter for men’s adultery—even though it was still common into the 1920s.12 The monogamous pairing of one husband and one wife in the new-style beauty collections was radical in presenting a new, achievable marital ideal for an ordinary male citizen. After all, how many ordinary men could afford a large household with a wife and multiple concubines? The celebration of a single, beautiful, competent wife in the new-style One Hundred Beauties was a fresh vision of a family structure in which a greater number of men were likely to feel successful. One of Ding’s modern-beauty wives challenges the power of the older generation and their superstitious beliefs. She queries her mother-in-law’s instructions to sleep apart from her husband because of some superstition about the phases of the moon. The young wife can’t get to sleep and doesn’t believe in monsters, so she calls out to her husband—presumably to join her in their bed. She lifts the bed curtains to peer out into the room. Her arms and neck are bare as she sits up with the sheets over her thighs. In this pictorial story, the companionate marriage confronts the fading power of senior generations and old superstitions.13 Western-style weddings also appear in the modern pictures, bringing new rituals for marriage into Republican fashion. The older generation is absent from these illustrations of conjugal rituals. Brides in white, complete with bouquets and veils, provide modern, glamourous alternatives to oldstyle weddings, where elders receive kowtows from the bride and groom. Sometimes Chinese clothing is mixed with a Western veil, bouquet, and

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flower girls, as if to say, “Chinese brides can embrace the foreign (modern) too.”14 In one of Ding’s bridal images he describes the bride coming out of her bridal chamber using the specifically Chinese term chu dongfang, thus amplifying the intermingling of the customs. Dan Duyu’s sketch of a ­bouquet-​bearing bride mixes Chinese and Western elements in the bridal gown. Her long train and veil with Grecian skirt are topped by an instantly recognizable Chinese-style shirt with a high closed collar. None of these images, or the many photographs of weddings featured in magazines or newspapers, include the parents of either bride or groom. The battle being waged by young people in these years to wrest control from their parents over the choice of marriage partners was reflected in the modern beauties’ images.15 Despite centuries of Confucian attention to family unity and the filial respect due parents from their children, the Qing beauties collections do not include images of mother-child bonds; rather the focus of familial loyalty is the wife’s or concubine’s loyalty to her husband or his parents. Lady Xi of the Spring and Autumn Period is one of the rare instances where children feature (fig. 4.1). Wu Youru’s picture of this famous beauty alongside her two sons has them seated on a balcony. But the story recounts the tragedy of a woman who is unable to stay loyal to her first husband and is forced to endure a second marriage. Lady Xi was captured during a dispute between her husband’s kingdom and the neighboring kingdom of Chu. King Wen of Chu took his defeated rival’s wife for his bride. During her life in Wen’s palace, Lady Xi’s misery was as evident as her beauty, even though the marriage produced two sons. When Wen asked about her sadness, she explained that she could never be happy knowing that on death she would face both her husbands in the afterworld and could never be appropriately loyal and faithful to either. The children symbolize her struggle with loyalty to two husbands rather than her excellent mothering. For Qing readers, these children symbolize the challenges remarried women face in achieving virtue by demonstrating loyalty and faithfulness to one man throughout their lives. Similarly, Qiu Shouping includes a baby and toddler in his picture of Cai Yan (fig. 4.2), who, after her return to China, abandoned two children born during her forced marriage to a tribal chief. Wu Youru’s illustration has one child tucked under a fur blanket at her feet as she reclines (see fig. 3.6). The children amplify the core moral story recounting the tragedy of the truly virtuous woman for whom circumstances beyond her control conspire against her realization of loyalty to one man.

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4.1. (above) Lady Xi with her two sons. Wu Youru, 1895. GJBMT, shang:1b. 4.2. (left) Cai Yan and her two children. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 2:11.

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The artistic category of “beauties” (meiren) did not generally include women whose prime success involved their children. Even the venerated “Mencius’s mother” is excluded from explicit illustration in the collections by Qiu and Wu.16 Rather, these women appeared in other didactic texts such as the Biographies of Exemplary women (Lienü zhuan) and Admonitions for Women (Nüjie).17 But even in these latter texts, motherhood is celebrated only when women raise exceptional sons who go on to become great men.18 Only during the Republican era is an everyday notion of mothering elevated as a desirable experience—and it does so because new values of individual self-sufficiency, autonomy, and productive capability become public virtues in this new democratic era.19 The rising importance of mothers and children is evident in the periodicals created for women, which prioritize health, welfare, and education in the modern home.20 Mothers are still recognized as a child’s first teacher, in keeping with Confucian tradition, but they teach fresh content to create active citizens for the new nation-state. MOTHERS AS TE ACHERS OF NEW CITIZENS

Mothers have long been lauded as the first teachers for their children in classic Chinese narratives. Mencius’s mother is paramount among them. When Mencius was young, his mother relocated their home several times to achieve the correct environment for his education. As he grew, she was vigilant in inculcating in her son a respect for learning. He went on to be the most famous scholar after Confucius, and generations of students would study his teachings from The Mencius.21 While Mencius’s mother is invoked as a model of maternal virtue, she is not included in the One Hundred Beauties genre. Maternity, in and of itself, was not celebrated as beautiful until the Republican era transformed this artistic genre. However, Wu Youru invokes her story in his Amoureuse in a picture titled “Modeling after Mencius’s Mother.” The picture shows a busy family study in which children are seated at tables with ink brushes practicing calligraphy. One woman stands behind a toddler, holding his hand and brush to guide his writing. The room is filled with the traditional markers of literati scholarship and shelves of books.22 While mothers in the Republican period retain the pedagogical ideal implicit in the story of Mencius’s mother, the subjects they teach their children differ dramatically. A new, politically charged role for women as “mothers-of-citizens” emerged in the twentieth century, and their duties

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included inspiring patriotism in husbands and children.23 The promotion of women as mothers-of-citizens constrained a more radical expression of female political agency as independent “female citizens,” but the sheer volume of textbooks, readers, articles, commentary, and illustrations that gave women public billing as participants in the production of the new democratic nation through a new ideal of a small, monogamous, self-sufficient family was an advance from the imperial era, when mothering only mattered if it produced a “great man,” such as Mencius. Where the traditional Confucian education focused on moral learning drawn from the classics, the Republican images depict children acquiring “modern technical knowledge.” Children’s books of these years brought into the household new concepts that focused on technology, science, and concrete objects instead of philosophies of correct behavior and relationships, which had been the focus of all earlier education.24 Technical knowledge became a key “modern virtue” for the children in the Republican One Hundred Beauties collections, as the ideal citizen-in-training was imagined as learning to manipulate the real world in practical ways. Modern children learned about new ways of conceptualizing their republic using flags and maps. The kindergartens that expanded from the 1920s promoted educational toys along with these nationalistic props and taught their students patriotic songs, as well as the history and geography of the new nation. One leading educator, Chen Heqing, declared, “Today’s children are tomorrow’s citizens!”25 These early childhood educators formed a bridge between the child and the state with their new curriculum designs, but for adults without contact with these new schools, the commercial artists were important conduits of similar patriotic, nation-oriented values. Artists like Shen, Ding, and Dan literally drew pictures of how to be a citizen, and adult readers saw these visions of family life through their regular newspaper reading. Ding Song’s picture of a mother standing beside her son shows her teaching him about the national flag on National Day (see fig. I.3), revealing the ways traditional ideals interact with the Republican spirit of citizen­ ship to produce a modern Chinese mother and child. Shen Bochen shows the importance of mothers teaching the new national symbols through his image of a mother holding a baby and pointing at a wall map of China (fig. 4.3). Her young daughter also holds a small map or book in her hands as an active reader of the “nation” too. The modern mother-beauty conceives of the national space owned by citizens of the Republic with a new cartographic consciousness that she teaches her offspring. The accompanying

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4.3. Mother and daughter looking at a map of China. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 46.

text narrates how the mother wonders when her child will be able to understand longitude and latitude so she can identify the absent father’s location. A modern mother, even though she is in the domestic space with her children, conceives of a world beyond and teaches this to her daughters too. The cloistering, narrow domestic vision of the imperial beauties is gone. The new Republican education curriculum of these years was explicitly building a nationalist geographical sense of China’s territory. It established a bordered terrain that drew people together as sovereign citizens.26 Our commercial artists showed that the egalitarian spirit of this new concept of the public citizen also included women and children outside the classroom, who would learn, teach, and share their new national identity and patriotism through cartography.27 Another image has a mother reclining on a sofa “flipping pages teaching zhi and wu” to her daughter. The spring of her own youth has passed, so she dedicates herself to her daughter’s education.28 While it was not uncommon for women in literati families to be highly educated, it is significant that this modern mother explicitly describes teaching her daughter and not her son:

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4.4. A beauty reading the Great Republic Daily with her son. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 217.

the status of women is rising, and the teaching of girls is gaining prestige too. In another charming picture, Shen Bochen depicts a mother and child reading the Great Republic Daily together (fig. 4.4). The text describes “waking up” the “old family” and notes that even though the child cannot really understand the paper, mother will read the world news aloud. The subject matter is no longer the old classics of Mencius; instead, modern, democratic mothers teach their children current affairs out of the progressive reformist newspaper that Shen supported with many of his illustrations. Present texts, rather than the classics of the past, are important for the modern mother and her child. And it is a notion of the present in which the Chinese nation is positioned alongside other nations and in which national affairs connect directly to the domestic realm. Modern mothers also maintained Chinese festival rituals with their children. Ding’s drawing of a mother of two burning incense at a decorative altar for Chang E, the Moon Goddess (fig. 4.5), is explicitly identified as taking

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4.5. Mother and children celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival. Ding Song, 1916. SSZBMTY, 55.

place during Mid-Autumn Festival, when the moon is at its largest and brightest. The boy wears Western-style shorts and socks, his mother the classic Chinese skirt and top. The children both hold colored celebratory pennants, while their mother ponders her hopes for the family reunion expected at the Mid-Autumn Festival. A modern and distinctly Chinese family is produced in the merger of time-worn traditions of family togetherness and the new clothing and accessories that adorn the festival.

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Where children appear in Wu Youru’s Amoureuse pictures of Shanghai’s demimonde, they are depicted as part of a woman’s recreational life or used to invoke the then-familiar One Hundred Children images, which symbolized prosperity. The One Hundred Children theme adorned ceramics and paintings from the Ming dynasty onward.29 Children are depicted playing with balls, shuttlecocks, and dominos, or engaged in games like leapfrog or hide-and-seek. Childhood is depicted as a time of recreation and pleasure— all while a parent’s desire for her son’s success is reflected in various symbols of prosperity, grandchildren, and success in the official bureaucracy.30 Wu Youru’s children are usually dressed in Chinese clothes and are frequently marking major festivals in the lunar calendar or playing Chinese games. A family celebrating the Lantern Festival includes children pulling wooden rabbits on wheels, riding toy horses, and flying kites. They are overseen by four adult women, one with a babe in arms. The prosperity and fecundity of this very Chinese scene is evident. In another, he shows an engaging scene of children flying kites and, in another, children buying fighting crickets from a peddler.31 In the image with the cricket seller, the accompanying women’s tiny bound feet peep out beneath their gowns. Many of Wu’s images of children and women-centered family groups directly imitate the older One Hundred Children genre. In contrast, when children appear in the Republican period, they invoke an entirely different imagination, which includes national or global travel, technical learning, and pragmatic aspirations. The Qing illustrations depict children as objects to be played with by groups of women, whereas in the Republican period pets take over this emotional space and children become subjects that are taught new knowledge.32 Maps, clocks, and flags are the props that accompany the modern Republican child and the modern mother as pedagogical markers of new citizenship and mobility. In the Republican images the children most frequently are dressed in European-style clothing, often sailor suits with short pants, knee socks, and leather shoes—invoking dreams of ocean travel. One of Shen Bochen’s mothers is seated on a chair feeding her young son gruel to fortify him for school. He is dressed in a sailor suit, and the toys surround­ ing the pair include rifles, bugles, swords, cars, cannons, and a national flag. 33 Her child’s toys speak to the technological strength of a national military force. Modern children are often depicted standing with their hands behind their backs or at attention as if surveying the scene with a cool, technical, and pragmatic view—as in the wide-legged stance of the boy

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watching his mother set the grandfather clock (see fig. I.6). His sailor collar, with shorts, bare knees, long socks, and heeled leather shoes, complete the vision of a commanding young boy, firm in his purpose and destined to sail the world. Another of Shen’s images has an even younger boy dressed in a sailor suit imagined as a future member of the national navy by his mother, who carries an umbrella as she helps the child from a small boat onto the muddy shore. 34 Frivolity and playfulness are not necessarily present in pictures of modern beauties and their children, while they are standard in Wu’s Qing images. MODERN HOUSEWIVES MANAGE AND NURTURE THE SMA LL FAMILY

The Republican One Hundred Beauties not only modernized the role of mothers as teachers, but they also presented everyday household work as worthy of admiration. The depiction of a modern kitchen is central to this shift in the value of housework. The old-style beauties lived in apparent freedom from base human needs for sustenance: their function was to impart morality, and their romance was drawn from the cerebral and ethereal effect of the drawings. The production of food and the act of nurturing appear as subjects of romance and desirability for the first time in the Republican One Hundred Beauties. The new-era artists presented the real world as worthy of attention and addressed practical questions about how to live one’s life in these modern times. Valuing food production and the care of children become acts of modernity and desirability in these new images. However, the path to celebrating domestic work is gradual. Shen Bochen’s image of a well-organized kitchen range with a wok and two Chinese utensils hanging conveniently above and a housewife in charge has accompanying text that explains that this is more than a well-organized kitchen with a competent household mistress (fig. 4.6). Readers are told that she desires to be a person of knowledge and wisdom and should not be looked down upon as merely someone concerned with household trivia or the details of the many flavors of food. Household work is not, in this narrative, anathema to modernity or personal advancement—the two can exist together—but old prejudices about the triviality of domestic work must nonetheless be contended with. Only ten years later, Dan Duyu sketches a young woman standing at a Western-style cooking range on a tiled floor wearing an apron and flat shoes (fig. 4.7). She is described unashamedly as being “back in the

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4.6. (left) A housewife is more than a good cook. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 118. 4.7. (right) A hygienic housewife. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 2:26.

kitchen with washed hands making a beautiful soup”—no explanation for her presence needed. The cooking implements, pots, and kettles are all in the European style, and the explicit mention of her clean hands confirms that hers is a modern, advanced, hygienic household. She is a modern beauty and a desirable housewife model. The act of food preparation can also invoke the newfound democratic marriage and nuclear family. Ding Song’s beauty sets the table for a meal of chicken broth and fresh fish as the west wind beats against the windows (fig. 4.8). She has prepared some wine to repel the cold but is sad to be eating alone while her husband is far away. The table is set with a homely and nutritious Chinese meal, but the housewife, poised with her chopsticks, wears heeled leather shoes of the foreign style. There is no mother-in-law or father-in-law present or alluded to in text or image. The conjugal marriage bond is the object of her longing and not the multigenerational family. The modern domestic realm is a platform from which this relationship can

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4.8. (above) A wife eating alone. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 54. 4.9. (right) A former courtesan doing the household accounts. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 100.

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be romanticized. No poetry, weaving, or fans appear as symbols of lovers’ separation—the productive space of the kitchen and dining room serves as the modern equivalent. Modern family formation is an avenue for liberation from bonded servitude as a courtesan. Shen Bochen’s beautiful housewife expert in managing the family budget stands in front of a Western-style safe with an account book in her hand. The accompanying text explains that she is a former courtesan who successfully married and worked her way out of bonded labor (fig. 4.9). She finds managing the family accounts very simple because she is quick with figures. Modern families can include women newly liberated from the demimonde, and their real-world skills are presented as desirable additions to that modern household. The solo work of the modern housewife in food preparation or house­ hold budgeting is replicated in the depiction of caring for young children. In the modern family, parenting is an independent act that requires dedication from the beautiful mother. It is frequently the mothers who do the tending, and not only servants or older relatives, as in Qing depictions of multigenerational, polygamous families. Images of mothers as sole caretakers give new power to young mothers—power that would earlier have accrued to their parents-in-law. It also elevates their competence as caregivers. In each of the new-style images of maternal nurturing, the mother’s emotional bond to the child is apparent, and her labor for the child’s welfare expresses this love and care. Shen Bochen illustrates a mother and son, dressed in Chinese style but with leather shoes, leaving the house to fly a kite (fig. 4.10). The accompanying text tells readers that the mother should not be concerned about indulging greedily in playtime with her child. As they depart the house alone, she pulls the door closed with her hand behind her back. The clothing and the kite-flying are recognizably Chinese, but the shape and style of the front door, the European column of their porch, and the depiction of the mother taking her child out alone to play are all distinctly modern forms of Chineseness. The autonomy of this modern mother, her confidence in their goal of venturing out for public play, makes this a family of the new nation, in which the mother-child bond nurtures new Republican values. The Republican images represent striving to become a practical and competent mother as a modern maternal act. A particularly touching picture from Ding Song shows a new mother nursing her child after feeding, trying to quiet the baby’s crying lest the neighbors mock her poor mothering.35 The room is a regular Chinese bedroom with a closet bed surrounded by

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4.10. Mother and son off to fly a kite. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 27.

drapes, but the inclusion of the nursing mother with her baby in a book of beauties makes this a very modern scene. Another of Ding Song’s pictures shows a competent mother carrying her “darling son” on one arm while opening the door with her free hand (fig. 4.11). The text explains that the child has been so sick he’s vomited. Shen Bochen depicts a hands-on mother washing her son’s face with a hot towel while the child complains bitterly.36 In another he reveals that the modern mother no longer spends time looking in her mirror since she gave birth to her baby (fig. 4.12). Now she is happier when people talk about her smiling baby. She places her baby carefully in the Western-style baby carriage in another “incidental” use of Western technology in a Chinese context. Skillful and dedicated mothering is a trait to be celebrated in this modern era, and the practical nurturing of both the parent-child relationship and the child’s health are central to this new spirit. Not only are former courtesans excellent with budgets, but they can be dedicated modern mothers too. Shen Bochen includes a picture of a former courtesan, now a married woman, seated in front of a fire blazing in a Western-style fireplace with mantelpiece, side supports, and iron grill. She

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4.11. A mother with sick toddler. Ding Song, 1916. SSZBMTY, 48.

is still within her lying-in period, so she is staying warm while nursing her baby (fig. 4.13). The intimacy of the connection to her child and her solo per­formance of maternal care contrast starkly with a comparable image in Wu Youru’s 1893 Shanghai Amoureuse collection. Wu’s courtesan mother lies languidly on her chaise longue while another woman nurses a baby behind her (fig. 4.14). The exact relationship between the two women and the baby is not clear. Distance rather than intimacy and groups rather than individuality dominate all his Amoureuse images of children and women. In contrast to the modern mother-beauty’s hands-on approach to mothering, Wu’s Amoureuse mothers are rarely depicted carrying their children or nursing them. Their care is manifest in their observant eye but only occasionally in physical touch. One picture shows a baby being weighed on traditional scales while other women and children stand around to observe.37 Another uses a family scene to mark domestic leisure in his image of a mother playing dominoes seated at a table while her servant holds her young baby nearby. Another servant sits farther away, pulling the cord that operates the bamboo-framed fan cooling the group around the table. Domestic bliss in the traditional fantasy was one in which wives and mothers had

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4.12. A mother putting her baby in a stroller. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 71.

servants to carry the burden of child care.38 Another picture shows a table of four women playing mahjong while a kitten plays under the table with two children. A maid entertains one child. The mahjong, children, servants, and kitten all signify a life of leisure.39 Importantly, these images are outside of the One Hundred Beauties genre with its focus on exemplars, but their existence reveals the dramatic break in the way mothering was valued that was accomplished in the modern Republican beauty illustrations. One significant deviation from this general pattern of hands-off traditional mothering appears in Wu Youru’s picture “Teaching How to Push a Carriage.” Two Western baby carriages occupy the center of the frame. The women pushing the carriages are dressed in late-Qing gowns and appear to be discussing how to drive the carriages. The children seated in the prams include one dressed in a mixture of Chinese and Western styles—a boater and a Chinese gown. Another woman stands alongside, holding her young baby in her arms, and a dog runs ahead along the path. In a space that mixes Chinese and Western elements, a different type of maternal and child contact is produced.40

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4.13. (left) Former courtesan turned nursing mother. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 191. 4.14. (below) Courtesan mother and infant. Wu Youru, 1893. HSBYT, xia:20b.

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The Republican One Hundred Beauties genre rendered desirable a new moral space of productive families that engaged with democratic ideals of modern citizenship in a global frame. Mothers were freed of the weight of the “old family” and were presented as celebrations of individuality, practical capacity, and self-sufficiency in nurturing their families. Their roles as teachers expanded beyond the transmission of moral philosophy and into new ideas of geographic space and time that would reinforce the new nation-state’s borders and its progress toward modernity. They promoted patriotic values in their children’s education. They were scientific in their modern household skills and worthy of being included in collections of beauties in ways that were not possible in the Qing collections. No longer was the inner realm of the family home solely a springboard for the husband’s outer-realm public success; rather, effective household management and modern child-raising were integral to the Republic’s national success.41 Boundaries between inner and outer that Confucianism had rendered rigid were blurring, thus raising the status of the household and the women who occupied it. The new-style One Hundred Beauties pictures presented readers with visions of the transfor­mation of family space and the changing values associated with domesticity and children. As readers ponder the new lifestyles possible in the democratic Republic, they see that the modern household structure with modern mothering styles also facilitated the leveling of social hierarchies by the transformation of prostitutes into housewives. In the chapter to follow, we see how other aspects of female virtue transform as well.

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F RO M CON F UCI A N V IR T U E T O A N E W DE M OCR AT IC M O R A L I T Y

Man y of the women depicted in the tr aditional One Hu ndred Beauties collections were moral exemplars or highly talented women who were consequently endowed with superior moral qualities. As virtuous wives, wise and loyal concubines, sacrificing daughters, or dedicated mothers, the aesthetic charm the Qing illustrations evinced was steeped in literati morality. The Republican beauties were freed from these traditional moral roles and instead came to represent a future in which ordinary people forged their lives independent of the weight of the Confucianist legacy. Traditional exemplar biographies held little interest for the book buyers of the Republic.1 Readers’ desires and aspirations were no longer dominated by ancient literati morality, and in their idealization of beauty, Republican artists did not reillustrate the old exemplars, as had their Ming and Qing predecessors. The modern beauties are the imagined everywoman of the present and the future, rather than models from the past. These modern women are presented as being ripe with the potential for a new social code in a period when values were in flux and the stranglehold of Confucianism loosened. The disappearance of moral exemplars from the modern collections marks the decline of Confucian morality in everyday life over the first decades of the twentieth century. Changes in the depictions of romantic relationships reveal the emergence of autonomous citizens who act in their own interests, embrace new ideas about social interactions, and contemplate new significances for their physical body. The ancient beauties were routinely depicted as dependent upon significant men in their lives and lacked an identity outside of those relationships, whereas the modern beauties are often proactive in creating their 131

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relationships with men. The ways that love and romantic longing are depicted in the traditional One Hundred Beauties reveal a preoccupation with female passivity in relationships with men. The only acceptable actions for traditional beauties are those that involve sacrificing themselves for their menfolk. Modern women, in contrast, are depicted as taking direct and intentional action to advance their romances, their autonomy and selfsufficiency calling up those democratic values desired of citizens in the new nation-state. While invocations of the sensual and alluring aspects of female beauty are common to both old and new One Hundred Beauties, the explicit eroticization of the everywoman ideal increases through the twentieth century. And it is largely unmediated by moral warnings or lessons. The beauties’ portraiture genre was appreciated for its sensuality, with subtle sexual and romantic references suggested by carefully placed symbols.2 Banana palms symbolize the loneliness of abandoned women; incense burners, the destructive fires of passion; and the fluff of willow blossoms, the bliss of love. Clouds, mist, and rain signify the sexual act, butterflies symbolize men’s attraction to beauties, and fans indicate the impermanence of love and men’s ready abandonment of their courtesans.3 These are all references that readers in the early Republican period would have readily recognized. However, modern artists were not confined to using placeholder symbols to generate an atmosphere of romance or to hint at the sexual allure of the female form. Dan Duyu’s inclusion of nudes in his illustrations from the early 1920s is a radical break with earlier formats for this genre and takes his readers to a new moral and aesthetic space that challenges the old morality of traditional exemplary women. His embrace of the nude model— controversial even at the time of publication—is a rejection of Confucian morality, which kept women covered in cloth and secluded inside their homes or behind screens. Many of his nudes encourage readers to consider multiple perspectives on the single female form through the ingenious use of reflections, mirrors, semitransparent screens and clothes, or artists’ works-in-progress. Modern readers are led to consider that there are multiple ways of seeing the world depending upon one’s position. Dan’s expertise as a filmmaker no doubt contributed to his capacity to imagine and then recreate multiple dimensions of a single human form in the single page. Dan’s depiction of a young woman kneeling next to a brook (fig. 5.1) gives readers two views of her body—one directly across the water and one from underneath as the reflection captures

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5.1. A beauty looking at her reflection. Dan Duyu, 1923. DYBMT, 3:35.

her body from below. The caption describes how her body is set off by the clarity of the brook’s water and the whiteness of the stones on the bank and notes that she is also looking at her own reflection. She is both the observer and the observed. Dan’s challenge to the Confucian cloistering of women and his assertion of the physical beauty of the female form are both radical and alluring: a modern sensuality emerges from his brush. The One Hundred Beauties are given full bodies and presented as exemplars of the possibility of new perspectives on morality, relationships, and physicality. FEMA LE LOYA LT Y IN THE FACE OF MA LE INCONSTANCY

A key aspect of the romantic appeal of the imperial beauty is her vulnerability to the whims of the men in her life—usually her father or husband but sometimes her lover. A remarkable number of women in the One Hundred Beauties collections produced during imperial times are abandoned, forsaken, or misunderstood wives, lovers, or concubines. The idealization of female suffering over lost love and the women’s continued longing for their menfolk—no matter how unconscionable the men’s behavior—were central to Confucian orthodox romantic thinking. Chastity norms held that a woman

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should ideally have one husband for her entire life, making the death or departure of a husband or lover an extremely difficult time for women. In fact, widowhood was sometimes followed by suicide as women tried to avoid remarriage.4 Which husband would she serve in the afterworld once all were dead? Female loyalty and constant fidelity to their men, regardless of hardship or death, were romanticized through the exemplars presented in the old One Hundred Beauties. This self-sacrificing constancy was the key feminine virtue, and the beauty’s suffering is central to her romantic, erotic, and aesthetic appeal. None of the beauties in these orthodox collections “moved on” after being discarded by their men; rather, to be considered in the top hundred supremely beautiful women, a discarded woman had to demonstrate ongoing suffering and express continued loyalty to the man who had shifted his affections elsewhere. The lovelorn romantic beauty is typified in the life of Ban Jieyu (ca. 48 BCE–ca. 6 BCE). The abandoned concubine of Emperor Cheng of the Western Han was known for her beauty and talent. She was a preeminent woman of letters in her era, and her “Elegy for Myself” (Zidao fu) is the sole extant work in the rhapsody (fu) genre written by a woman.5 Despite her charms, fickle Emperor Cheng replaced her with new favorites: Zhao Feiyan, a singer and dancer of exceptional beauty (see fig. 2.13), and her sister, Zhao Hede. Histories of the Han record that the Zhaos brought promiscuity to the palace. As a result of the Zhaos’ machinations, Ban was accused of witchcraft and expelled. Demonstrating her constancy, Ban served the empress, who was also out of favor, until the latter’s death. Her “Elegy” was written while in exile from the emperor, and another poem attributed to her, “Resentful Song” (Yuan ge xing), expresses the misery of the abandoned woman.6 Because Ban likens herself to a discarded autumn fan in “Resentful Song,” pictures of her routinely include a circular fan. Fans became symbols of love’s fickleness and men’s inconstancy for centuries to follow. Both Qiu (fig. 5.2) and Wu use fans in their illustrations, where the romance of the loyal-but-mistreated lover is the underlying narrative. Readers learn that good, desirable women are loyal to their men despite their own misery or men’s inadequacies. Passive and cloistered in their bowers, the best they can do to alleviate their pain is to craft a poem that expresses their misery.7 In contrast to the pining beauty of the imperial era images, Shen Bochen’s beauty is not sad as she holds her fan over her mouth (fig. 5.3). Rather, she is remembering a tryst with her beloved. While she yearns for a future rendezvous, she is not miserable. The absence of a historical backstory

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5.2. (left) The discarded and resentful Ban Jieyu. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:17. 5.3. (right) A beauty holding a circular fan. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 133.

illustrating Confucian moral teachings means the modern beauty is not suffering and focused on a past romance, as was Ban Jieyu; rather she is contemplating a happier future. The appearance of a balcony and curtaining in the modern picture confirms its Chineseness. The moral loading of the images has changed fundamentally, but the aesthetic frame connects the modern beauty directly to generations of desirable imperial beauties. The tragic suicide of the talented flutist Lü Zhu (d. 300) reveals the extent to which women perform extreme loyalty to men who also remain steadfast. Lü Zhu, a renowned musician, dancer, and teacher, lived during the Western Jin dynasty. As a young girl, she was purchased by an official, Shi Chong (249–300), and attained great fame while in his house. Power shifts in the palace left Shi Chong vulnerable to attack from men seeking to strip him of his wealth. One of these, Sun Xiu, demanded that he hand over Lü Zhu. On refusing, Shi Chong was dragged out for execution. Lü Zhu swore to die before him and threw herself over a balcony.8 Wu Youru’s picture of this virtuous and loyal woman depicts the moment when she leaps from

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the balcony—arms, legs, hands, and feet all draped in cloth as she falls, amplifying her virtue and modesty (fig. 5.4). Her signature flute, tucked into her waistband, marks the loss of this talented musician. Zhuo Wenjun (ca. 179–after 117 BCE) is another beauty famed for her reflection of women’s constancy in the face of men’s inconstancy and the power of men over women in imperial times. Zhuo is an exemplary representation of women’s virtue in her dependence upon and loyalty to the two key men in her life: her father and her husband. The daughter of a wealthy man, she returned home after being widowed early. While there, she became entranced with Sima Xiangru, one of China’s most famous early fu writers, on hearing him play the qin.9 Sima was living in penury, having lost his patron, and was dependent upon the generosity of an old friend, who introduced him to the Zhuo household. Zhuo Wenjun was so enamored with Sima, and he with her, that the two ran off to live in Chengdu. Wenjun’s father severed ties with his daughter as punishment. In desperate circumstances, the couple borrowed some money and bought a wine shop. Wenjun served guests, and Sima managed the store. This reduction to manual labor of two former cultivated literati is the feature of both Qiu’s (fig. 5.5) and Wu’s illustrations. Eventually, Wenjun’s father gave in to the entreaties of family members and alleviated the hardship inflicted on these two talented individuals. He offered the couple funds to resume their literati lifestyle.10 But this happiness was soon threatened when Sima’s newfound wealth prompted a desire to take a concubine. Wenjun condemns his wavering affections in a poem titled “A Song of White Hair.”11 The poem reproaches men for their failure to hold to their vows of living with their wives into old age. The poem featured frequently in later operas and plays as a marker of the tragedy of women’s dependence on fickle men.12 Wenjun’s story reminds men of their power over women but also of their responsibilities in relationships. Male readers are perhaps enthused by the idea that a woman would love them as much as Wenjun did—facing poverty and menial labor, abandoning her father, and then pleading with her husband for fidelity. And ultimately forgiving him when he assents to her request. While women like Wenjun are not completely passive, they are ultimately dependent upon men for their wealth and happiness. To change her circumstances, the only tool Wenjun could deploy was persuasion. Tales of women’s boundless, chaste devotion to their men disappear in the modern era. This does not mean that romantic love is absent. Republican artists continue to include romance in the narratives of their new-style

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5.4. Lü Zhu committing suicide. Wu Youru, 1895. GJBMT, shang:17a.

beauties, but the historical layers of morality that produced, as an object of allure, a passive woman pining for a misled man have largely vanished. A woman’s misery or self-sacrifice is no longer central to the One Hundred Beauties story of love and romantic longing. The beauties of the modern era emerge as proactive builders of their relationships. Sometimes modern technology facilitates the romance. Ding Song’s depiction of a girl talking on the telephone is accompanied by text that reveals she is talking to a romantic interest (fig. 5.6). The text explains that the gods clearly have supernatural powers, since although the two sit under different skies and a thousand li (Chinese miles) apart, they are connected by fate and linked by the wire. Ding makes a pun on the word “wire” (xian); the same word in the context of the two preceding characters (yinyuan) is a well-known reference to the red “thread” that invisibly connects destined lovers. Romance blossoms thanks to the electronic thread of exotic, modern telephony. Telephones had arrived in the foreign settlement of Shanghai in the first years of the 1880s, thanks to the Danish Northern Telegraph Company, but their reach was limited, and in 1910 the entire nation had only

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5.5. Zhuo Wenjun and Sima Xiangru in their wine shop. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:39.

seven thousand sets. In America in the same year around 20 percent of all households were connected by phone.13 The exotic nature of the telephone for most readers of modern beauty images would have added to the excitement of seeing a woman phoning her boyfriend. Another of Ding’s pictures shows a woman, en route to visit her fiancé, seated on a tram—the modern transport method facilitating their crosstown romance (fig. 5.7). The idea that a bride-to-be would visit her intended groom runs counter to traditional patterns of marriage, in which the couple’s separation was idealized.14 In visiting her betrothed, she is asserting a Republican citizen’s right to move about public space freely and of her own volition, without accompanying family members and servants. The tram creates a new space in which new morals around romance can be performed—and this new morality allows women to take more initiative.

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5.6. A beauty on the telephone with her boyfriend. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 3:1.

A cursory glance at modern images might lead readers to miss the romance because the deceptively innocent depiction of young women performing everyday household chores is only given romantic overtones through the accompanying text—as with the woman traveling by tram to visit her betrothed. Ding’s picture of a young woman seated on a chair beneath a shady pergola is another example (fig. 1.9). The image gives the impression that the young woman is simply sewing in a cool and pleasant environment. But the text provides another layer of allure. She is sewing her wedding trousseau and thinking about marriage. With the topic of imminent marriage raised, her romantic appeal increases. Another image depicts a young beauty drawing water from a well, but the accompanying text tells of her imminent marriage (fig. 5.8). Descriptions of the silken rope that she pulls up from the ancient well are followed by the news that she is going to marry a merchant. She is accustomed to domestic labor, so the prospect of an ele­ vated marriage is quite sensational news. The romantic allure of the beauty is sustained across both periods, but the shift in women’s agency is dramatic. Modern beauties are more likely to be active participants in the relationship. Misery and self-sacrifice are

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5.7. (left) A beauty on a tram bundled up against the cold. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 4:23. 5.8. (right) A soon-to-be-married beauty drawing water. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 4:5.

not used to amplify the poignancy of the image. And modern technology creates fresh spaces and scope for a new morality to emerge within these modern relationships. Romanticizing relationships that include women as active, enthusiastic partners, rather than miserable victims or passive chattels, demarcates the subjects of old dynasties from the aspiring democratic citizens of the new Republic. SE XUA LIZ ATION OF THE BE AUT Y: EROTICA AND THE ONE HUNDRED BE AUTIES

The traditional collections of One Hundred Beauties are not explicitly ­pornographic, especially when one considers the range of Chinese pornography available in printed form to literati, but they are mildly erotic.15 The Republican images are arousing rather than pornographic.16 Prominent calligrapher, editor, and essayist Wang Dungen’s preface to Ding Song’s 1917 collection reveals the morally ambiguous position of the images as pur­ veyors of sensual beauty with an exhortation to uplift readers who may view

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the images with less salubrious intent: “We should follow their [readers’] natural attraction to women’s beauty and respond to it with sublime and elegant pictures so as to make those with base tastes and interests gradually become morally pure.”17 This putative didactic intent was a standard device for publishers of erotic and pornographic stories for centuries in China, and readers would have recognized the cultivated ruse instantly. By the early 1920s Dan Duyu carved out space for a more explicit sensuality with his nudes. But all three Republican artists modernized traditional motifs of sexual desire and made the idea of modernity itself sensual. The Republican collections made ordinary woman in ordinary scenes objects of sensual speculation. The everydayness of the scenes reveals the artists’ democratic consciousness. They used new printing technology and new drawing styles to depict these new sensual tastes and expanded the range of women who were eroticized. But as with the Ming and Qing counterparts, women rather than men were the focus of erotic contemplation.18 This shift in sexual aesthetics includes the modern phenomenon of public women who were not prostitutes. Being hidden and secluded no longer increased allure. Rather, being seen in public became desirable. Modern technologies also added to the everyday eroticism of the public space. In late Qing and early Republican fiction, new transport technologies were used as tropes to enhance eroticism. In an episode in Zhang Chunfan’s Nine-​Tailed Turtle (Jiuweigui), courtesan Shen Erbao learns to ride a bike so as to outdo her competitors. The flashing movement of legs and feet as she rides through Shanghai mesmerizes bystanders.19 Similarly, in one of Ding Song’s images, an electric fan serves as a modern prop to invoke the nervous sweating and flushed cheeks of young lovers. Ding Song’s young woman sitting under a whirring ceiling fan has her back to the reader, but the text explains that she is sneaking peeps at her fiancé while the fan cools the fragrant beads of sweat and her blushing cheeks (fig. 5.9). Symbols of sexual congress from the Qing also continue to be used in the Republican illustrations. The image of a beauty on a garden swing is a long-standing symbol of sexualized movement and always appears alongside the containment of women within enclosed personal garden spaces.20 All Republican artists include modern beauties on swings in walled gardens. But Ding’s modern beauty stands on the swing in an athletic mode as she pushes off with the strength of her legs and feet, her long braid flying in the wind. A European-style garden seat graces the background of the walled garden (fig. 5.10).

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5.9. (above) A beauty blushing beneath the electric fan. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 42. 5.10. (left) A beauty on a garden swing. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 4:18.

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5.11. A martial artist practicing with her swords. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 99.

Another of Ding’s sketches uses the text to reveal the sensuality in the athleticism of the beauty (fig. 5.11). A wide-legged beauty dexterously wields two swords as she practices martial arts. She faces a wooden frame, with a swing tied up to free space for her movements. The text explains that after she has finished with her swords, she will ride on the swing. Her body is as “light as a flying swallow” and as mobile as Hong Fu and Hong Xian. Flying Swallow is another name for the Han dynasty courtesan Zhao Feiyan (see fig. 2.13), whose sensual charms and slender form won her the position of empress and destroyed Ban Jieyu (fig. 5.2). The beautiful imperial concubines Hong Xian (see fig. 2.19) and Hong Fu are magical swordswomen romanticized for their loyalty to their men. The sensuality of Ding’s cap­ tion makes the illustration more than merely a display of modern female physicality. One of Shen’s swinging beauties crosses her trousered legs at the ankle as she gazes directly at the reader. Crossed legs carry well-recognized sexual connotations in Chinese art, but the calligraphy accompanying the text also alerts the literate reader to a deeper erotic reading.21 The text includes the words “wind,” “clouds,” and “tussled hair”—traditional symbols of

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sensuality. One of Dan Duyu’s swinging beauties is similarly rendered more sensual through form and text. Seated looking directly at the reader, she is a cross-legged beauty wearing a skirt with a Chinese-style high-collar, sideopening shirt. Earrings dangle at either side of her face, which is framed with a short, thin fringe. The caption reminds readers that she is not a palace girl dissipating her “spring moodiness”—a metaphor for sexual desire.22 Even though the modern anonymous beauties lack the rich contextual stories of figures like the sexual predators Zhao Hede and Zhao Feiyan, there is an eroticization of the everyday, through actions like self-­adornment or bathing, evident in the Republican drawings. Voyeurism was central to the allure of the traditional images, and many pictures position the reader as if looking into the women’s private inner quarters. Although modern beauties moved about in public, there is still a voyeuristic pleasure in seeing the private realm, with copious images of the beauty at her mirror. Images of modern women at their toilette abound—decorating their hair, putting on earrings, and applying cosmetics, all activities that invite contemplation of the intimacy and erotic scope of the feminine boudoir. One of Ding Song’s beauties has an electric light dangling over her mirror to amplify the modernity of her self-adornment. The paneled screen and the circular table mirror remind readers that they are still in China.23 Other images explicitly invite the reader to watch the beauty dress. Ding’s picture of a beauty looking at herself in a full-length mirror as she ties her shirt while contemplating whether she has gained weight at the waist (fig. 5.12) is a typical example of the everyday eroticism of some of the modern beauties and a continuation of traditional illustrations that allowed readers to spy on women in their boudoirs. The reader admires the beauty appraising her own physical appeal; she has an active role in assessing herself. Shen Bochen uses the same motif in his image of a beauty dressing to go out. She stands contemplating her size in the full-length mirror as she puts her Western-style coat over her Chinese shirt and long skirt. She is off to visit a friend for a banquet in the cold.24 Another of Ding’s drawings positions readers as sneaking a surreptitious view of a woman arranging her hair in a mirror. She has stolen back to her room during the New Year’s celebrations, snatching the opportunity to fix her hair after its silk ribbon came loose. Readers peek in on the woman’s moment of privacy, taking in a full view of her back, while the mirror provides a front view of her upper torso and inner arms.25 The reader’s voyeuristic position is powerful, since the beauty does not know she is being

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5.12. A beauty checking her waistline in a mirror. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 4:7.

observed. She is seen from behind by a person who also sees her front thanks to the mirror’s reflection. As with the beauty looking at her reflection in the brook (fig. 5.1), the modern reader is reminded of the potential for considering multiple perspectives within one frame. One of Shen’s graceful beauties, depicted putting on her cosmetics, ­confounds the divide between men and women (zha yin yang) with her masculine greatcoat (fig. 5.13). She stubbornly persists in wearing cosmetics despite the manly coat, and passersby might be duped into thinking they had just caught a whiff of a flower’s scent. Once again, Shen merges the Chinese with the Western, creating a modern Chinese vision of a woman heading out of her house. But he also invokes the allure of the cross-dressing woman at a time when anxiety about not being either Western or Chinese (bu Xi bu Zhong) was matched by anxiety about intermingling of the genders (bu nan bu nü).26 If women moved into men’s (public) space, what was stopping them from wearing men’s clothing too? Shen depicts a beauty washing the grime of a night of drinking from her face with hot, fragrant water, and readers are told that she is a sex worker, using the euphemism “a person in the know.” The clothing is Chinese, but

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5.13. (left) A cosmetics-loving cross-dresser. Shen Bochen, 1913. XXBMT, 90. 5.14. (right) A beauty drawing the curtains before she washes. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 4:13.

she wears a Japanese-style apron over the top, and the tiled bathroom, with electric wall lights and a checkered stained-glass window, mark this as a very modern establishment. Shen’s readers observe the beauty washing without her knowledge as she leans over the basin with her eyes covered by the washcloth.27 Sometimes voyeurism is consciously on the beauty’s mind. Ding’s picture of a young woman, just out of her nightclothes and washing her face in a basin, is accompanied by text that suggests a man is peeking from behind the ­curtains. Ding has placed the viewer behind those very curtains, positioning him or her as the voyeur.28 And the same suspicion of being spied amid ablutions appears in his image of a young woman about to wash (fig. 5.14). She pulls the curtains closed to be sure she won’t be spied on as her naked heels flick up from her slippers. She turns her head to look back at the reader while in the act of drawing the curtains. The text explains that she is closing the curtains because she fears that if her lover catches a glimpse of her bathing, he will be overwhelmed. The ambiguity of the voyeuristic position is

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5.15. A beauty seated on a bathtub. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 1:31.

encapsulated in her backward glance. Is the reader the one she is screening out or the one she is allowing to peep? Does she know, or just suspect, that the reader is looking at her preparations for bathing? NUDIT Y DIRECTLY CHA LLENGING CONFUCIAN MOR A LIT Y

Traditional Chinese art is largely devoid of nudes because notions of civility were connected directly to one’s apparel. The unadorned body was regarded as a form of savagery and lack of cultivation.29 Nudity was simply barbaric. But by the 1920s it was modern, and the number of nudes appearing in pictorial magazines began to expand at that time. With his illustrations of nude or seminude beauties, Dan pioneered a new theme for the genre.30 Dan Duyu’s depiction of women washing portrays them nude, whereas illustrations on a similar theme by Ding and Shen less than a decade earlier were limited to fully clothed beauties washing their faces. Dan instead draws a modern bathroom with a nude beauty sitting on the edge of a bath (fig. 5.15). Her buttocks curve over the end of the Western-style bathtub as she stretches her leg to toy with a sock. Her soft, smooth skin contrasts with the hard

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5.16. A wet-haired beauty on the riverbank. Dan Duyu, 1923. DYBMT, 4:32.

surfaces of the tiled walls and ceramic basin and bath. Her hair is clipped up to give full view of her neck. Sometimes the nudes are models for art classes or innocents bathing, but many of his beauties invite the readers to sensual thoughts through the position of their heads, the expressions in their eyes, or the placement of hands and legs. Other times, the nudity is gratuitous and out of context. His lovesick beauty lying on rocks at the water’s edge has her hands reaching into the water. The length of her long, white body is stretched out for the viewer’s contemplation.31 Another waterside beauty is bent over, with her hair dripping to the ground as the wind blows through the willow trees. The text references Longnü, the mythical mermaid and daughter of the Dragon King, to remind readers of the Chinese context of this unusual scene

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5.17. A model adjusting her sock. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 1:11.

(fig. 5.16). The legend of the Dragon King’s daughter is a popular story of the tragedy that befalls a woman with a dissolute husband. The Dragon King takes revenge on behalf of his wronged daughter. 32 The inclusion of this historical reference gently reminds any male readers not to become dissolute even while they admire the nudes. Dan Duyu shows off his mastery of perspective and detail, including props as decorative backgrounds for his scenes of artists’ studios where nude models pose. One complex picture shows a model seated with her leg over the arm of the chair as she fixes her footwear (fig. 5.17). A half-finished canvas in the backdrop provides the posterior view of a nude female form for readers, while they also have the anterior view of the model as she dresses. The accompanying text tells readers that the room is filled with the sounds of music and remarks on the shyness of the model. Other props associated with a creative life dot the room—violin, sheet music, paintbrushes, vases, and frames. Another model stands in front of a flowered wall with a tall planter and a long draping cloth as props (fig. 5.18). Her slightly raised foot, with her chin tilted downward as she looks at the reader, mirrors her consciousness of the blemishes on her skin, as expressed in the text. Dan’s expertise with mesh techniques, used to create drape in cloth

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5.18. A model posing with a length of cloth. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 2:34.

and texture on the walls, ensures that the jade-like white flesh of his beauty is given best effect. The modern, cultured setting of both these beauties legitimizes their nudity. Dan’s modern women are regularly presented in the middle of undressing, removing their last items of clothing as they prepare to sleep or bathe. In one detailed sketch Dan Duyu provides a translucent screen to protect the modesty of his disrobing beauty, but the text alludes to her vanity. The room is decorated with an eclectic mix of Western and Chinese decor, and a piece of clothing is draped alluringly across the top of the screen while her bare heel pokes out (fig. 5.19). Again, Dan’s expert mesh technique gives his sketches a depth that Ding and Shen did not achieve in their simpler drawings of only a few years earlier. Another example of his dressing beauties shows a woman in front of her mirrored dresser looking at the reader as she pulls on her shirt (fig. 5.20). The text reminds readers of the fragrance and delicacy of the scene. It too has a screen at the margins of the frame, with a piece of discarded clothing on the floor, adding to the impromptu feeling that the viewer has caught the beauty in the act of dressing.

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5.19. A beauty disrobing behind a screen. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 1:47.

Dan extends readers’ gaze into personal space by drawing beauties in bed. His sleeping beauties are frequently in a disheveled state, with chest buttons unclasped or legs akimbo (fig. 5.21). His remarkable image of a beauty sleeping under mosquito netting is alluring in its naturalness and intriguing in its penetration into the personal space beneath the netting. The text intimates that she is in a deep drunken slumber. Another pictures a beauty sitting on the side of her bed, stretching her arms above her head, after having gone to

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5.20. A woman dressing in front of a mirrored dressing table. Dan Duyu, 1923. DYBMT, 4:42.

bed late (fig. 5.22). The style of bed, the mirrored dresser, and the side table with bed lamp are all trappings of a modern bedroom, but the beauty herself is clearly Chinese. His natural, impromptu images also include a beauty sitting with her knees up, dressed in an undershirt and shorts and looking away from the reader in a large, pillowed, Western-style bed.33 The complex interplay among plants, insects, clothing, props, and accessories in the frames of the One Hundred Beauty genre shows that in both old and

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5.21. (left) Sleeping under mosquito netting. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 1:21. 5.22. (right) A beauty stretching in bed. Dan Duyu, 1923. DYBMT, 4:1.

new styles, the body could be eroticized regardless of the amount of skin revealed.34 However, the Republican artists provide new scope for the creation of a sensuality of the everyday act and the ordinary woman. It is a modern form that is freed of the moral overtones of both traditional femme fatale stories and pornography.35 The modern beauty, whether nude or wearing her pajamas, is liberated from historical moral tales because she is just going about her daily life—getting up, getting dressed, or taking a wash. Likewise, readers consuming these new-style images could imagine a nation of new moral codes through these newly liberated beauties who are viewed and view themselves from multiple perspectives. These women are sensual and sometimes shy about their nudity, but they are beauties nonetheless, and their inclusion in a time-honored genre marks the start of a new sexual morality. The new-style artists created a world in which women were romanticized for having autonomy and taking active roles in their relationships. The public and private appraisal of their physical bodies stands as a direct challenge to Confucian morality. While the modern beauties are freed from centuries of Confucian moralism with their promise of a modern sensuality, they are still

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commodified as objects for mass perusal. Women’s bodies are the vehicles by which both the old morality and the new possibilities were/are presented. However, in the chapter to follow, we see how the modern beauty collections created the possibility for a wider range of ordinary men and women to become legitimate consumers of these visions of other ordinary woman as desirable beauties. In the Republic, consumption of One Hundred Beauties is open to the “people of the public” and not just the literati.

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N E W CON S U M E R S , N E W A U DIE N CE S

In contr ast to the fr equent depiction of men watching or listening to the Qing beauties, the modern beauty remains independent of an identifiable male gaze. Not one of the Republican pictures includes an adult male in the frame, whereas the Qing images include multiple male figures. The only man viewing the Republican beauty is the man reading the book, magazine, or newspaper in which the new-style beauty’s image appears. His viewing experience is not mediated by the presence of any male literati or political figures drawn explicitly or implicitly into the illustration, as is the case with the Qing images.1 The beauty is displayed as an independent woman going about her business, feeding her family, going to school, or skating. But significantly, Republican artists have also established the independence of the reader of the images. The absence of an explicitly drawn male audience in the Republican images also opens the possibility for a female readership at a time of rapid expansion in periodicals and newspapers targeting women readers.2 It also creates space for the homoerotic gaze of the lesbian reader, as a new consciousness of same-sex desire emerged in the Republic within medicalized discourses of sexology.3 This new, more open range of potential audiences also created scope for women to be seen as active participants in the creation and consumption of visions of female desirability. The removal of the panoptical imperial, male figure of the Qing images makes the early Republic era a more democratic, less hierarchical, and less predetermined commercial publishing market. The Qing illustrations amplify the beauty’s positioning in an established relationship to another person—primarily a husband or lover. She is not available to just any man; she is already the property of another and frequently has an extensive historical legacy of poems and plays as proof. The Qing illustrations, in their depiction of a fantasy of desire or prestige, are built 15 5

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on predetermined relationships. Courtesans pine for lost lovers, noble women consider their duty to husbands, fathers, or lovers even when the men are not explicitly present in the image. Qing images that include male figures in their frames effectively authorize male literati as the legitimate viewers. The illustrations are crowded with other men’s desires and other men’s stories. In contrast, the Republican beauty appears on her own, relieved of the historical baggage of men’s perceptions. Modern readers can assume their ownership of the beauty as they gaze upon her form. This rising individuality in the reader’s position creates a democratizing and empowering citizens’ consciousness among audiences. While Republican pictures depicting women going about their daily business reflect the empowerment of ordinary women,4 the absence of a predetermined male eye also marks the empowerment of ordinary men. In these shifts, the modern One Hundred Beauty images help create the “horizontal community” that progressive Republican reformers sought to build, in opposition to the hierarchies of the past.5 The presence of women in public and the potential for men to leer lasciviously at them provided content for satirical cartoons. While Ding Song sketched images of modern beauties doing modern things for readers to enjoy, he was also aware of the prurient interests of men as they leered at the newly public women. Ding drew a series of cartoons called “Strange Social Phenomena” that ran in January and February 1919 in a daily newspaper, The Eden. He satirizes a range of deviant behaviors, including “gentlemen” who urinate in public, laziness, gambling, alcohol addiction, spitting, reliance on others for one’s livelihood, and a man in a Western suit and hat leering at a young woman walking past—a modern man with bad attitudes (fig. 6.1). The opening of viewing space to all men and of public space to all women was an integral part of the new One Hundred Beauties that Ding was instrumental in promoting, but it also clearly caused social anxiety about “plebian pornography.”6 Giving every man access to looking and leering at women undermined the ideal of literati connoisseurship that authorized elite men’s sexual “looking at women” in art books like the One Hundred Beauties or in more explicitly pornographic novels or art collections. But women were new consumers of images of women in the Republic too. And in multiple pictures from this era women are depicted looking at women, who are also looking at women. For example, the first issue of the Women’s Eastern Times shows two women looking at the cover of the very magazine issue that has them on the cover—an infinitely repeating view in which women are the subjects and the objects, the readers and the read, the viewers and the viewed,

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6.1. “Lust” (Hao Se). Ding Song, 1919. The Eden (Xianshi leyuan ribao), January 9, 2.

the consumers and the consumed.7 This clever device is a celebration of the new, more equal reading community that was forming around the production and consumption of images of women. The same vision is also presented in Shen, Ding, and Dan’s modern-style beauty collections, where readers are encouraged to develop horizontal connections with other citizens rather than the hierarchical ones of their past lives as subjects.8 MEN IN AND OUT OF THE FR AME

In the Qing images, whenever men are present, literati or lordly authority, approval, and ownership are amplified. Wu’s and Qiu’s illustrations of the Three Kingdoms beauty Diao Chan show her praying in the garden to the Moon Goddess while in the background her patron, Wang Yun, listens to her expression of commitment to his country’s well-being. His witnessing of her prayer is central to the moral tale associated with her exemplary status.9 Qiu’s depiction of the slender, sex-charged Zhao Feiyan includes two male figures, one of whom is Emperor Cheng watching her dance (see fig. 2.13).10 Qiu and Wu include many images of women playing musical instruments. Though some are playing solo in a garden or pavilion, the rich context behind the images means that the women are not really alone with the

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reader. Most of the beauties depicted playing musical instruments are famed for their skill and depicted in an imperial/literati household as concubines whose talents are only for the personal viewing pleasure of their lord and master. The beauties play their instruments to perform for this explicitly or implicitly referenced male figure. With beauties known for their performance talents, such as the Tang musical genius Zhang Honghong (fl. 745– 779), men are often explicitly included in the frames. She and her father had earned their living as singers. Later she was taken as a concubine by General Wei Qing. Honghong was famous for her capacity to memorize music after only one hearing. Her beloved general died during the An Lushan rebellion (755–763); on hearing of his death, she died of grief, despite her own rather happy position in the palace as a teacher.11 Wu Youru’s picture of Zhang shows her seated, draped in layers of cloth and flowing ribbons, across a table from an aged, bearded male companion. Her qin is ready on the table as she waits for him to request musical accompaniment.12 Qiu Shouping’s illustration of Honghong includes two male figures and depicts the famous episode where her lord, General Wei Qing, uses her musical skill to shock a visiting male musician (fig. 6.2). The musician performed a “brand-new song,” only to be told that Wei Qing had heard it before. Zhang Honghong emerged from behind the screen to sing the song perfectly. The beauty—in this case, Honghong—becomes a tool for competition between men, and Qiu’s explicit inclusion of male figures in the drawing means that all viewers of the image are witness to Wei Qing’s competitive ownership of the beauty. Another example of the inclusion of the male in the picture frame can be found in the illustration of Nong Yu, daughter of Duke Mu of the Qin dynasty. She and her husband, Xiao Shi, were of modest means, but both were renowned flute players. She fell in love with Xiao Shi on hearing him imitate the call of phoenixes. Nong Yu herself played the flute so beautifully that she attracted phoenixes to the balcony of their pavilion. Ultimately, she and her husband achieved immortality and flew off riding a phoenix and a dragon, respectively. Qiu’s illustration of Nong Yu’s story shows Xiao Shi seated next to her as the phoenixes fly in, attracted by her music.13 Although Wu Youru’s picture of Nong Yu positions her alone in the garden playing her flute, the circling phoenix alerts readers to her love story and her devotion to Xiao Shi (fig. 6.3). The importance of the master as audience is also evident in Qiu Shou­ ping’s depiction of the tragic story of Lü Zhu, who committed suicide rather than be transferred to her master’s enemies. In Qiu’s image of Lü Zhu, the

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6.2. (left) Zhang Honghong sings for her lord and his guest. Qiu Shou­ping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 1:11. 6.3. (below) Nong Yu and a ­ hoenix. Wu Youru, 1895. GJBMT, p xia:19b.

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6.4. Lü Zhu playing her flute for her lord. Qiu Shouping, 1887. QD-GJBMTY, 2:18.

expert flutist performs for her doting master’s pleasure—an image of the happy days before she leapt from the balcony in a display of fidelity and chastity (fig. 6.4; see fig. 5.4). In contrast to these old-style examples, where known men are either implicit or explicit in the illustrations, the modern woman seems to be having fun with music simply for herself. There is a wide variety of instruments— including European violins, pianos, and trumpets. The women are not depicted as being in company, since the settings are usually their own sitting rooms rather than performance halls. Their distance from the musical beauties of the Qing is further marked by their competence with Western musical instruments. When Chinese instruments appear, they are often used to invoke melancholy and longing, connecting the reader with an emotional register more akin to the imperial era. Ding Song’s illustration of a beauty playing a three-stringed Chinese lute shows her seated in a room of mixed European and Chinese decor. The caption invokes the traditional theme of the pining beauty as readers learn that she is seeking solace in music for her broken heart. The beauty’s misery is amplified by the inclusion of the Chinese lute.14 Dan Duyu’s bamboo-flute-playing beauty also invokes

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6.5. A solo flute player gazing at the moon. Dan Duyu, 1923. DYBMT, 3:34.

the misery of the traditional beauty playing a Chinese instrument (fig. 6.5). She sits on a garden verandah playing her flute with her back to the reader, gazing at the moon while the accompanying text tells of her low spirits. Both images reflect the strong symbolic value attributed to traditional accessories, like lutes or fans, as markers of misery and longing. Republican beauties decorated with European musical accomplishments are not pining beauties awaiting their lords.15 One of Ding Song’s beauties declares her preference for the piano in contrast to the Chinese guzheng and pipa (fig. 6.6). “The new score of ‘Fresh Blossom’ has a crisp, clear sound like that of the guzheng and pipa. Although I am without company playing alone in my boudoir, the piano suits me best of all.”16 The word “piano” (transliterated bi-ya-na) emphasizes the player’s knowledge of foreign music and language. Ding’s beauty sits on a stool at a small upright piano, wearing a Chinese-style pantsuit, black stockings, and high-heeled shoes, ready to press the pedals of the instrument. She tells readers directly that she is playing for her own pleasure and apparently without regard for company or even Chinese instruments. Dan Duyu sketches a woman seated at a grand piano, illuminated by two electric lamps and surrounded, as she practices, by pieces of sheet music

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6.6. A beauty playing the piano. Ding Song, 1917. QD-GJBMTY, 3:23.

spread across the floor. She turns her head to look at the reader while her elegant arms reach across the keys. Her head is decorated with a simple European-style headband with earrings framing her face. Her Chinese-style jacket with high collar and side opening is set off against the immense European instrument. The accompanying text directly contrasts the grand piano with Chinese instruments: “It’s not the precious stringed se, it isn’t the cultured qin, as night approaches and quiet descends, people patiently listening.” But no audience is pictured in the frame, and the room is small and intimate; thus the reader of the book becomes the beauty’s personal audience.17 In Ding’s picture of a young woman playing a violin near a glass-framed window, her audience is none but the reader of the book. The accompanying text tells the reader that the young trouser-wearing musician has been a skilled musician since she was young, quickly learning new tunes and new instruments—like the violin (transliterated fanhelin). In each instance, the learning of the foreign musical instrument is highlighted through the musical score spread across the floor or statements about the beauties’ speed

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6.7. A beauty playing her violin. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 1:8.

in learning. And it is a Chinese woman—dressed in a sometimes modernized Chinese style of clothing—who is learning. The modern musical beauty exemplifies the transformative possibilities of Chinese gaining mastery over Western culture. Sometimes doubt is cast about the beauty’s capacity to master the foreign instrument.18 Dan Duyu’s beautiful violinist stands with her back to the reader, dressed in her high-heeled shoes with her neck revealed by a scoop-back dress (fig. 6.7). The accompanying text explains that she is noisy and screechy in her endeavors as she faces her music stand holding books and sheet music, while on the floor a violin case lies open.

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6.8. A beauty and her gramophone. Ding Song, 1916. ­SSZBMTY, 33.

The modern beauty and her musical instrument are occasionally connected with feelings of sadness. One instance is Dan Duyu’s beauty leaning against a piano, overwhelmed with sadness as she looks at the new music score with its sorrowful tune. But for the most part Western music does not implicitly romanticize misery through the female form. In this case it is her response to the music, rather than her relationship with a man, that prompts her sadness.19 Another of Ding’s images brings the technology of the gramophone into the beauty’s world and formally places her in the role of audience rather than performer. The beauty sits gracefully in a wooden chair, being entertained by the music emanating from the machine (fig. 6.8). Her room has European napery and curtains, while she is dressed in long skirt and high-collared Chinese-style shirt. The Chinese beauty makes Western technology a tool

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of entertainment. The beauties skilled in piano and violin or listening to gramophones invoke the desire for, and possibility of, success in mastering Western technology; more than simply wearing leather shoes, these women have trained and developed their modern skills. The piano and the violin carry none of the centuries-old representational burden of the lute or flute. Their novelty is alluring because it is foreign and modern, and the women playing them potentially modern women rather than kept women. And these modern women are available for the procuring gaze of ordinary magazine and newspaper buyers—not lords and literati of old with their extensive personal libraries. The opening of the genre to an audience with commercial rather than cultural power emerged with the rise of leisure reading and simultaneously prompted a change in the viewing possibilities of illustrations in this ­centuries-old genre. In the Republican era, the person buying the newspaper or magazine no longer had to channel his/her viewing as a secondary and subordinate gaze. The Republican reader was always the primary observer of the beauty. WOMEN AS THEIR OWN AUDIENCES

Another remarkable addition to the assumed audience of the modern One Hundred Beauty illustrations is the beauty herself. A striking feature of the modern images is the number that include women drawing or painting self-portraits or portraits of young women of the same social standing.20 Self-portraiture was not a common form in the Chinese tradition; portraits were completed for many different types of ceremonies and occasions, but capturing the spirit of the individual rather than their true likeness was the goal.21 Self-portraits were rare until artists embraced Western art styles— including a trend toward verisimilitude. Republican beauties are depicted as excelling in this form and painting murals and portraits of all shapes and sizes. This action would have been considered as modern as using a telephone or driving a car; self-portraiture created an individual persona with an autonomous self-admiring gaze. The act was remarkably modern. Not only is the reader looking at the beauty, but the beauty is simultaneously performing the modern act of looking at herself and reproducing herself in art. It is likely that Republican consumers of these images would have been aware of the key historical reference to the late sixteenth-century play by Tang Xianzu, The Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting), in which the heroine

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6.9. (above) An artist painting a modern woman on a mural. Ding Song, 1918. MGFQBMT, 67. 6.10. (right) An artist at work. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 2:32.

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attempts to capture her rapidly fading beauty as she pines for her lover.22 The painting becomes the vehicle through which her lover is able to resurrect her from the dead. This famous antecedent to depictions of the beauty painting herself enhances the romantic air of the modern illustrations, invoking the agony of separated lovers. The modern technologies deployed in the Republican images, such as easel and palate rather than scroll and brush, and the nature of the drawing under construction, such as women painting women, together establish a modern Chinese mode of citizens’ consciousness. They speak of an independent woman creating her own life. In one of Ding’s images he draws a young beauty standing on a ladder painting a huge wall mural of a modern woman, with hair tied in a bun, kneeling at a stream. The readers do not see the artist’s face, but the woman being painted looks directly out to meet the reader’s gaze (fig. 6.9). The artist’s workspace has a table full of brushes and tubes of ink, and although she stands on the top rung of her ladder, she is dwarfed by the vision she is creating. The accompanying text tells of her skill and audacity. Dan Duyu’s beauties are frequently painting themselves or others. One image provides readers with a similar front view of the beauty on the canvas and posterior view of the artist, who has a stretch of thick, black braided hair down her back and holds a paintbrush in the air ready to make another stroke (fig. 6.10). The text compares her work favorably with esteemed Jiangnan painters of old. In Dan Duyu’s collection nude models are not only the objects of the artist’s gaze but also active in appraising the progress of the artwork that captures their form. In one illustration a model stands with a blanket wrapped around her torso, just revealing her buttocks, as she leans to see how the female artist has painted her (fig. 6.11). The artist’s legs and feet are visible under her easel. Women are both the viewer and the viewed in this scene. The text plays on a Buddhist phrase that refers to Buddha’s capacity to reincarnate and transform; the woman model is being reincarnated on the page. The nude model as a persona is completely different from bathing nudes (see figs. 5.14 and 5.15). The model knows she is being looked at and assumes a position of agency through this modern act of nude art modeling. While the reader is possibly titillated by the amount of skin revealed, the model is no naive victim in the image—she knowingly displays herself and then appraises how she is being represented.23 The modern beauty also controls the new technology of photography and the creation of modern images. Dan Duyu’s collection includes a picture of a woman, with a long thick plait down the center of her back, holding up

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6.11. A model appraising the ­artist’s work. Dan Duyu, 1923. DYBMT, 3:25.

some photographs fresh from the development fluid bath (fig. 6.12). Modern women are not only the topic of pictures; they also paint themselves into the images and develop photographs to control the creation of new technological images that can be reproduced identically over and over again. When seeking to invoke sadness, the Republican artists call up traditional references. The melancholy modern-day beauty becomes a consumer of her own image through the age-old motif of a face reflected in a pool of water. The classical reference for this trope is the story of poet Xiaoqing. The talented and cultivated young woman became a concubine in the Feng household, but the wife grew jealous of her talents and beauty and banished her to a distant residence to live in isolation. To alleviate her loneliness and misery, Xiaoqing found company in a pond’s reflection of her face. Her sadness eventually impacted her health, and she died leaving only a few poems. In the Republic, artists invoke this idea of a lonely beauty finding companionship in her watery reflection. The pond may be an art deco square rather than a traditional garden setting, but the act of the beauty viewing herself has echoes of the well-known story of Xiaoqing.24 One of Dan Duyu’s beauties looks into a reflecting pool, but the surrounds are

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6.12. A photographer developing film. Dan Duyu, 1923. DYBMT, 4:4.

distinctly foreign in style. The garden space in which she sits is bordered by a mesh fence, indicating that it is a public park rather than the secluded enclosure that Xiaoqing experienced. The accompanying text informs readers that the modern beauty is suffering from a new illness.25 The modern beauty’s presumed desire to represent herself and look upon her form is also depicted in the frequent use of full-length mirrors as props. One of Dan Duyu’s illustrations shows a woman seated on a chair in front

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6.13. A beauty looking at herself in a wall mirror. Dan Duyu, 1922. DYBMT, 1:16.

of a huge mirror. Readers are told that she is pondering her own serenity. Another in the same collection has a young woman in a pantsuit seated on a chair in front of a mirror looking at herself. The text tells us that she is deep in thought.26 Ding’s beauty checking her form in the mirror to see if she has gained weight is a classical self-appraising modern beauty (see fig. 5.12). It is no longer just the face that matters; the modern beauty surveys her whole form. Dan Duyu combines the nude and the mirror with a posterior and anterior view of a beauty who holds a sheet for modesty (fig. 6.13). A fan and pillow lie on the floor of the otherwise empty room. He cleverly uses a large wall mirror to present the reader with a nearly 360-degree view of the beauty. Readers are told that she has just finished her bath and now has plenty of time since there is nobody around. She admires herself while the reader admires her in private—since there is “nobody” about.

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The presentation of women as consumers of their own form and the removal of the implicit or explicit lordly male “owner” of the beauty open up new possibilities for a wider range of potential desiring citizens. Ordinary men and women can occupy the position of prime viewer and imagine themselves as artists or photographers who could also create similar pictures. The readers of Republican China looked upon the world with a new consciousness of themselves as entitled, active producers and consumers of their nation’s modernity in a horizontal community of other readers. They could gaze at the modern woman as she looked upon herself in her fulllength mirror, with limbs and torsos revealed for view. So too could they wonder as she created herself in her own modern portrait, sometimes as huge as a whole wall. The confidence of the modern beauty—her audacity to go out into the wide, boundless world, to present herself in full view, and to gaze upon her whole body—was a dramatic shift from the Qing beauty, who was contained in courtyards, gazed upon by her lord or master, and admired for her restraint and modesty. The idea of a horizontal community that bound all people to the nation as a public act is confirmed by the change in audience for the modernized One Hundred Beauties.

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CONCL U S IO N Drawing Popular Sovereignty

The evolu tion of the On e Hu n dr ed Beau ties gen r e ov er the course of only a few decades, from the 1880s to the 1920s, provides us with a map of how concepts like public people and popular sovereignty bedded down to produce a more democratic citizen’s consciousness compared to the hierarchical subjecthood of monarchy. Despite the chaos in political institutions, instability and violence from various military actions, and dramatic economic shifts, ordinary people embraced a new way of perceiving themselves in relation to their leaders and the state: as a “horizontally interconnected and bounded national community.”1 China’s political elites had embraced a new political discourse that included concepts of individual rights, equality, and political participation.2 They welcomed the public contestation that this discourse produced as people discovered their new position in society and literally “tried on the clothes” of the Republic and “joined in the games” that citizenship presented. China’s commercial artists were part of a new style of influential elites: they were closely attuned to public sentiment through attention to profit and publishing, but they were also politically inspired and saw themselves as agents capable of influence. Shen Bochen’s contributions to the progressive newspaper the Great Republic Daily and his satirical illustrations of (undesirable) “strange social phenomena” for The Eden show the link between his work as an artist and his reformist political views. A futureoriented vision is manifest in the political cartoons of Shen, Ding, and Dan, and also in their leisure-oriented drawings, such as their reworking of the conservative literati genre of the One Hundred Beauties. Commercial illustrators, including Ding Song, would make key contributions through 172

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their drawings to propaganda work during the War of Resistance against Japan. And as patriotic artists sought to enlist more of their colleagues in the war effort, they would describe those who continued drawing beautiful women, lipstick, and virgins as frivolous and indulgent given the magnitude of the crisis facing the country.3 Yet political change was also promoted within even this leisured, sensual genre. China’s “people of the public” were emerging from the beauties depicted, as readers of these images gained ideas about how they too could be modern and Chinese in the new Republic—regardless of its sometimes chaotic political, economic, and military conditions. The new-style One Hundred Beauties, placed in direct or implied contrast to the old-style beauties, promoted a notion that individuals, both men and women, had the right and duty to participate in their nation’s public life. For women, imagining oneself as legitimately and morally having the right to access public space was a major shift from Confucian ideologies that had prioritized women’s chastity through seclusion and footbound immobility. The women depicted by Ding, Song, and Dan are confident in both the domestic and public spheres as they adopt the new responsibilities required of modern citizens. To be effective in a modern world, citizens needed to have a modern education and command modern technologies. And so, we see myriad pictures of women out and about in automobiles, at schools, or reading newspapers at teahouses. The idea that people, rather than scholars, could participate in the core structures of the national public life as politicians or soldiers is evident in the new-era drawings as well. A new citizen’s right to public leisure and pleasure is also promoted. The hard work of being modern came with its compensations, as recreation took on positive connotations for wider ranges of people. No longer were literati pursuits of playing chess or painting calligraphy the only forms of romanticized leisure. Skating, tennis, golf, and dancing all emerge as legitimate activities that modern people could and should enjoy. A new appreciation of the physical rather than the cerebral emerges, as ancient hierarchies that emphasized mental skills are overturned through the depiction of beauties as desirably modern while performing physical roles. This new promotion of physical power is also evident in the idea that individuals should be responsible for their society and not just their family or clan.4 Independence and self-sufficiency are celebrated through making ­productive labor desirable, rather than valuing dependency and frailty. Working women appear all across the volumes, in contrast to their near-complete

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absence in old-style equivalents. They till the fields, work in banks and photography studios, and spin yarn, in addition to performing those ordinary tasks that sustain life—cooking and child-minding. Ordinary women, be they mistresses or servants, become objects of desire in this newly imagined horizontal community of citizens. The capacity to contribute to society through mundane activities is presented as a romantic ideal in the new-style images. In their imperial counterparts, only the achievement of moral goals underpinning entrenched Confucian hierarchies, such as loyalty, filial piety, and chastity, was romanticized. The nation that depended upon the contributions of these newly productive, capable citizens is also explicitly referenced in the new-style beauties. Use of symbols of the new nation, such as the flag and maps, make the new orientation explicit in the Republican images. In contrast, the old-style beauties were replicated dynasty after dynasty because they were heralded as timeless models promoting the eternal core values of Confucianism. But the nation was moving fast into the future, and looking back became less attractive. The publication of commercially oriented volumes of “present” (modern) beauties alongside the republication of “past” (ancient) beauties gave readers bidirectional focal lines—perspectives that could instantly recognize the recent past as “old” because of the presence of the fresh face of the future. The aesthetic and moral world of late imperial China emerges as a “cerebral past,” and that of the new Republic as a “physical present.” Newstyle beauties were positioned to orient themselves toward a new space that accepted its temporality and geography.5 The maps examined by new beauties outlined the limits of the national border; the trains and planes they rode and flew invoked ideals of travel across that space, while ships promised connections with other nations over oceans. This sense of space situated China as but one nation among many, putatively equal, states. The beauty in traditional garb was shrouded in not only yards of cloth but also centuries of moral lessons and projections of loyalty and dedication to the significant men in her life. The virtues of filial piety, fidelity, chastity, and loyalty are thickly layered in every image—alongside the potential for patriarchal containment of feminine sensuality, talent, and artistry. The beauty of the past was consumed as a packaged and contained figure. She was locked in the garden of literati dreams. The challenge facing new purveyors of this well-established and conservative genre was not small. To move the beauty into new times required inscribing her with new values—values that readers with a heightened sense of the future would

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appreciate. To achieve this, the artists would depict the beauty literally transporting herself through new social spaces and across new physical geographies—steering ships to foreign places. The concurrent circulation of “past” and “present” beauties in the commercial pictorials of this period accentuated the radical nature of the shift to new times and new values. Republican commercial artists captured not only the essence of “the beauty of the world”6 but also the ideas and principles that were desirable in the new society—a horizontal community that was to be liberated from the stultifying hierarchies of the old. The images communicate the values of the new education system, which was charged with creating “productive, nationalistic, modern citizens” rather than recruiting a bureaucracy, as it had been in the past.7 The independence and self-sufficiency of the beauty are striking in these images, but so too is the space these renditions opened for a new type of independence for the reader. The desiring eye of the Republican reader looked more directly at the beauty, liberated as she was of literati containment of her significance. Both the reader and the beauty were rendered citizens freed from their previous subjecthood. Not only was the beauty’s movement through space at a pace and in a form unseen among past beauties, but her path was also of her own volition and carried out independently. She went out into the world to face its uncertainties, prepared for any weather and embracing the risks of climbing, swimming, and sports. Roller-skating and running races, sailing boats and flying planes—the modern beauty was capable of any feat required of modern times. Yet through the invocation of old poetic tropes and symbols, she was modern but she was also Chinese. The referencing of the old in the modern pictures helped indigenize the foreign and created a modern Chineseness. It made China’s past useful to the modern present by indigenizing foreign ideas and exotic objects. So why did the One Hundred Beauties genre fade from prominence in the late 1920s? The genre’s decline after so many centuries of popularity partly resulted from technological advances. Consumers could see such beauties in every magazine, every advertisement and billboard. The blackand-white brush figures of Wu, Qiu, Shen, Ding, and Dan were the antecedents to the colorful calendar and advertising beauties of 1930s Shanghai. Advances in photography and the availability of cameras produced more “real” visions of modern beauties going about their modern lives in the Republic. And by the 1930s, these modern beauties really were seen everywhere in the public spaces of urban China.

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People’s desire for even richer fantasies was met by the new cinematic technology as movie theaters spread across China’s urban spaces and artists moved into new creative spaces to produce film. Dan Duyu moved on from his commercial art to pioneer full-length films, eventually screenwriting, directing, and editing films in Shanghai and Hong Kong, where he relocated after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1937. Cinema gave audiences glamorous moving—and, eventually, talking—beauties who modeled new ways of being desirable and Chinese to a community gathered in cinema halls for a collective experience of leisure citizenship. The new media rendered redundant the black-and-white brush drawings bounded by frames and pages; the fantasy world was now one of light, sound, and shared community experience. The dissipation of the genre may also be a result of the fact that the ideological and emotional work being carried out by the modern One Hundred Beauties was complete by the late 1920s. The foreign had been indigenized. The “traditional” had been identified, and Chineseness had been modernized. Ordinary people had successfully reimagined themselves as legitimate contributors to the national public sphere and celebrated their capacities beyond the control of literati structures. And of course, the war would present an entirely different challenge to the artistic world, as leisure and pleasure became both politically and practically more problematic to celebrate. A century later, at the turn of the twenty-first century, another burst of interest in the One Hundred Beauties in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) emerged. In keeping with nostalgia for the imperial era and China’s “four thousand years of culture and history,” new collections of beauties trace a direct line from the twenty-first century to the imperial era, skipping altogether the Republican beauty’s challenge to the old roles for women. The artwork is colorful and has a modern line-drawing style, but unlike the new-style beauties of the first years of the Republic, these PRC-era beauties cling to the old Confucian moral exemplars. A book by leading PRC commercial artist Hua Sanchuan (1930–2004) features the virtuous Ban Zhao, Nong Yu, Cai Wenji, and Xue Tao arrayed as they were in Ming and Qing collections.8 As Confucianism is reinherited as a positive moral and philosophical code and Chinese tradition is renovated for socialist purposes, conservative values around personal relationships and gender norms again become romanticized.

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NO T E S

Introduction: New Times, New Space, New Beauties 1 For more on Yaoniang and the importance of footbinding, see Ko, Cinderella’s Sisters, 114. 2 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 2–3. See also Fogel and Zarrow, Imaging the People; and Cheek, The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History, chapters 1 and 2, for a succinct overview of the ideological shifts occurring at this time. 3 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 3–4. 4 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 3–4. 5 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 5. 6 For an authoritative summary of the electoral shifts occurring in these years, see Hill, Voting as Rite. 7 Ding, “Paying Respects on National Day” (Gongzhu guoqing), Xianshi leyuan ribao (The Eden), October 10, 1918, 2. 8 Hill, Voting as Rite, 142. 9 Strand, An Unfinished Republic, 1–12. 10 Zhang Xiaowei, The Politics of Rights, 9; Judge, Print and Politics, 1–13. 11 See Fitzgerald, Awakening China, on the importance of “waking” imagery among reformers. See Strand, An Unfinished Republic, on the new value of public speaking. 12 For a discussion of the importance of researching the shifts that occurred in people thinking about their place in a modern world, see Ip, Hon, and Lee, “The Plurality of Chinese Modernity.” 13 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, shang:24. Many thanks to Yang Binbin, who assisted me with this translation. 14 Edwards, “Policing the Modern Woman.” 15 Yeh Wen-hsin, Shanghai Splendor, 56 and 72. 16 Judge, Republican Lens, 6. 17 Ip, Hon, and Lee, “The Plurality of Chinese Modernity,” 490. 18 Yeh Wen-hsin, Shanghai Splendor, 81. 19 Traditional Chinese timekeeping divided the night into five blocks of two hours each, called geng. Generally speaking, the first geng was 19:00–21:00, the second 21:00– 23:00, the third 23:00–1:00, the fourth 1:00–3:00, and the fifth 3:00–5:00. The precise timing would depend upon latitude and season. Timekeepers announced the change in time with drums and gongs as they walked the streets. See Bedini, The Trail of Time, 15–16.

17 7

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20 The first public clocks appeared in Shanghai in the 1870s, and through the 1920s ­cities installed clock towers to replace the traditional noon cannon. Dikötter, Things Modern, 120–21. 21 Finnane, Changing Clothes in China, 3. 22 Ng, “Gendered by Design”; Edwards, “Dressing for Power.” 23 Compare the clothing of the following contrasting images: for example, Wu’s depiction of Sun Liang’s four imperial consorts in GJBMT, shang:7b; Ding’s mother and maid playing with children in MGFQBMT, 19; Dan’s woman in a striped dress in DYBMT, 3:43. Sun Liang (243–260) was emperor of the Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period. His favorite consorts were Chao Shu, Li Ju, Luo Zhen, and Jie Hua. 24 See also his “Latest-Style Western Women’s Hats,” Xianshi leyuan ribao (The Eden), July 31, 1919, 2; and “Latest Style Skirts,” Xianshi leyuan ribao (The Eden), August 1, 1919, 2. For the history of The Eden, see Catherine Vance Yeh, “Guides to a Global Paradise.” 25 Ko, Cinderella’s Sisters, 11. 26 Ko, Cinderella’s Sisters, 18–28. See also Ko, “The Body as Attire”; Ko, Every Step a Lotus; Shepherd, Footbinding as Fashion. Shepherd shows that the incidence of footbinding correlated to imitation of social elites’ fashion: where elites bound feet, other social classes also bound feet, and vice versa. 27 On shifts in women’s education, see Bailey, Gender and Education in China; Yu, ­Yundongchang nei wai. On the role of women soldiers, see Edwards, Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of China. 28 Violence was emerging as a more acceptable modern attribute in discourses of citizenship; see Edwards and Zhou, “Gender and the ‘Virtue of Violence.’” 29 Harrison, The Making of the Republican Citizen, 59. 30 Laing, “Visual Evidence for the Evolution of ‘Politically Correct’ Dress for Women,” 113. 31 Zamperini, “Clothes That Matter,” 197. 32 Zamperini, “But I Never Learned to Waltz,” 122; Rhoads, “Cycles of Cathay,” 97. Rhoads includes a wonderful 1909–10 sketch of women on bicycles from the periodical Tuhua ribao. Mittler notes that in the late 1890s Shen bao readers were treated to an article titled “On the Fact That Bicycles Must Flourish in the Future,” in which convenience, speed, and affordability are trumpeted. Mittler, A Newspaper for China?, 428. 33 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 57. 34 Wright, “Shanghai Imperialists versus Rickshaw Racketeers,” 77. 35 Consul-General Goodnow, cited in United States Treasury Department, Commercial China in 1899, 2184. 36 Stokes, A Visit to Yale-in-China, 6. 37 Köll, Railroads and the Transformation of China. 38 Huenemann, The Dragon and the Iron Horse, 46, 86. 39 Goodnow in United States Treasury Department, Commercial China in 1899, 2204. 40 Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai, 9. On the history of printing in China prior to the arrival of Western machines, see Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China.

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41 Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai, 23. 42 Pang, The Distorting Mirror, 40. 43 See Wagner, “Joining the Global Imaginaire,” 122, for a succinct discussion of the ­origins of Touchstone Studio in 1879 from within the Shen bao newspaper company. The Dianshizhai huabao (Illustrated news from the Dianshizhai) commenced in April 1884. Major had started Shen bao a few years earlier, in 1872. For an authoritative and comprehensive study of this newspaper, see Mittler, A Newspaper for China? 44 For an extended discussion of Dianshizhai, see Ye Xiaoqing, The Dianshizhai Pictorial. 45 Reed, “Sooty Sons of Vulcan.” 46 Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai; Yeh, “Shanghai Leisure.” 47 Zhang explains that these women also were instrumental in spreading the new ­vernacular (baihua) written language. Zhang Yun, “Feminism in the Vernacular.” On women journalists, see Ma, Women Journalists and Feminism in China. On the changing relationship between women and reading, see Widmer, The Beauty and the Book. 48 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 76. 49 Mullaney, The Chinese Typewriter, 55–56. 50 Mullaney, “Controlling the Kanjisphere.” 51 Mullaney, The Chinese Typewriter, 137–47. 52 On the deep cultural significance of inkstones, see Ko, The Social Life of Inkstones. 53 Dikötter, Things Modern, 133–44. 54 On the emergence of a public identity for women artists, see Sung, “Redefining Female Talent.” 55 On women’s education, see Bailey, Gender and Education in China; and his Reform the People. 56 Cited in Chen Pingyuan, “Male Gaze/Female Students,” 332. See also Zhang Yun, “The Emerging Modern Woman.” 57 Zamperini, “On Their Dress They Wore a Body.” 58 Bailey, “‘Unharnessed Fillies,’” 334. 59 Judge, The Precious Raft of History, 77–79. See Judge’s reproduction of a 1909 illus­ tration titled “A Group of Prostitutes Pretending to be Female Students,” 78. 60 Zhang Yun, “Nationalism and Beyond.” 61 Bailey, “‘Unharnessed Fillies,’” 344–45. 62 Bailey, “‘Women Behaving Badly,’” 157. 63 Judge, “The Republican Lady, the Courtesan, and the Photograph,” 196. 64 Qian Nanxiu, “Lienü versus Xianyuan,” 87. The great Ming writer Feng Menglong is credited with starting the One Hundred Beauties genre. Wue, “Deliberate Looks,” 58. Katherine Carlitz (“The Social Uses of Female Virtue,” 121) argues that during the late Ming “the social organization of art . . . affected the way women’s virtue was imagined.” 65 Qian, “Lienü versus Xianyuan,” 87. On the Lienü zhuan, see Raphals, Sharing the Light. For a translation, see Kinney, Exemplary Women of Early China. 66 Catherine Vance Yeh, “Creating the Urban Beauty,” 400.

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67 Mann, Precious Records, 208. 68 For an excellent discussion of the how Qing women interacted with traditions of exemplars, see Yang, Heroines of the Qing. 69 On the evolution of the genre, see Tan, “Chinese Print Culture.” And for the twentyfirst-century version, see Hemelryk Donald and Zheng, “A Taste of Class.” 70 Judge, “Exemplary Time and Secular Times,” 119. For a reprint of Wei’s book, see Li Qiao, Baimeitu ji. On the impact of biographies of foreign women, see Qian Nanxiu, Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China, 159–84. On Yan’s volume, see Li Xiaorong, “Woman Writing about Women,” 56–67; and Li Xiaorong, “Who Are the Most Beautiful Women of China?,” 620–28. 71 Judge, Precious Raft of History. 72 Bailey, “Chinese Women Go Global,” 228–29. 73 The referencing of the past in the Republican modern beauty collections contrasts with publications like the Women’s Eastern Times (Funü shibao), which, on Judge’s reading, did not locate women in relation to past historical exemplars, ritual principles, or classical texts. See Judge, Republican Lens. The One Hundred Beauties collections make frequent historical references but give them new twists. 74 Claypool, “Painting Manuals and Gendered Modernity,” 30–31. 75 Ye cited in Claypool, “Painting Manuals and Gendered Modernity,” 42. 76 See Judge on the impact of international influences in Republican Lens, 22. See Dan’s drawings of beauties on covers for the fiction magazine Fiction Miscellany (Xiao­ shuo congbao), 3, no. 4 (1916); 3, no. 5 (1916); 4, no. 4 (1917); 4, no. 5 (1918). 77 I have relied primarily on collections of Illustrated Beauties that were circulated in the first two decades of the Republic, with the occasional inclusion of one-off images from newspapers and magazines. 78 For an overview of the history of Chinese comic art, see Lent and Xu, Comics Art in China, 8–17. 79 Laing, “The Fate of Shanghai Painting Style,” 958. 80 Cited in Catherine Vance Yeh, “Creating the Urban Beauty,” 423. 81 Catherine Vance Yeh, “Creating the Urban Beauty,” 441. On the operations of Fleeting Shadow, see Hay, “Painters and Publishers,” 138–39; Andrews, “Commercial Art and China’s Modernization,” 182–84. 82 Laing notes that eight of the hundred beauties in the Amoureuse are under Zhou’s name rather than Wu’s. Laing, Selling Happiness, 55. 83 Li also notes that Qiu was known as Qiu Shounian and that the collection was ­originally published in 1875. Li Xiaorong, “Who Are the Most Beautiful Women of China?,” 618. 84 Some sources list Ding’s death year as 1972, but I have followed the leading expert, Wu Haoran. See Wu Haoran, Minguo manhua fengfan, 33. 85 This book is held in the University of Chicago Library. These types of images had deep roots. Qiu’s illustrations followed two eighteenth-century works, Baimei xinyong and Lidai mingyuan shici. 86 Laing, “The Fate of Shanghai Painting Style,” 957; Li Xiaorong, “Who Are the Most Beautiful Women of China?,” 629.

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87 Hay, “Painters and Publishers,” 148. 88 Laing, Selling Happiness, 64. 89 Zheng, “Private Tutorial Arts Schools,” 323–24. 90 Ding’s fame among women readers is evident from the publication of his wedding photo in a leading women’s magazine, China Women’s World (see “Shanghai huajia Ding Song yu Jin Sujuan nüshi jiehun sheying” [Wedding photo of Shanghai artist Ding Song and Jin Suhuan], Zhonghua funü jie [China women’s world] 2, no. 1 [1916]: 16). He married Jin Sujuan in 1916. As part of a celebrated couple, her photos appeared in another women’s magazine, New Family, in 1933 (see “Minghuashi Ding Song furen” [Wife of Ding Song, famous artist], Xin jiating [New family] 1, no. 12 [April 1933]: 6). Their son, Ding Cong (1916–2009), was also a commercial artist and cartoonist of both the Republican and Communist periods. 91 One abridged edition of Ding Song’s SSZBMTY that includes only fifty images is edited by Wang Jiaseng and appears in some library catalogs under Wang’s name. It is held at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Thanks to librarian Tsang Lau Foon for allowing viewing of this rare book. Another edition of the full collection of one hundred images was published in Taipei in 1968 under the title Shanghai shizhuang tuyong. The pictures are complete, but the final two pages of Wang Dungen’s four-page preface have been omitted. I have used the more widely available Taipei version. 92 Ding, MGFQBMT. I have referred to the 2004 reprint since it is beautifully produced and readily available for other scholars and students to use thanks to Beijing’s Wenlian Chubanshe. 93 Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 39. 94 For a detailed analysis of the latter, see Judge, Republican Lens, 22. 95 Shen Kuiyi, “Lianhuanhua and Manhua,” 109. See also Wu Haoran, “Manhua jubo Shen Bochen,” 72–80. It includes some beautiful color versions of the modern beauty images. 96 Zheng, “Private Tutorial Arts Schools,” 327. In 2010 Wu Haoran edited a new collection of the Brand New One Hundred Beauties, bringing together additional images from Shen’s Supplement to the Brand New One Hundred Beauties (Xinxin baimeitu waiji) and his Continuation of the Brand New One Hundred Beauties (Xu Xinxin baimeitu waiji) in a single, remarkable volume of 191 images. Wu Haoran, Lao Shang­hai nüzi fengqing hua. Cornell University’s Wason Collection holds two volumes of Shen’s original book, which include 109 images, some of which differ from Wu’s array. 97 Ye and Zhu, Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema, 43. 98 Zhang Yingjin, Chinese National Cinema, 33. For a history of their collaboration, see Zheng Yimei, Yingtan jiuwen. 99 The images discussed in this book are by no means the only ones produced in these years, but they are the most prominent. For example, Qian Binghe (1879–1944), best known for his political cartoons and satire, published forty-four beauties in his Bing He conghua. Qian includes a mixture of modern beauties and traditional beauties and includes poems by famous poets like Du Mu and Li Shangyin alongside his drawings. Qian also published a collection of One Hundred Beauties illustrations

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by three leading Qing artists (Gai Qi, Wang Su, and Fei Danxu) in the early years of the republic (for a reprint, see Qian, Wan Qing san mingjia). Chen Yingxia (1896– 1966) published Yingxia xinzhuang baimeitu in 1923. Melbourne University has a photocopy version. 100 Zhou Jianyun, “Zhou xu,” ii. 101 Zhou Jianyun, “Zhou xu,” iii. 102 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, iii. 103 On the controversy over female nude models, see Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 66–67. 104 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern, 43.

1. Liberating the Female Hand 1 Zhou’s study noted the transformation in the value of productivity for men’s hands. Lili Zhou, “The Reconstruction of Masculinity.” 2 Laing, Selling Happiness, 103. 3 See also Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 3:3, 4:5. 4 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 76. 5 Dan, DYBMT, 4:4. See also Dan’s beauties holding a hoe, DYBMT, 3:18; and repotting a plant, DYBMT, 1:14. 6 See Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity. 7 Ching-Chung, “Pan, Consort of Sun Quan.” 8 Fong, “Female Hands.” 9 Lily Xiao Hong Lee, “Su Hui.” 10 Kinney, Exemplary Women of Early China, 84–85. 11 See also Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 140, 62, 169, 171. Dan also depicts women at needle­ craft in DYBMT, 4:45. 12 See also Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 114. 13 Xu, Wiles and Lee, “Guan Daosheng.” 14 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 1:29; Wu Youru, GJBMT, shang:21a. 15 Jia, “Xue Tao.” 16 Wu Youru, GJBMT, xia:11a. 17 Images of Diao Chan: Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 2:26; Wu Youru, GJBMT, xia:2a. 18 Long, “Diao Chan.” 19 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 196. 20 In Qiu’s image Ban Zhao points her delicate fingers, giving instruction to her students, the empress, and imperial concubines—some of whose hands are also visible as they hold books. Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 1:9. 21 Ding, MGFQBMT, 17. 22 Ding, MGFQBMT, 34. 23 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 193. 24 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 61. For the beauty packing the Great Republic Daily prior to sale, see XXBMT, 107. This newspaper ran from 1912 to 1915.

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25 Wu Pei-yi, “Liang Hongyu.” For images of Lady Liang, Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 1:28; Wu Youru, GJBMT, shang:25a. For Hua Mulan, Wu Youru, GJBMT, shang:17b. 26 Edwards, “Transformations of the Woman Warrior Hua Mulan.” On how women warriors consolidate Confucian patriarchal structures, see Edwards, “Women ­Warriors and Amazons.” 27 Laing, “Depictions of Mulan,” 182–83. 28 On the women’s suffrage campaigns, see Edwards, Gender, Politics, and Democracy. Shen’s rifle-shooting beauty challenges the male-only domain of hunting with the text emphasizing her independent expedition into the wild mountains, while rascally men use hounds and hawks. There is no space that the modern women cannot venture into in defiance of men. Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 121. 29 See Louie and Edwards, “Chinese Masculinity”; and Louie, Theorising Chinese Masculinity. 30 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 142. 31 Dan, DYBMT, 2:30.

2. A Modern-Footed Person Claiming Public Space 1 For more on the rise of physical culture in China during the early twentieth century, see Xu, Olympic Dreams; Yu, Yundongchang nei wai; Morris, “‘To Make the Four Hundred Million Move’”; Gimpel, “Freeing the Mind through the Body”; Gao, Sporting Gender; Cunningham, “The Modern Girl in Motion.” 2 Judge, Republican Lens, 255. 3 Catherine Vance Yeh, “Creating the Urban Beauty.” See also Liu, who argues that this collection was the beginning of a completely new way of thinking about women that would be manifest in the work of Shen Bochen. Liu Qiulan, “Haishang baiyantu,” 112. 4 Wu Youru, HSBYT, shang:4a, 9a, 12a, 25b. Yeh shows that Western-style carriages were “new spaces for love” and caused controversy and sensation because “the rules governing behavior in these places [parks and carriages] had yet to be established and accepted within the community.” Catherine Vance Yeh, “Playing with the ­Public,” 156. 5 Raphals, Sharing the Light, 225. 6 Wu Youru, GJBMT, shang:17. 7 Wearing trousers would diminish during the 1930s. Lin Yutang commented in 1936 that in the 1920s “Chinese women paraded the streets in trousers and to-day they are floating in long gowns covering the ankles.” My Country My People, 144. Harrist explains the importance of trousered legs as markers of new time and speed in the years. Harrist, “Clothes Make the Man.” 8 Dan, DYBMT, 1:25. See also Ding’s student punting a fishing boat with legs braced, SSZBMTY, 12. 9 Female tennis players were a popular theme and a global conversation between ­artists and graphic designers arose around it. See Judge, Republican Lens, 24.

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10 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 101. 11 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 189. 12 See fig. I.2 for Qiu’s Yaoniang. 13 Wu Youru, GJBMT, 19. 14 Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World. 15 Edwards, “The Shanghai Modern Woman’s American Dreams.” 16 Ballet also makes an appearance in the 1920s. Dan Duyu draws a joyous beauty in ballet tutu with shoes, legs bare to the thigh, shoulders, neck, and arms all revealed as she stands on one leg. The text tells of feathery clothes and carefree floating. He uses the phrase piaopiao yuxian, which includes two characters that mean “desiring a goddess” (yuxian), presenting readers with grace, lightness, and desirability in the one dancing form. Dan, DYBMT, 1:41. 17 See McLaren, The Chinese Femme Fatale. 18 Au, “Zhao Feiyan,” 245–47; and Shen, “Zhao Hede,” 250–51. For more on the Zhao ­sisters, see Raphals, Sharing the Light, 81–85. 19 Legs are significant in Wu Youru’s drawing of the seated Zhao Hede. Wu, GJBMT, shang:2b. Wu surrounds her frame with billowing clouds, her right leg curled around her left and her hand poised coquettishly against her cheek. The crossed leg, even when covered in cloth, marked the sensuality of the beauty in imperial era art—a custom continued in the Republican era. Dal Lago, “Crossed Legs in 1930s Shanghai.” 20 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 96. 21 Li Yu-ning, “Wang Zhaojun.” 22 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 1:38. 23 Berg, Women and the Literary World, 69. 24 Hua, Chinese Clothing, 33. 25 Bailey, “Chinese Women Go Global,” 254; Judge, Republican Lens, 212–22. 26 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 54.

3. Weathering the Elements, Experiencing the New Nation’s Geography 1 Zarrow, Educating China, 10. 2 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 207. 3 On how the “foreign” was a powerful construct creating the nation, see Mittler, “The New (Wo)man and Her/His Others.” 4 Volpp, “Zhu Shuzhen,” 100. Volpp’s chapter includes samples of her poems. Readers will note that Zhu makes frequent reference to other famous beauties, such as Zhao Feiyan, Yang Guifei, and Ban Jieyu. See also Lee and Wiles, “Zhu Shuzhen.” 5 Wu Youru, GJBMT, shang:22a. 6 Levy, “Cai Yan.” See also Nishimura, “Cai Yan.” 7 Cai, “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute.” 8 Dan Duyu includes a picture with the romantic caption “In search of plum blossoms, walking out on a cold street.” It shows a leather-shoed beauty wearing a neck wrap and hand muff beneath a floppy-hatted bobbed head. The shoes and the activity of walking in the cold suggest a foreign modernity, while some of her clothing and the

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search for plum blossoms are distinctly Chinese. Dan, DYBMT, 1:24. See also Ding, SSZBMTY, 4. 9 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 4:23. 10 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 4:25. Another beauty, dressed in fashionable youthful style of matching pants and top with flat cloth shoes, has her hands covered by a long muff as she sits on a fence in wintery climes. Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 3:17. 11 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 94. 12 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 86. 13 Wu Youru, GJBMT, shang:16b. 14 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 166. 15 Ding, MGFQBMT, 14.

4. One Wife for One Husband, One Mother for the Children 1 Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State. 2 Judge, The Precious Raft of History, 109. See also Yang’s study of how old and new exemplars conceived of domesticity in “A Pictorial Autobiography by Zeng Jifen.” 3 See Glosser on the commodification of the nuclear family during the 1930s in “The Business of Family”; and Leo Ou-fan Lee on its display on the covers of The Young Companion in Shanghai Modern, 67–71. On the comparison between Chinese and Korean ideal housewife models, see Jung, “Searching for the Modern Wife.” On maternalism in the women’s movement, 1930s and 1940s, see Hubbard, “The ‘Torch of Motherly Love.’” 4 Mittler, “In Spite of Gentility,” 208. This vision displaced “the politically motivated woman” and emerged to allay fears that changing gender norms generated among the broader public. 5 Schneider, Keeping the Nation’s House; and Bailey, “Active Citizen or Efficient Housewife?” 6 Zurndorfer, “Gender, Higher Education and the ‘New Woman’”; Cong, “From ‘Cainü’ to ‘Nü jiaoxi,’” 144. 7 Tillman, Raising China’s Revolutionaries, 42. 8 Hayford, “Open Recipes, Openly Arrived At,” 76. 9 The Amoureuse collection is not part of the traditional One Hundred Beauties genre because it focuses on courtesans—it is not presenting exemplars. Rather it gives insights into the theater world and the demimonde. On books circulated among theater aficionados, see Wu Cuncun, “Qing huapu liuxing zhuangkuang.” Many of these included photographs once this technology came available. 10 Wicks, “Family Pictures,” 170–76. 11 See also Wu’s depiction of a woman and child paying respects to seniors. Wu Youru, HSBYT, shang:2b. 12 Tran, “Sex and Equality in Republican China,” 193. See Zurndorfer, “Polygamy and Masculinity in China,” on changing attitudes from the Ming to the twentyfirst century.

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13 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 4:16; and Dan’s bride with Western-style veil and bouquet, DYBMT, 1:1. 14 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 4:4. 15 The call for “free-choice love marriages” filled the pages of polemical journals like New Youth (Xin qingnian), spearheaded by leading intellectuals of the time like Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu. 16 On the importance of Mencius’s mother, see Raphals, Sharing the Light, 33–35. 17 See Raphals, Sharing the Light. For discussion of texts that instructed women, even more ancient than the Admonitions, see Milburn, “Instructions to Women.” 18 Judge, The Precious Raft of History, 109. See her discussion of how the classical canon largely ignored the maternal role in favor of female chastity and wifely devotion. 19 For detailed accounts of domestic science education, see Schneider, Keeping the Nation’s House. 20 af Sandeberg, “Room for Improvement,” 195. 21 Cook, “Mencius’s Mother.” 22 Wu Youru, HSBYT, shang:17b. 23 For a comprehensive examination of how women can teach patriotism, see Judge, The Precious Raft, 115–23. 24 Pang, “The Pictorial Turn,” 25; Wicks, “Family Pictures,” 170–76. See also Hsiung, A Tender Voyage, for discussion of childhood in the Late Imperial era. 25 Tillman, Raising China’s Revolutionaries, 43. On the impacts of new views of childhood on literature, see Pease, “Remembering the Taste of Melons”; and Farquhar, Children’s Literature in China. 26 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 54. 27 On women’s publications’ embrace of new ideas about China as a nation, see Qian Nanxiu, “Competing Conceptualizations of Guo.” 28 The phrase jiang zhi wu is similar to “teaching her ABCs” since zhi and wu are very simple characters. Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 188. Shen also depicts a mother tucked up in bed after a night of heavy drinking taking the chance to teach her son to read while she rests. The bed is a draped closet bed in the Chinese style, but the cabinet holds a Western-style lamp. Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 93. 29 Bartholomew, “One Hundred Children,” 58. 30 Bartholomew, “One Hundred Children,” 58. 31 Wu Youru, HSBYT, shang:3a, 8b, xia:2a. 32 For images of pets including dogs, cats, rabbits, and birds, see Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 137, 180, 199. 33 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, vol. 2, approx. p. 27. This image is not reprinted in the Qilu shuju edition. The original XXBMT with this image is at Cornell University. 34 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 178. 35 Ding, SSZBMTY, 8. 36 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 212. 37 Wu Youru, HSBYT, shang:18a. 38 Wu Youru, HSBYT, shang:20a.

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39 Wu Youru, HSBYT, shang:24a. 40 Wu Youru, HSBYT, xia:2b. 41 Schneider, Keeping the Nation’s House, 7, 11.

5. From Confucian Virtue to a New Democratic Morality 1 Judge, “Exemplary Time and Secular Times.” 2 Dal Lago, “Crossed Legs in 1930s Shanghai,” 117. 3 Laing, “Erotic Themes and Romantic Heroines,” 68. One of Shen Bochen’s drawings shows a woman contemplating cutting back the banana palms that have grown so thick that they are casting shade and causing moss to spread. She holds a broom as she looks at overhanging branches. The text does not imply that she has been abandoned or is pining for a lover, but perhaps the palms (lover) need clearing out. Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 138. 4 Thiess, Disgraceful Matters. 5 Zheng Bijun, “Ban Jieyu,” 101. 6 For translations of “Resentful Song” and “Elegy for Myself” (aka “Rhapsody of SelfCommiseration”) and more on Ban’s life, see Knechtges, “Ban Jieyu.” 7 Wu Youru, GJBMT, shang:4b. 8 Lily Xiao Hong Lee, “Lü Zhu.” See fig. 6.4 for Qiu’s picture of Lü Zhu playing her flute. 9 A fu is prose that is interspersed with verse, sometimes called a rhapsody. 10 Chang and Yim, “Zhuo Wenjun.” 11 For translation of the poem attributed to Wenjun, see Birrell, Chinese Love Poetry, 44–45. 12 Wu Youru, GJBMT, xia:1b. 13 Jackson, Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up, 14; Casson, The History of the Telephone, 274; Fischer, America Calling, 93. 14 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 4:23. 15 See Van Gulik, Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period. 16 Laing, Selling Happiness, 103. She states that in reading Ding’s and Shen’s images “cultural and political messages behind these fresh images should not be ignored; they reinforce the rising empowerment of women to pursue a choice of lifestyles. . . . They are not helpless or listless, nor do they provoke sensual or sexual passions.” 17 Li Xiaorong, “Who Are the Most Beautiful Women of China?,” 641. The translation is Li’s. Wang Dungen was a member of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly literary school, founding its fiction magazine Saturday (Libai liu). Denton, Modern Chinese Literary Thought, 513. 18 Zhang Yingjin, “The Corporeality of Erotic Imagination, 126. 19 Zamperini, “But I Never Learned to Waltz,” 122. 20 On the frequent appearance of garden swings in the erotic art of the pre-Qing China, see Van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China and Erotic Color Prints of the Ming Period. 21 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 36. 22 Dan, DYBMT, 1:46.

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23 24 25 26

Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 4:6. Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 151. Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 3:8. On a famous cross-dressing woman of this era, Qiu Jin, see Edwards, Women Warriors and Wartime Spies. 27 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 131. 28 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 3:13. 29 Ko, “The Body as Attire,” 12. 30 Zhang Yingjin, “The Corporeality of Erotic Imagination”; Waara, “The Bare Truth.” 31 Dan, DYBMT, 2:15. 32 See Yang and Yang, The Dragon King’s Daughter. 33 Dan, DYBMT, 2:35. 34 Hay, “The Body Invisible in Chinese Art?,” 53. 35 See McLaren, The Chinese Femme Fatale; and Stevenson and Wu, Wanton Women in Late-Imperial Chinese Literature.

6. New Consumers, New Audiences 1 Zhang Yingjin, “Artwork, Commodity, Event,” 128. 2 Hockx, Judge, and Mittler, Women and the Periodical Press. 3 Sang, The Emerging Lesbian, 99–127. 4 Laing, Selling Happiness, 103. 5 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 3–4. 6 Wu Cuncun, “Pornographic Modes of Expression.” Wu notes that the same anxiety was found in the late Ming with the expansion of short-form pornographic fiction that targeted ordinary urban dwellers rather than literati. 7 Andrews, “Persuading with Pictures,” 25; Judge, Republican Lens, 1–2. 8 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 3–4. 9 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 2:26; Wu Youru, GJBMT, xia:2a. 10 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 1:43. 11 Liu Ning, “Zhang Honghong.” 12 Wu Youru, GJBMT, xia:7b. 13 Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, QD-GJBMTY, 2:7. 14 Ding, MGFQBMT, 22. 15 Courtesans are also depicted as musicians entertaining male customers in Wu’s HSBYT. 16 I am grateful to Wu Cuncun for help in translating this text. 17 Dan, DYBMT, 2:40. 18 Ding, MGFQBMT, 87. 19 Dan, DYBMT, 3:50. 20 Ding, SSZBMTY, 53. 21 Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, 9. 22 Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, 16–18. Vinograd reproduces a Ming dynasty woodblock picture of Du Liniang painting her scroll.

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23 See also Dan, DYBMT, 3:10. 24 Li Xiaorong, “Woman Writing about Women,” 100. 25 Dan, DYBMT, 2:9. 26 Dan, DYBMT, 1:9 and 3:2.

Conclusion: Drawing Popular Sovereignty 1 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 4. 2 Zhang Xiaowei, The Politics of Rights, 249. 3 On wartime mobilization of cartoonists, see Edwards, “Drawing Sexual Violence in Wartime China”; and Hung, “The Fuming Image.” 4 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 3–4. 5 Culp, Articulating Citizenship, 4. 6 Shen Bochen, XXBMT, 111. 7 Hon and Culp, “Introduction,” 4. 8 Hua Sanchuan, Hua Sanchuan hui xin baimeitu.

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BIB L IOGR A P H Y

Abbreviations BDCW

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women

DYBMT

Dan Duyu, Duyu baimeitu zhengxu ji

GJBMT

Wu Youru, Gujin baimeitu

HSBYT

Wu Youru, Haishang baiyantu

MGFQBMT

Ding Song, Baimeitu waiji

QD-GJBMTY

Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, Gujin baimei tuyong

SSZBMTY

Ding Song, Shanghai shizhuang baimei tuyong

XXBMT

Shen Bochen, Xinxin baimeitu

Sources af Sandeberg, Maria. “Room for Improvement: The Ideal of the Educational Home in The Ladies Journal.” In Hockx, Judge, and Mittler, Women and the Periodical Press in China’s Long Twentieth Century, 192–212. Andrews, Julia. “Commercial Art and China’s Modernization.” In A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-Century China, edited by Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen, 181–212. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1998. ———. “Persuading with Pictures: Cover Art and The Ladies Journal (1915–1931).” In Hockx, Judge, and Mittler, Women and the Periodical Press in China’s Long Twentieth Century, 21–56. Andrews, Julia, and Shen Kuiyi. The Art of Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Au Chi-kan. “Zhao Feiyan, Empress of Emperor Cheng.” In BDCW: Antiquity through Sui, 245–47. Bailey, Paul. “Active Citizen or Efficient Housewife? The Debate over Women’s Education in Early Twentieth Century China.” In Education, Culture, and Identity in Twentieth-Century China, edited by Glen Peterson, Ruth Hayhoe, and Yonglin Lu, 318–47. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.

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2017. GJBMT was first published as Shuo Guiyan (Beauties of the boudoirs) in 1895. [Pagination for references to Wu Youru’s illustrations uses the Biyuanhui She ­edition, except fig. I.13, which retains the Nam San pagination.] Wue, Roberta. “Deliberate Looks: Ren Bonian’s 1888 Album of Women.” In Visual ­Culture in Shanghai 1850s–1930s, edited by Jason Kuo, 55–77. Washington, DC: New Academia, 2007. Xu Guoqi. Olympic Dreams: China and Sports 1895–2008. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Xu Shiduan, Sue Wiles, and Lily Xiao Hong Lee. “Guan Daosheng.” In BDCW: Tang through Ming, 95–99. Yang Binbin. Heroines of the Qing: Exemplary Women Tell Their Stories. Seattle: Uni­ versity of Washington Press, 2016. ———. “A Pictorial Autobiography by Zeng Jifen (1852–1942) and the Use of the Exemplary in China’s Modern Transformation.” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China 19, no. 2 (2017): 263–315. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, trans. The Dragon King’s Daughter: Ten Tang Dynasty Stories. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1954. Ye Tan and Zhu Yun. Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012. Ye Xiaoqing. The Dianshizhai Pictorial: Shanghai Urban Life, 1884–1898. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Yeh, Catherine Vance. “Creating the Urban Beauty.” In Writing and Materiality in China: Essays in Honor of Patrick Hanan, edited by Judith Zetlin and Lydia Liu with Ellen Widmer, 397–447. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center for the HarvardYenching Institute, 2003. ———. “Guides to a Global Paradise: Shanghai Entertainment Park Newspapers and the Invention of Chinese Urban Leisure.” In Transcultural Turbulences: Towards a Multi-sited Reading of Image Flows, edited by Christiane Brosius and Roland ­Wenzlhuemer, 97–132. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2011. ———. “Playing with the Public: Late Qing Courtesans and Their Opera Singer Lovers.” In Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China, edited by Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson, 145–68. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. ———. “Shanghai Leisure, Print Entertainment and the Tabloids, Xiaobao.” In Joining the Global Public: World, Image and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870–1910, edited by Rudolph Wagner, 201–33. New York: SUNY Press, 2007. ———. Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals and Entertainment Culture 1850–1910. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. Yeh, Wen-hsin. Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843–1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Yu Chien-ming. Yundongchang nei wai: Jindai huadong diqu de nüzi tiyu (1895–1937) (On and off the sports field: Women’s physical education in modern East China). Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindai yanjiusuo, 2009.

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IN DE X

accessories, 6, 41, 60, 100–102, 120, 152; beauties as, 67; as markers of status, 85, 101; servants as, 49, 59; technology as, 40, 44, 94; against the weather, 100–102 accountants, 28, 46, 124 Admonitions for Women (Nüjie), 58, 116 adultery, 98, 113 adults, 93, 117, 121, 155 adventurousness, 90, 92–93, 110; as modern, 42, 69, 70, 89, 94, 96, 100 advertisements, 11, 17, 24, 37, 62, 175 agility, 3, 4, 8, 13, 44 airplanes, 21, 42, 69, 84, 89, 94, 174, 175 alcohol, 145, 156, 186n28. See also wine altars, 57, 119 An Lushan, 86, 158 Anhui, 112 animals, 36, 85, 100. See also specific kinds of animals ankles, 3, 105, 143, 183n7 anonymity: of the modern beauty, 41, 53, 144 anxiety, 6, 12, 23; about cultural intermingling, 12, 145; about gender intermingling, 145; about morals, 30, 156, 188n6 aprons, 122, 146 arms, 3, 121, 128, 144, 162; bare, 105, 113, 151, 184n16; hidden, 44, 70, 86, 136; moving, 75; strength of, 109 artists, 5–12, 35–40; beauties as, 29, 34, 56, 165–68, 171, 179n54; self-portraits, 28– 29, 165–67; as social reformers, 13, 17– 18, 20–21, 29, 34, 172; training of, 37, 39, 40 athletes, 3, 8, 73, 141, 143

audiences, 6, 66, 176; changing attitudes of, 11, 46; viewing beauties, 33, 35; wider range of, 41–42, 65–66, 155–71; women as, 10, 42, 164, 165–71 automobiles. See cars autonomy, 3, 23, 165; as democratic, 70, 92, 116, 131, 132; as modern, 23, 45, 58, 65, 68, 75, 125, 153 autumn, 62, 103, 134; Mid-Autumn Festival, 120; Spring and Autumn Period, 114 babies, 114, 117, 125, 126, 127, 128 badges, 73 balance, 22, 77 balconies, 114; beauties cloistered in, 57, 71, 136, 158; modern variation of, 70, 95, 96, 135; suicide from, 160 ballet, 184n16 balls, 72, 74, 75, 121 balustrades, 95, 103 bamboo, 127, 160 Ban Jieyu, 82, 134, 135, 143, 184n4 Ban Zhao (Cao Dajia), 58–60, 59, 176, 182n20 banana, 96, 132, 187n3 bank, 46, 174 barriers, 13, 21, 93 basins, 146, 148 baths, 144, 146, 147, 148, 150, 167, 170 battles, 64; with environment, 91; legal, 39; naval, 6, 64; with parents, 114; women in, 19, 64, 70 bedrooms, 91, 125, 152 beds: beauties in, 113, 151, 153, 186n28; closet-style, 125; Western-style, 152

203

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204

INDE X

Beijing, 7, 89 Beiyang Women’s Normal School, 32 bells, 43, 65 bicycles, 21, 23, 84, 84, 178n32 binoculars, 41, 43, 93, 95, 96, 108 biographies, 34, 46, 116, 131, 180n70 Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan), 50, 116, 179n65 birds, 36, 89, 98, 186n32. See also specific types of birds black: clothing, 73, 80, 102, 103, 109, 161; hair, 75, 167; and white, 175, 176 blankets, 114, 167 blossoms, 71, 72, 74, 98, 132, 137, 184–85n8 boats, 64, 69, 85, 89; fishing, 183n8; rowboats, 109; sailing, 84, 175 bodies, 5, 73, 75, 131, 132–33, 147; changes in, 16, 35, 40, 68; dead, 105; moving, 84–86, 89, 91, 109, 143; newly visible, 42, 147–48, 153, 171; servants as part of, 49, 59; swimming, 107; weight, 109, 143. See also nudes books, 14, 25, 35, 58, 98, 163; foreign, 60– 61; handling, 59–60, 182n20; illustrated, 15, 25, 32; markers of class, 27, 59, 74, 116; out-of-date, 34, 60; significance of changes in, 34, 60–61, 117; textbooks, 34, 61, 93, 117; women as subjects of, 156 boots, 18, 74, 95 borders, 6, 21, 26, 93, 130 boudoirs, 36, 201; beauties secluded in, 41, 69, 161; erotic spaces, 144; moving out of, 69 bouquet, 113, 114, 186n13 bowling, 74 Boxer Rebellion, 6 brains, 59. See also cerebral talents breasts, 73 brides, 3, 113–14, 138, 181n90, 186n13 brocade, 50, 85 brooks, 132, 133, 145 brothers, 32, 39, 89 brushes: for calligraphy, 25, 26, 29, 57, 116, 167; paintbrushes, 149, 167 Buddha, 167 bugles, 121 bunting, 73

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buses, 21, 22 butterflies, 98, 132 buttons, 19, 102, 151 cai. See talent Cai Yan (Wenji), 98–99, 100, 114–15 Cai Yong, 98 calendar, 26; lunar, 121; posters, 37, 175 calligraphy, 33, 57, 74, 116, 143, 173; of beauties, 25, 28, 33; of Chen Xu, 37; of Lady Guan Daosheng, 56–57; of Lady Wei, 26–27; of Wang Dungen, 38; of Wang Xizhi, 26; of Xiao Die, 38; of Xu Shiyan, 39; of Xue Tao, 57; of Zhang Danfu, 38 cameras, 12, 43, 175 cannon, 121, 178n20 Cao Cao, 98 carriages, 23, 69, 84, 85–86, 86, 91, 183n4 cars, 21, 22–23, 42, 84, 85, 90, 91, 121 cartography. See maps cartoons, 37, 156, 172, 180n78, 181n99, 189n3 carts, 44, 62, 69, 92, 101 cats, 128, 186n32 cerebral talents, 56–57, 58, 93, 109, 122; versus manual, 56, 59, 60, 74, 173–74 Chang E (Moon Goddess), 57, 119, 157 changpao, 20 Changsha, 23 Chao Shu, 178n23 chariots, 47, 48, 49, 49, 64 charm: clever use of, 57; feminine, 5, 44, 66, 85, 134, 143 chastity, 41, 50, 104, 133, 174, 186n18; changing attitudes to, 173; as Confucian value, 41, 50, 104, 173–74; defense of, 3, 133–34, 160; sacrifice of, 57 cheeks, 141 Chen Duxiu, 186n15 Chen Xu, 37; son of (Xiao Die), 38 Cheng Heqing, 117 Chengdu, 57, 136 chess, 173 chest, 73, 151 childless, 50 children, 6, 8, 9, 13, 17, 93, 100, 111–22, 174; care for, 41,113, 122–28, 130, 174;

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INDE X

education of, 41, 117, 130; groups of, 113, 121, 127; toddlers, 114, 116, 127. See also daughters; sons Chongde Girls School, 30 chopsticks, 123 chores, 43, 44, 60, 111, 112, 139 churches, 6 citizens, 3, 6, 7, 130; creating, 8, 21, 28, 66, 156, 172, 176; desirable, 43, 68; healthy, 72, 73, 74, 92; modern, 11, 12, 20, 42, 64, 110, 131; new roles for, 6, 24, 40, 42, 140; politically active, 10, 32, 61; productive, 32, 60, 112, 175; public, 61, 63, 118; relationships with leaders, 6–7, 9, 111, 116, 117, 174; rights and duties, 7, 30, 66, 121, 132, 173; traveling, 67, 69, 93, 94; women, 3, 10, 11, 19, 25, 46, 70. See also democratic consciousness civic action, 7–8, 30, 32, 64 civic spirit, 7, 25, 43, 68 civic values, 10, 65, 111 clan, 7, 111, 173 class, 10, 45; bound feet as markers of, 18, 178n26; changing significance of, 7, 45; mixed, 20, 32, 63; mobility, 47–49; modes of transport, 24; superior, 60 classrooms, 61, 118 climate. See weather climb, 16, 108, 109, 110, 175 clocks, 13–16, 14, 51, 108, 121, 122, 178n20 cloth, 5, 50, 149–50; brocade, 50; diaphanous, 35, 150; embroidered, 20, 68, 74; production of, 47, 55, 85 clothing. See dress clouds, 79, 89, 132, 143, 184n19 cold, 98, 101, 103, 104, 123, 140, 144, 184n8 collectables: One Hundred Beauties images as, 35, 38 communication, 12, 21, 26 competition, 72, 73, 75, 79, 141, 158, 175 concubines, 3, 33, 136, 182n20; abandoned, 134; absence of, 41; as exemplars, 33, 114, 131, 133; family, 113; favorite, 82, 85; talent of, 47, 77, 89, 91, 143, 158, 168. See also names of specific women confidence, 45, 66, 85, 110, 125, 171 Confucian classics, 34, 117, 119 Confucian gender order, 41, 65

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 205

205

Confucianism, 7, 34, 36; freedom from, 41–42, 131; morality of, 50–51, 58, 174, 176. See also chastity; filial piety; loyalty consorts, 33, 79, 178n23 constitutional monarchy, 7 cosmetics, 30, 144, 145, 146, 173 cosmopolitanism, 55 couches, 60, 70 courage, 64, 89, 110 courtesans, 185n9, 188n15; abandoned, 132; as exemplars, 32, 34, 156; former, 124, 125, 126, 129; and modernity, 21, 69, 112, 141; as morally compromised, 30–31; as mothers, 127, 129 courtyards, 30, 58, 69, 171 cowherds, 94, 96 cranes, 89 crickets, 121 crochet, 52 croquet, 74 cross-dressing, 64, 145, 188n26 Crystal (Jingbao), 38 crystals, 85 curtains, 79, 85, 113, 126, 135, 146, 164 daily life, 21, 59; of beauties, 41, 153, 156; of households, 41, 43, 44, 60, 111, 112, 139; new forms of, 10, 21 Dan Duyu: agile woman citizen, 4; artist at work, 166; beautiful golfer, 76; beauty in a bathing suit surrounded by water, 106; beauty with binocu­lars, 96; beauty disrobing behind a screen, 151; beauty drawing water, 46; beauty hurrying along a windy path, 99; beauty looking at her reflection, 133; beauty looking at herself in a wall mirror, 170; beauty playing her violin, 163; beauty reading about national affairs, 62; beauty seated on a bathtub, 147; beauty stretching in bed, 153; depiction of nudes, 39; driver removing her gloves, 91; hygienic housewife, 123; ice-skater, 104; life and career of, 37–40; mesh technique of, 149, 150, 169; model adjusting her sock, 149; model appraising the artist’s work, 168; model

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INDE X

Dan Duyu (c0ntinued) posing with a length of cloth, 150; photographer developing film, 169; screenwriting, 176; sleeping under mosquito netting, 153; solo flute player gazing at the moon, 161; wet-haired beauty on a riverbank, 148; woman dressing in front of a mirrored dressing table, 152; Yin Mingzhu (Pearl Ing) and, 39 dance: danger and, 82–83; European-style, 79, 80, 82; with legs hidden, 77, 79; as leisure, 79–80, 173; in moderation, 79; old styles of, 16, 75–76, 78, 134, 135; private performance of, 5, 79, 92; solo, 81 dancehall, 79, 80 Danish Northern Telegraph Company, 137 daughters, 47, 71, 98, 136, 148–49, 158; selfsacrificing, 33, 64, 105, 131; teaching of, 21, 55–56, 117, 118 daughters-in-law, 33, 51–52 de, 33. See also virtue debates, 9, 11, 62–63. See also lectures; public speaking demimonde, 30, 34, 36, 69, 121, 125, 185n9 democracy, 6–12, 116, 130; and morality, 131–54; and readers, 42; and selfsufficiency, 41; and space, 15, 32; and subjectivity, 3, 65, 67, 68, 70, 108 democratic consciousness, 8, 9, 10, 12, 24, 40–42, 83; new social formations and, 111, 112, 119, 123, 155; produced through action, 43, 64, 141, 172 dependency, 18, 22, 41; liberation from, 22; of old-style beauties, 3, 41, 60, 92, 136; of women, 18, 43, 111, 173. See also independence desks, 26, 27, 58 destruction, 34, 83, 132; of poetry, 32, 98 Dianshizhai Pictorial (Dianshizhai huabao), 179n43 Diao Chan, 57, 157, 182n17 dictionaries, 60 Diexian. See Chen Xu Ding Song: artist painting a modern woman on a mural, 166; beauties rollerskating on ice, 75; beauty blushing beneath the electric fan, 142; beauty

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 206

checking her waistline in a mirror, 145; beauty crossing a bridge on a windy spring day, 102; beauty draw­ing the curtains before she washes, 146; beauty on a garden swing, 142; beauty at her bookshelf, 61; beauty on a ladder silenc­ing clock chimes, 15; beauty p ­ laying the piano, 162; beauty posing in her bathing suit at the waterside, 106; beauty sewing her trousseau, 54; beauty swimming fully immersed, 106; beauty on the telephone to her boyfriend, 139; beauty on a tram bundled up against the cold, 140; Chen Xu and, 37; Dan Duyu and, 39; duo practicing new dance moves, 80; farmer hoeing, 45; four women roller-skating, 103; graceful tennis player, 77; latest Western and Chinese shoe styles, 17; life and career of, 37–38; “lust”, 157; mother and children celebrating MidAutumn Festival, 120; mother with a sick toddler, 127; mother teaching son about national flag, 9; political philosopher delivering a lecture, 11; soldier guarding the Republican camp, 19; solo dancer, 81; soon-to-be-married beauty drawing water, 140; student entering Chongde Girls School, 31; trio reading about competing views in a teahouse, 63; wife eating alone, 124; woman driving an open-top automobile, 90; woman sewing by lamplight, 53; young woman lounging barefoot, 71 dirt, 97 dogs, 128, 186n32 dominoes, 121 Dong Si, 99 Dong Zhuo, 57 dragons, 82, 84, 89, 148–49, 158 drapes. See curtains dreams: absence of, 70; literati, 174; new, 6, 42, 111, 121; popular, 25 dress, 6, 9, 12, 14; changes in, 6, 15–16, 20, 40; Chinese, 13, 15–16, 103, 121, 125, 128, 163; courtesans, 30–31; as cultural marker, 15–16, 20; foreign, 15; Japanese, 30, 146; military, 19; protective, 97;

2/10/20 9:06 AM

INDE X

regulations, 30; Western-style, 8, 13, 20, 30, 109, 121, 163. See also specific articles of clothing drowning, 74, 105, 107 drums, 18, 19, 64, 177n19 drumsticks, 63–64 Duanwu Festival, 105 Duke Mu of Qin, 158 earrings, 101, 144, 162 Eden, The (Xianshi leyuan ribao), 8, 17, 157, 172, 178n24 education, 19, 178n27; Confucian, 117; ­curriculum, 19, 34, 37, 39, 61, 117, 118; domestic, 55, 112; military, 19; new forms of, 12, 32, 46, 69, 116, 118, 130, 173, 175; physical, 19, 69; respectability of, 30. See also schools; teaching elbows, 64 elections. See voting electric fans, 27–28, 141, 142 electric lights, 27, 62, 79, 102, 144, 142, 161 electricity, 12, 28 Elegance (Linglong), 112 embroidery. See needlecraft emperor, 5, 6, 7, 42, 64, 111; Cheng, 82– 83, 135, 157; Guangxu, 6; Li Yu, 77; Sun Liang, 178n23; Tongzhi, 6; Wu (Sun Quan), 47; Wu, 71, 79; Xiao Baojuan, 77; Xuantong, 6; Yuan Shikai, 8 empire, 6, 7, 33, 57, 80 empress, 33, 134, 143, 182n20; dowager, 47. See also Pan, Empress; Zhao Feiyan engineering, 67 English American Tobacco Company, 37 equality, 32, 65; among citizens, 9, 65, 118, 172; among nations, 174; among readers, 42, 157; in relationships, 10, 185n3; for women, 111, 113 eroticism, 33, 140; homoeroticism, 155; of modern beauties, 133, 141, 144, 148, 153; of old-style beauties, 34, 132, 134, 140– 41, 143, 173, 184n19, 187n16; of physical activity, 21, 72, 143–44; of public space, 141 Europe, 80; influence of, 12, 14, 35–37; models from, 34

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 207

2 07

eyes, 146, 148, 175; directing reader’s gaze, 57; male, 156; modest, 49; mothers, 127; personally witnessing, 11 faces, 32, 73, 126, 144, 162, 167, 170; reflections of, 168; washing, 145, 146, 147 factories, 32 families, 7, 98, 99; in art, 113; connections to nation, 111–12; departure from, 30, 64, 70, 85; dependence on, 18; extended multigenerational, 41, 112, 116, 121; management of, 122–27; modern, 67, 111–19, 119, 120, 130; rise of nuclear, 41, 111–12, 117; stability of, 33, 49, 50, 114, 120; versus clan, 7, 173 Family Weekly (Jiating xingqi), 112 fans, 82, 125, 132, 134, 135, 161. See also ­electric fans farmers, 8, 23, 32; as beauties, 43, 45 fashion: Miss Foreign Fashion (Yin Mingzhu), 39. See also dress fathers, 32, 158; absent, 118; death of, 47, 105; loyalty to, 3, 64, 105, 156; ownership by, 42, 133, 136 fathers-in-law, 123 feathers, 85, 101, 184n16 feet, 19; active, 62, 70, 72, 74, 84, 92, 141; bare, 18, 70, 71, 72, 107, 150; bound, 3, 5, 16–17, 22, 60, 68, 77, 121, 178n26; com­ mentary on, 68; covered, 47, 71, 76–79, 83, 92, 136; crippled, 17, 74; femmes fatales and, 34; liberation of, 43, 68; markers of modernity, 20, 22, 75, 167; natural, 3, 16–18, 40, 69, 73, 79, 80 Fei Danxu, 181–82n99 femininity, 97, 144, 174; of action, 50, 51, 53; beauty and, 5, 43–44, 64, 67, 85; transition from, 64; virtue and, 8, 49, 134 festivals, 105, 119, 120, 121 fiancé, 102, 138, 139, 141 filial piety, 41, 50, 112, 114, 174; of daughters, 33, 63–64, 70, 105; of daughtersin-law, 51–52 Filial Wife, 50 film, 176; Dan Duyu and, 39, 132; makers of, 6, 39, 132; Mingxing Film Company, 39; Sea Oath (Haishi), 39; Yingxi Film Company, 39

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208

INDE X

fingernails, 60 fire, 126, 132 flags, 8–10, 9, 10, 16, 19, 117, 121, 174; FiveColored, 8, 10, 19, 32, 73 Fleeting Shadow Studio Pictorial (Feiying ge huabao), 37 flood, 89; disastrous (huoshui), 80, 82, 83 floor, 77, 80, 122, 150, 162, 163, 170; sweeping, 45 flowers, 85, 89, 98, 145; lotus, 79; wall, 149 flute, 99, 136, 158–59, 160, 161, 165, 187n8 food, 112, 122, 123, 125 foot. See feet footbinding. See feet foreheads, 71, 85 foreign, 6, 12, 23, 33, 176; activities, 74–75; aesthetics, 14; books, 61; buildings, 96, 169; consciousness of, 13, 15, 175, 184n3; crafts, 53; language, 25, 27, 29, 60; music, 161–63, 165; names, 60; objects, 15, 70, 84; people, 105, 180n70; settlements, 137; styles, 16–17, 20, 39, 114, 123 Four Great Beauties, 57, 85 freedom: bought, 99; false, 10; of movement, 68; vehicle (bicycle), 22, 84. See also liberation friends, 16, 21, 29, 30, 101, 113, 168; boyfriends, 138, 139 frost, 99 furniture, 35 furs, 99, 102, 114 future, 12, 13, 14, 24, 42, 74, 131; imagining of, 27, 40, 122, 135, 172, 174

gifts, 44, 57, 60 glass, 26, 35, 55, 79, 146, 162. See also windows glasses, 19 global comparisons, 40 global context, 10, 34, 60, 130 global interactions, 6, 34, 60, 121 global knowledge, 29 global perspective, 34 goddesses, 184n16; Chang E (Moon Goddess), 119, 157; Luo River, 74; Xue Yelai (needle goddess), 55, 85–86, 86 gold, 50, 77, 89, 91 golf, 74, 76, 173 Goodnow, Consul-General, 178nn35,39 government, 7, 9, 12, 20, 22, 30 gowns, 5, 20, 46, 79, 114, 121, 128 grace: feminine, 5, 108, 145, 164; movement as, 5, 77, 89, 184n16 gramophone, 12, 164, 165 gravity, 108, 109 Great Republic Daily (Da gonghe ribao), 38, 62, 119 Great Republic Pictorial (Da gonghe huabao), 38 Grecian style, 96, 114 greeting, 49 gu. See past Guan Daosheng, Lady, 56–57 guns, 19, 43, 183n28 Guo, Lady, 86, 87 guzheng, 161 gymnast, 3 gymnastics, 3, 17

Gai Qi, 181–82n99 gangsters, 22 gardens, 168, 169; leisure in, 141, 142, 158, 161; seclusion of, 69, 95, 157 geese, 85 geography, 6, 12; challenges posed by, 41; experiencing, 105–10; lack of awareness of, 41, 97; modernity and, 21, 93, 103, 174; national, 67; understanding, 94, 117. See also space gender: intermingling of, 145; morality of, 5, 41; norms, 176, 185n3; political ideals of, 5

hair, 10, 12, 89, 136, 143; bobbed, 184n8; braid, 10, 75, 141, 167; bun, 10, 167; changes in, 6, 12; Chinese-style, 14, 95; decorations, 60, 84, 101, 144; pins, 101; plait, 167; short, 74; wet, 148 Han: dynasty, 82, 85, 98, 134, 143; empire, 57; ethnicity, 13, 16, 17; style, 20, 94 Han Shizhong, 64 handbags, 20, 98 handicrafts, 46, 50–52. See also crochet; knitting; needlecraft; spinning; sewing; weaving

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 208

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INDE X

handkerchiefs, 96, 108 hands, 3; active, 40, 43–44, 55, 60–61; covered, 41, 43–44, 47, 49, 57, 60; delicate (xian shou), 43–44; featherlike, 44, 57; liberation of, 43, 67; life-like, 43–45, 51–52, 61, 64; productive, 43–45, 47, 60; tools of the heart/mind, 56–57; visible, 43, 61, 64–65 hats, 17, 20, 104, 178n24 headbands, 162 health, 74, 116, 126, 168; of citizens, 70, 73, 83, 92 heels, 18, 73, 98, 146. See also shoes height, 3, 59 helplessness, 45, 187n16 heroes, 19, 64, 95, 165 hierarchy: beauties’ reliance upon, 41; changes in, 21, 47, 175; consolidation of, 33, 174; dismantling of, 7, 65, 130, 155–57, 172, 173 hip, 64 history: teaching of, 117; of traditional beauties, 41, 176; weight of, 42 home, 51, 80, 102; changes in, 14, 43, 112, 116, 130; women cloistered in, 21, 69, 132; women leaving, 30, 70, 85; women returning, 64, 136 homoeroticism, 155 Hong Fu, 143 Hong Kong, 39, 176 Hong Xian, 88, 89, 91, 143 horns, 99 horses, 64–65; and carriages, 69, 84; and carts, 23, 101; reins of, 63, 86; riding, 85; toy, 121 hospitals, 46 housewives. See wives housework, 36, 122; as modern, 46, 56, 123 Hua Mulan, 63–65, 65, 69, 183n26 Hua Sanchuan, 176 husbands, 3; absent, 3, 113; beauty’s ownership by, 42, 155; dissolute, 149; love for, 158; loyalty to, 3, 41, 50, 64, 114, 134, 136; modern, 111, 113, 117, 130; subservience to, 41, 133, 156; unappreciative, 97–98 hygiene: women skilled in, 41, 51, 112

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 209

209

ice skates, 74, 75, 104 ideology: changes in, 46, 63; modernity as, 44; traditional, 50, 173, 177n2 illnesses, 3, 64, 126, 127, 169 incense, 57, 58, 119, 132, 192 independence, 3, 15, 16, 22, 67, 131; of modern beauties, 41–42, 60, 101, 155, 175; modernity as, 25, 32, 44, 173; of women, 117, 125, 167 individualism, 10, 45, 116, 127 individuals, 9; capacity of, 40, 22, 92, 130; competition between, 73–74; emergence of, 9, 25, 41, 165; pleasure-seeking, 74, 83; readers as, 156; rights and duties of, 7, 11, 43, 172–73; servants as, 59 inkstones, 27, 179n52 insects, 98, 152 international connections, 12, 18, 20, 27, 71 international context, 7, 61, 180n76 jacket, 20, 162 Japan, 6–7; clothing of, 30, 146; influence of, 14, 22, 24, 35; typewriters from, 25; war with, 23, 173, 176 Jeanne d’Arc, 34 Jesuits, 37 jewels, 98 Jiang Huaisu, 39 Jiangnan, 167 Jiangxi, 39 jin. See present Jin dynasty, 64; Eastern, 26; Western, 135 journalists, 6, 25 kindergartens, 117 kings: Dragon, 148; Wen of Chu, 114 kitchens, 112, 122, 123, 125 kites, 121, 125, 126 kittens, 128 kneeling, 57, 132, 167 knees, 3, 13, 59, 95, 109, 121, 122, 152 knitting, 52, 55, 56 kung-fu, 6, 143 labor, 8; as antithetical to beauty, 50, 60; changing value of, 49, 51, 125; manual versus cerebral, 59; menial, 44, 45,

2/10/20 9:06 AM

210

INDE X

labor (continued) 59, 112, 136; productive, 40, 47, 51, 67; value of women’s, 50, 125. See also work ladders, 8, 13, 15, 16, 108, 110, 167 lakes, 93 lamps, 51, 53, 102, 161, 168 lances, 64 Lantern Festival, 121 leapfrog, 121 lectures, 11, 30, 32 legs: covered, 41, 71, 76, 77, 83, 86, 89, 136; erotic appeal of, 72, 141, 143, 151; movement of, 80, 84, 183n7; naked, 105, 109, 148; strength of, 19, 70, 75, 92; visibility of, 74, 79, 83, 98, 100, 167, 184n19 leisure, 32, 125; changes in activities, 21, 30, 74, 103, 176; collective experience of, 176; individuals seeking of, 79, 80, 83, 92; physical versus cerebral, 75; as privilege, 60; public forms of, 74–77, 80–84, 125; publications, 38, 172–73; reading, 10, 25, 50, 62, 165; spaces, 32, 69, 75, 104, 127; symbols of, 128. See also specific sports and games lesbian, 155 Li Ju, 178n23 Liang, Lady (Liang Hongyu), 63–64, 183n25 liberation, 22, 84; from dependence, 22; of feet, 68; of hands, 43–67; modernity producing, 21, 33; from servitude, 125; from tradition, 153, 175; of women, 153 libraries, 59, 60, 165 lienü, 33 Lienü zhuan. See Biographies of Exemplary Women Lijuan, 79 limbs. 49. See also arms; legs lips, 19, 173 lipstick, 173 literati, 7, 176; cultural refinement, 25, 57, 97, 116, 136, 173; education of women, 118; networks among, 57; orthodox ­values, 33–34, 44, 50, 68, 131, 172; ownership of beauties, 42, 155–58, 174; as readers, 3, 50, 140, 154 literature, 56, 86 lithography, 24–25, 36, 69

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 210

Liu Haisu, 39 Longnü, 148 looms, 47, 49, 50, 51, 64 lords, 161; beauty’s loyalty to, 57, 85; beauty’s ownership by, 42, 57, 157, 165, 171; subservience to, 41; viewing of beauties by, 5, 77, 79, 92, 158–60 lotuses, 5, 77, 79 lovers: absent, 3, 125, 156, 167; beauties claimed by, 42, 133, 155; communication with, 21, 137; destruction of, 34; erotic feelings of, 141, 146; pining for, 187n3 lovesickness, 148 loyalty, 3, 133; as Confucian value, 41, 63, 143, 174; to fathers, 3, 50, 136; to husbands, 3, 50, 114, 134–36; to nation, 7–8 Lü Bu, 57 Lü Zhu, 135, 137, 158, 160, 187n8 luggage, 42, 66, 67 Luo Zhen, 178n23 lutes, 160, 165 Luzhou, 89 machines, 21, 22, 24, 173; beauties’ mastery of, 41, 84, 86. See also technology magazines, 11, 24, 25; One Hundred ­Beauties in, 35. See also individual publications magic, 6, 89, 91, 109, 143 magpies, 94 mahjong, 128 maids, 13, 57, 67. See also servants Major, Ernest, 24 makeup. See cosmetics mandate to rule, 7 mantelpiece, 126 maps, 21, 93, 117–18, 121, 172, 174 march, 19 marriage: avoiding a second, 134; of Cai Yan, 98–99, 114; companionate, 113; diplomatic, 85; of Lady Xi, 114; modern forms of, 12, 113–14, 123, 138, 186n15; romance of, 139; trousseau, production of, 51, 54; unhappy, 97, 114 martial arts, 6, 143 martial power, 64

2/10/20 9:06 AM

INDE X

masculinity, 185n3; of clothing, 145; power of, 65, 83 masters: beauty viewed by, 5, 79, 158, 160, 171; loyalty to, 91; subservience to, 41. See also lords maternalism, 36, 112, 116, 185n3 men, 116, 145, 174; adultery and, 113, 134, 136; as audiences for beauties, 57, 155; as citizens, 9, 173; clothing of, 20; networks among, 57; non-literati, 7, 22, 69, 99–100, 111, 113, 154, 156, 171; as owners of the beauties, 42, 131–32, 133, 134, 143, 157–60; power of, 65, 83; as subjects of art, 36, 39, 141; tilling fields, 49 Mencius, 116, 117, 119 Mencius’s Mother, 116, 186n16 merchants, 98 Milky Way, 94 military, 65, 121, 172, 173; clothing, 19, 95; service, 64 Ming dynasty, 179n64; books of beauties, 3, 33, 36, 41, 141; exemplars, 131, 176 Mingxing Film Company, 39 mirrors, 35, 132, 144, 169, 170; beauties looking into, 42, 126, 144–45, 150, 152, 170, 170–71 misery, 3, 98, 160, 161, 164; of abandonment, 134, 168; absence of, 137, 140; in marriage, 97, 114 mist, 95, 132 mistress, 16, 32, 66 models: nude, 39–40 modesty, 3, 49, 136, 150, 170–71; feet and, 74, 83; financial, 39, 158; hands and, 43, 47, 57; monarchy, 6 monogamy, 111, 113, 117. See also marriage moon, 113, 120, 161 moon goddess. See Chang E mosquito netting, 151, 153 mothers, 32; as beauties, 116; devotion of, 112; new form of, 36, 41; teaching children, 8, 32, 41, 118 mothers-in-law, 50–51, 123 motion. See movement mountains, 93, 183n28 movement, 3, 13, 19, 20, 77, 143, 174; bodies in, 84–86, 89, 91, 109, 143; dependence

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 211

211

upon others, 41, 85–86; as desirable, 29, 40, 67, 69, 141, 176; mechanized, 22, 68, 83; around the nation, 23; new forms of, 68, 85, 175; self-propelled, 70, 79, 89, 92; around the world, 69, 79 mud, 24, 72, 100, 101, 107, 122 muffs, 41, 102–3, 184n8, 185n10 murder, 47 muscles, 39, 79, 92 music, 44, 149; as cultivation, 56, 74; as performance, 158, 188n15; for personal enjoyment, 160, 161, 164. See also songs musical instruments, 157, 158, 164; Chinese, 160; European, 161, 162, 163. See also specific instruments musicians, 34, 162; famous, 135–36, 158 nation, 40, 69, 110, 174; affairs of, 61–62, 119; changing values of, 12, 74, 111, 117, 125, 132, 153; consciousness of, 8, 25, 172; geog­raphy of, 7, 21, 23, 41, 67, 93–100, 118; international links to, 13, 27, 34, 94, 119, 121; revival of, 30, 41, 67, 112, 130; service to, 8, 11, 32, 64, 65, 116, 176; shame of, 68; strength of, 7, 18, 20, 23, 31; welfare, 80; values of, 111 national day, 8, 13, 177n7 national flag. See flags naval clothing, 16, 89, 109, 121, 122 necklaces, 101 necks, 101, 105, 113, 148, 163, 184n16 needle goddess (zhenshen), 55 needlecraft, 21; embroidery, 49, 85; sewing, 8, 10, 51, 53, 53, 54, 139. See also ­crochet; knitting; spinning; weaving needles, 51 new (xin). See old-style versus new-style newspapers, 9, 11, 24, 114; beauties appearing in, 32, 35, 155–56, 165; beauties’ engagement with, 25, 61–63; Crystal (Jing­bao), 38; debate in, 9; delivery of, 62; democracy and, 117, 119, 165, 173; One Hundred Beauties in, 35. See also individual newspapers nomads, 3, 85, 99 Nong Yu, 158, 159, 176

2/10/20 9:06 AM

212

INDE X

Northern and Southern dynasties, 71 Northern Wei, 64 nudes: controversy over, 39–40, 147, 182n103; Dan Duyu and, 39, 132, 141, 167, 170; models, 39–40, 132, 148–49, 167; as modern, 147, 153 Nüjie (literary work). See Admonitions for Women nüjie (neologism), 31 nurse, 46–47, 47 nursing, 125, 126, 127, 129 obedience, 9 objets d’art, 35 oceans, 93, 95, 105, 108, 174 old-style versus new-style, 9, 12, 34, 100, 173; bodies, 33, 40, 75, 122; feet, 17, 68, 72; leisure, 25; mothers, 113, 125, 130; publications, 11, 15, 22, 34–35, 38; readers, 71, 153, 155; space, 69, 85, 95–97; ­talents, 25, 44, 76, 80; technologies, 13, 24, 27; values, 40–41, 42, 67, 122, 136, 160, 174 Opium Wars, 6 oxen, 85 paintings, 56, 121, 188n22; as marker of cultivation, 39, 44, 56, 173; murals, 165– 67; Western-style, 14–15, 37, 79. See also artists; calligraphy pajamas, 146, 153 palace, 47–48, 89, 134–35; ladies, 71, 114, 144, 158 palanquins, 69 palms, 96, 132, 187n3 pamphlets, 9 Pan, Empress, 46, 48–49, 59, 64 Pan Yu’er, 77, 78 pants, 185n10; Chinese, 16, 75, 161; Western, 121, 170 paper, 26, 57 parents, 41, 85, 98, 114, 125. See also fathers; mothers parents-in-law, 41, 50, 51, 113, 123, 125. See also fathers-in-law; mothers-in-law parks, 183n4; public parks, 21, 30 parasols, 41 passivity, 21, 45, 85, 132

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 212

past; books, 119; demarcating from present, 9, 11–12, 14–15, 36, 40, 174–75; hierarchies of, 156–57; imperial, 3, 13, 20, 107; models from, 27, 36–37, 45, 85, 131, 180n73; yearning for, 17, 34, 42, 135 patriarchy, 33, 50, 65, 174, 183n26 patriline, 33 patriotism, 32, 117, 130, 173, 186n23 pavilions, 97, 98, 157, 158, 165 pens, 38, 43, 46; fountain, 27 Peony Pavilion (Mudang ting), 165 pergolas, 139 periscopes, 93 perspective: artistic, 35, 149; international, 34; modern, 93, 95, 110, 133, 174; multiple, 36, 132, 145, 153 philosophy, 11, 66, 117, 130. See also Confucianism phoenixes, 85, 158, 159 photographs, 20, 24, 37, 174; in news­ papers, 24; public circulation of, 32; replacement of artists’ drawings, 175; taken or developed by women, 46, 167– 69, 169, 171; wedding, 114; of women, 32, 46, 175 physicality, 19, 22, 49, 85, 143; of action, 43, 45, 58; admiration of, 143, 153; aestheticized, 60, 67, 74, 109, 133; culture of, 69, 92, 93, 183n1; and leisure, 75, 92; limitations of, 68, 76, 79; of skill, 3, 22, 57, 64; of space, 110, 175; of touch, 127; versus the cerebral, 173, 174 pianos, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165 Pictorial Shanghai (Shanghai huabao), 39 pictorials, 34, 112, 175; books, 3, 25; magazines, 32, 147; newspapers, 37. See also individual magazines and newspapers pink, 71 pipa, 85, 161 planes. See airplanes planets, 94 plants, 35, 98, 152; potted plants, 27, 45, 62, 149, 182n5 poetry, 38, 56, 125, 155; destruction of, 32, 98; emotion expressed in, 99, 134, 136; gifts of, 57; inscribed in pictures, 33, 37, 80; woven into cloth, 50

2/10/20 9:06 AM

INDE X

poets, 168, 181n99; beauties as, 34, 56; Du Mu, 181n99; Li Shangyin, 181n99; Xiaoqing, 168, 169; Xue Tao, 57, 58; Zhu Shuzhen, 97, 97–98, 184n4; Zhuo Wenjun, 187nn10,11 politics, 61–62, 155, 172, 176; art and, 176; new spirit of, 9–10, 12, 32, 173; philosopher of, 11, 66; system of, 7, 172; women’s engage­ment with, 31, 61, 63, 64, 65, 116–17 polygamy, 125, 185n12. See also marriage porches, 125 pornography, 140–41, 153, 156 ports, 21, 79; treaty, 13 potted plants. See plants poverty, 22, 136 prayers, 57, 157 present, 11, 12, 119; comparison with past, 13–14, 34, 40, 174–75; and future, 27, 131 presidents, 8, 64, 89 princess, 33; Luo River, 74; Shouyang, 71–72 printing, 24–25, 32–33, 41, 141; history of, 178n40; typeface, 46. See also lithography private households, 28 private leisure, 74 private performance, 5, 79 private spaces, 29, 32, 69, 144 private transport, 22 private viewing, 153, 170 professionals, 32, 47, 112 prostitutes, 30, 32, 130, 141, 145, 179n59. See also courtesans protests, 8, 9, 32 public culture, 40, 57, 63, 72–74, 153, 171–73, 175–76 public life, 7, 23, 32, 42, 61, 118, 130, 154; enthusiasm for women in, 42, 141, 144 public morality, 30, 116 public schools, 31 public spaces, 14, 21, 29, 30, 41, 67, 138, 169 public speaking, 32–33, 65–66, 177n11 public transport: women in, 29, 30, 32–33, 62, 68–70, 93, 101–2, 145, 156. See also specific types of vehicles publishers, 12, 32–33, 35; Biyuanhui, 36; Communications Library (Jiaotong tushuguan), 38; Fleeting Shadow

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 213

213

Studio (Feiying Ge), 36–37; Guoxue Shu­shi, 3; New Citizen Library (Xinmin Tushuguan), 39; Shanghai Shuju, 3; Touchstone Studios, (Dianshizhai), 24, 36, 179n43; Wenruilou, 36; Zhonghua Tushuguan, 37 Qian Binghe, 181n99 qin, 103, 136, 162 Qin dynasty, 158 Qing dynasty, 3, 16, 23; dress-style, 30; exemplars, 131; readers in, 42; transition to Republic, 6–7, 9, 11, 34, 40 qipao, 16 Qiu Jin, 188n26 Qiu Shouping (Qiu Shouyan): Cai Yan and her two children, 115; Cao E moments before she drowns, 107; discarded and resentful Ban Jieyu, 135; Empress Pan at weavers’ cot­t age, 48; Filial Wife at her spinning wheel, 52; influence on Wu Youru, 37; Lady Su Hui at her loom, 51; life and career of, 37; Lü Zhu playing her flute for her lord, 160; Mulan with her horse, 65; Pan Yu’er dancing, 78; plum blossom Princess Shou­y ang, 72; secluded Zhu Shuzhen, 97; Xue Tao in solitude at her desk, 58; Xue Yelai traveling in a carriage, 86; Yaoniang dancing for her lord, 5; Zhang Honghong sings for her lord and his guest, 159; Zhao Feiyan dancing for Emperor Cheng, 83; Zhuo Wenjun and Sima Xiangru in their wine shop, 138 rabbits, 121, 186n32 railroads, 6, 21, 23 readers, 11, 14, 170–71; dreams of, 6, 8, 12, 26, 33, 130, 131; instructions to, 17, 19, 21, 27, 36, 93–94; literati, 50, 113–14, 136; power and, 34, 42; wider range of, 25, 41, 66, 155–57; women as, 179n47 reading: for erotic pleasure, 144–46, 148– 49, 151; new ways of, 35, 36, 40, 44, 153, 155–56 reformers, 7, 13, 18, 111–13, 156, 177n11. See also artists

2/10/20 9:06 AM

214

INDE X

relationships, 164; equal, 10; family, 123, 126, 127; new forms of, 12, 21, 40, 123, 137, 139– 40, 153; old forms of, 117, 136, 153, 156, 176; romantic, 131–33, 140. See also citizens republic, 16, 172–76; geography of, 21, 41, 93, 98, 110; participation in, 30, 32, 43, 43–45, 65–67; political culture of, 9–12, 15, 19, 21, 40, 73, 156; spirit of, 8–9, 32, 67, 69, 84, 108, 125, 111, 125; transition to, 6, 7, 11, 23. See also citizens; democratic consciousness revolutionaries, 34 ribbons, 60, 77, 89, 144, 158 rickshaw (jinrickshas), 22, 23, 24, 69; ­pullers of, 22, 24 riding crop, 84 rifle, 121, 183n28. See also guns ring: gymnastics, 3, 17 risk, 31, 89, 92, 107, 175 ritual, 21, 44, 119, 180n73; Cao E’s father, 105; marriage, 113; prayer, 57 rivers, 21, 23, 64, 74, 104, 105, 148 roads, 21, 22–23, 62, 91 robes, 76, 77, 79, 89 rocks, 66, 132, 148 roller skates, 74, 75, 75, 103, 104, 175 romance, 122, 184n8; changes in, 131–43, 153; as modern, 23, 96, 105; of the modern, 22, 122, 125; traditional imagery of, 74, 94, 167; worlds of, 97 romanticization: of misery, 164; of tradition, 173, 174, 176; of women, 34 rope, 45, 108, 108–10, 139 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 10 sacrifice, 3, 33, 50, 57, 64, 137, 139 salute, 19 Saturday (Libailiu), 37, 187n17 scars, 85 scarves, 41, 98; as adventuresome, 89, 91, 101, 102, 104 scenery, 13, 24 scholars, 7, 34, 116, 173; women as, 58, 60, 98. See also literati scholarship: symbols of, 26–27, 116 schools, 21, 29, 69, 117; of art, 37–40; public, 30–31; for women, 34, 173. See also education; teaching

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 214

science, 84, 112, 117 scissors, 51 screens: crystal, 85; decorative, 27, 70, 74, 144; segregating women, 132, 158; semitransparent, 35, 150, 151 scrolls, 28, 57,58, 167, 188n22 se (lust/desire), 33, 157 se (instrument), 162 sedan chairs, 22, 23, 92 sedentariness, 68, 70, 75, 76, 85 self-portraits. See artists self-sufficiency, 67; of citizens, 40, 41, 111, 173; of families, 117, 130; through labor, 43, 112; of women, 67, 113, 116, 175 servants, 8, 13, 16, 27, 52; as accessories to beauties, 49, 59; as beauties, 32, 43– 44, 174; caring for children, 125, 128; as exemplars, 59; no need for, 41, 43, 67, 138; as status markers, 41, 44, 60, 67, 112; supporting beauties, 49, 59, 85, 86, 125. See also maids sewing. See needlecraft sex, 39; act of, 132, 141; desire for, 144, 187n16; desire of same, 42, 155; hierarchies of, 7, 185n3; literary references to, 132, 141, 143; mixed, 32, 79; morality about, 153; power and, 82, 157; separation by, 69, 133; worker, 145. See also prostitutes; courtesans sexology, 155 sexualization, 39, 140–45, 156 Shanghai, 40, 79, 176; Art Academy of, 37, 38, 39; demimonde of, 69, 112, 121, 127, 141; Katherine Stinson’s visit to, 89; modern women of, 36, 175; moderni­ zation of, 23–24, 28, 137; style of art, 35–36; Yingxi Company, 39 Shanghai Cartoons (Shanghai manhua), 37 Shanghai Puck (Bochen huaji huabao), 38 shawls, 102, 103 shelter: old-style beauties in, 41, 98, 100 shelves, 60–61, 116 Shen Bao, 24, 179n43 Shen Bochen: artist drawing an artist, 29; athletics competition, 73; aviatrix, 88; bank accountant, 28; beauty on a bicycle, 84; beauty climbing down a rope

2/10/20 9:06 AM

INDE X

into a dinghy, 109; beauty and her gramophone, 164; beauty with her ­binoculars fogging up, 95; beauty holding a circular fan, 135; beauty putting heeled shoes on her Western feet, 73; beauty reading the Great Republic Daily, 119; beauty spinning yarn, 55; beauty with suitcase and umbrella, 66; beauty at a typewriter, 26; citizen of beauty sewing the national flag, 10; cosmetics-loving cross-dresser, 146; Dan Duyu and, 39; descending a rope ladder, 108; “disastrous flood” from the West, 82; drummer spurring on the troops, 18; former courtesan doing the household accounts, 124; former courtesan turned nursing mother, 129; friends venturing out into the rain, 101; housewife is more than a good cook, 123; intrepid beauty walking in the rain, 101; intrepid train traveler, 90; life and career of, 38; modern Hua Mulan, 65; mother adjusting a clock with her son, 14; mother and daughter looking at a map of China, 118; mother knit­ ting while instructing her daughter, 56; mother putting her baby in a stroller, 128; mother and son off to fly a kite, 126; professional nurse, 47; stargazer, 94; woman steering her ship, 87 Shen Erbao, 141 Shen Shuying, 39 Shi Chong, 135 ships, 86, 87, 95, 108, 109, 174, 175; steamships, 21, 79. See also boats shirts, 20, 150; Chinese-style, 75, 94, 114, 164; Han-style, 16; high-collared, 73, 144, 164; long-sleeve, 70; side-opening, 96, 144; sleeveless, 3; undershirt, 152; Western-style, 8; wide-sleeved, 74 shoes, 3, 16–18, 17; cloth, 16, 18, 68, 79, 103, 108; high-heeled, 16, 46, 67, 71, 80, 161, 163; leather, 55, 67, 71, 80, 102, 109, 121, 122, 125, 184n8; leather as sign of moder­ nity, 16, 18, 20, 46, 68, 123, 165; slippers, 3, 16, 71, 146. See also boots shoppers, 25, 30, 33, 43 shops, 21, 33, 69, 70, 136, 138

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 215

215

shorts, 152; Western-style, 8, 13, 120, 122 shoulders, 22, 103, 184n16 shuttlecocks, 121 sicknesses. See illnesses silk, 5, 20, 60, 84, 139, 144; as poetic device, 85; restrictions on wearing, 30 Sima Xiangru, 136, 138 Sincere Department Store, 8, 17 Sino-Japanese war, 23 skates, 21, 155, 173, 175; revealing power of legs, 74. See also ice skates; roller skates skin, 39, 92, 107, 147, 149, 153, 167 skirts, 17, 19, 75, 91, 98, 100–101, 144; ­Chinese-style, 16, 20, 104, 120; Grecian, 114; knee-length, 3; long, 16, 74, 102, 104, 164; pleated, 16; three-quarter length, 80 sleep, 13, 71, 113, 150, 151, 153 sleeves, 16, 70, 74; absence of, 3; lengthy, 43, 49, 50, 57, 60, 89 smock, 16, 55 socializing, 12, 79; new forms of, 21, 40 society, 7, 103; contributions to, 40, 43, 44–45, 66, 173–74; new forms of, 6, 8, 67, 92, 172, 175; people’s connection to, 7, 40, 172 socks, 8, 13, 120, 121, 122 soldiers. See troops solitude, 58, 92, 98, 123–24, 157, 158, 161 Song dynasty, 60, 64, 97 songs, 32, 99, 117, 134, 136, 158 sons, 8, 9, 13–14, 32, 114 soup, 123 sovereignty, 9, 10, 12, 172 space, 16, 64, 109, 117, 121, 151; cultural, 13, 27, 132; democratization of, 15, 32, 44, 60, 156, 183n4; domestic, 61, 103, 113, 118, 125, 130; fantasy, 44; geographic, 21, 41, 67, 100, 105, 130; global, 40; men’s, 145; modern, 29, 30, 36, 104, 128, 138, 140, 174; mystical, 97, 110; traversing, 19, 22, 40, 41, 66–71, 85–86, 89, 92, 175–76; water as, 107. See also public spaces spectacles. See glasses speed, 24, 74; of attitudinal change, 8–9, 34; as modern, 23, 85–86, 162, 183n7;

2/10/20 9:06 AM

216

INDE X

speed (continued) of movement, 67, 73, 89, 91–92; of work, 35, 53 spinning wheel, 50, 51, 52, 52, 53, 55, 112 sports, 25, 72, 74, 92, 175. See also specific sports and games spring, 102, 144; of youth, 118; mountain, 107 Spring and Autumn Period, 114 stargazing, 33, 41, 94; Vega and Altair, 94 stasis, 40 status, 23, 44, 157; boundfeet as markers of, 18; changes in, 6, 47–49; citizens’, 24; decorations as markers of, 85, 101; labor and, 50; nuclear family’s, 111; outcast, 99; servants as markers of, 41, 60; women’s, 119, 130 Stinson, Katherine, 89 stirrups, 84 stockings, 70, 80, 102, 161 strength, 8, 22, 92, 98; of beauties, 15, 19, 41, 67, 72–75, 91–92, 108–9, 141; of citizens, 68, 92; and democracy, 41; erotic appeal of, 72–75; of nation, 18, 121 strikes, 32 strollers, 128, 128 students, 93, 116, 117; of art, 39; female, 30–32, 179n59, 182n20. See also education Su Hui, Lady, 50 Su Yufen, 89 subjects, 11, 121, 171; of art, 49, 156; imperial, 20, 21, 140, 157; relationships with leaders, 6–7, 9, 172; seclusion of, 61 subservience, 41 suffrage. See voting suicide, 3, 134, 135, 137, 158 suitcases. See luggage; trunks sumptuary rules, 15, 20, 30 Sun Xiu, 135 Sun Yat-sen, 23 superstition, 113 Suzhou, 37 swallows, 143 swimming, 93, 105, 106, 107, 175 swings, 16, 141, 142, 143, 144 swords, 19, 89, 121, 143

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 216

Taiping Rebellion, 6 Taiwan, 23 talent, 56–57, 131, 134, 174; cerebral, 60; dancing, 76, 79; frustrated, 98; literary, 168; musical, 74, 135–36, 158; of women, 33–34, 44 Tang dynasty, 3, 5, 77, 86, 89, 158; hat style, 103; poetry, 57 Tang Xianzu, 165 tea parties, 30 teachers, 37; as desirable, 43; mothers as, 9, 116–22, 118, 128, 130, 186n28 teaching, 8–9, 9, 13, 16, 128; of art, 37; ­Confucianism and, 135; Mencius and, 116 teahouses, 32, 63, 69, 173 technology, 6, 9, 12, 13, 20, 24, 25; for children, 117; as Chinese, 20, 29, 94, 124; cinematic, 176; creating new possibilities, 24, 29, 32, 33, 46, 110; as empowering, 69, 70, 84, 92, 164; mastery of, 41, 84, 165, 167; romance and, 137, 140, 141 telephone, 6, 21; expansion of service, 137–38; facilitating new relationships, 137–38, 139 telescope, 41, 44, 94 tempest, 95 tennis, 16, 74, 75, 77, 173, 183n9 tent, 19, 99, 100 textbooks, 34, 93, 117 theaters, 32, 176 thread, 51, 84, 137 Three Kingdoms, 46, 85, 157 time, 21, 126, 155, 170; “civilized”, 14; imperial, 16, 20, 133, 136; leisure, 21, 104, 121, 125, 170; linear, 40; modern, 26–27, 46, 61, 71, 105, 122, 175; new, 14–15, 35, 130, 145, 175, 183n7; old, 15, 120; passage of, 13–14; timekeepers, 177n19; traditional Chinese, 13, 177n19. See also clocks timelessness, 27, 174 tiptoes, 45 toddlers, 114, 116, 127 toilette, 71, 144 tongue, 19 Touchstone Studio (Dianshizhai), 24, 36, 179n43

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INDE X

towel, 126 toys, 117, 121. See also specific games and toys trade, 6, 30, 36; tools of, 43 trains: with beauties, 66, 69, 84, 90, 91, 174; depicted by artists, 23; as markers of modernity, 66–67. See also railroads trams: as agents of change, 6; efficiency of, 21; expansion of, 23–24; as modern, 12, 22, 84; romance and, 102, 138, 139; women using, 16, 29, 30, 140 transport, 12, 138, 141; fares, 24; mechanized, 21, 30; as modern, 22–24, 68, 70, 85, 91–92, 175; old forms of, 47, 64; women using, 84. See also public transport travel, 13, 21, 24; as modern, 42, 67, 102, 121; old methods of, 84 travelers: as conduits for cultural exchange, 13, 34; as markers of modernity, 16, 21, 69, 174; old beauties as, 85, 86, 87, 89, 91; women as, 30, 42, 67, 70, 79, 90, 139 trays, 46, 60 trees, 71, 98, 148 troops, 18, 19, 64, 99; as desirable, 19, 43, 173, 178n27 trousers, 70, 73, 79; decline in use of, 183n7; as markers of Chineseness, 20; narrowlegged, 16; three-quartered, 8 trucks, 21 trumpets, 160. See also bugles trunks, 13, 108. See also luggage Tushuwan Painting Studio, 37 typesetting, 25 typewriters, 25–27, 26 umbrellas, 41, 66, 122; as symbols of adventuresome spirit, 100–101, 110 uniforms, 13, 19, 30, 89 United States of America, 23, 37, 89, 138; influence of, 6, 14, 34, 35 urban dancehalls, 79 urban families, 112 urban life, 20, 36, 42 urban transport, 21–23, 29 urban women, 36, 69, 175

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217

urbanites, 9, 12, 36, 42, 188n6 US consul-general, 22 uselessness, 60 values, 5, 8, 10; changes in, 6, 8, 40, 67, 131, 175; Chinese, 55; civic, 10, 111, 125, 130, 132; new-style, 5, 116–17; old-style, 3, 27, 174, 176 veils, 113, 114, 186n13 verandahs, 62, 97, 103, 161 violence, 172, 178n28 violins, 149, 160, 162, 163, 165 virgins, 173 virtue, 5; books and, 60; changes in, 34, 44, 112, 116, 117; Confucian models of, 41, 51, 58, 63, 131–54, 174; exemplars of, 41; maintenance of, 64, 114; needlecraft as, 8, 49, 55; One Hundred Beauties as models of, 33, 34, 57; violence as, 178n28 vomit, 126 voting, 7, 8, 177n6, 183n28 voyeurism, 144, 146 wagons, 22–23 waists, 75, 82, 94, 126, 144, 145 walking, 24, 60, 156; with confidence, 41; lack of, 71; as modern, 16, 19, 21, 70, 102; old-style, 77, 85–86, 177n19; in poor weather, 41, 100, 101, 103, 184n8; in public, 21, 30 walls, 3, 26; flowered, 149–50; garden, 69, 141; lights, 146; mirror, 170, 170; mural, 167, 171; room, 8, 13, 14, 26, 51, 117; tiled, 148; verandah, 103 Wang Dungen (Wang Hui), 37, 38, 140, 181n91, 187n17 Wang Jiaseng, 181n91 Wang Su, 181–82n99 Wang Xizhi, 26 Wang Yun, 57 Wang Zhaojun, 85 war, 57, 63–65, 88, 89, 91. See specific wars and conflicts wardrobes, 39, 108 warriors, 8, 63, 183n26. See also troops washing, 126, 145, 146, 147

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218

INDE X

water, 27, 45–46, 139, 140, 148; control of, 89; danger of, 105, 107; reflections in, 132–33, 168; swimming in, 105–6, 110 weakness, 18, 20 wealth, 21, 22, 79, 135, 136 weather, 62, 97; absence of, 97–99; enthusiasm for, 100; as modern, 102; resilience in the face of, 41, 89, 93–110, 175; shelter from, 41; symbolism of, 98 weaving, 64, 125; old-style depictions of, 47–50, 48, 112; as virtuous, 46–49 weaving maid, 94, 96 weddings. See marriage Wei, Lady, 26–27, 57 Wei dynasty, 85. See also Northern Wei Wei Qing, General, 158 Wei Xiyuan, 34 Weibo, 89 weight: of body, 109, 127, 144, 170; for ­calligraphy, 57 wells, 45, 46, 139 wen and wu, 64–65 wheelbarrows, 22 wheels, 22, 24, 62, 74, 89, 91, 121 whips, 64, 85 widows, 33, 50, 58, 98, 134, 136 willows, 132, 148 willpower, 41 wind, 93, 102, 104, 123, 141; marking danger, 91, 108; resilience in the face of, 100; as romantic, 98–99, 143, 148 windows: circular, 103; glass-paned, 26, 35, 55, 79, 146, 162 wine, 123, 136, 138. See also alcohol winter, 62, 103, 104, 185n10 wistfulness, 45 witchcraft, 136 wives, 33, 36, 133; devotion of, 50, 136, 186n18; fidelity of, 112, 131, 136; man­ aging households, 111–30; new form of, 41, 111–13 wok, 122 women, 7, 8; American models of, 34; anonymous modern, 36, 41, 45, 131–32, 174; as audiences, 42, 133; Chinese as inferior or superior, 34; collective consciousness of, 31; dangers of, 34, 80–81, 82–83; drivers, 22, 23, 42, 85, 86, 89, 90,

F.Edwards, Citizens of Beauty.indd 218

91, 91–92, 173; European models of, 34; famous, 3, 33–34, 36, 131–32, 134; ignored by society, 7–8; as knowledge producers, 25, 27, 63–64, 119, 155, 167– 68, 179n47; magical, 88, 89, 143; mastering technology, 22, 26–27, 41, 70, 89; new modes of being, 11, 19, 21, 30– 31, 61, 65, 112, 187n16; as objects for view­i ng, 10, 156–57, 165; as objects for viewing by men, 32–33, 35, 79, 82, 141, 144, 171; as objects for viewing by women, 42, 133, 165, 167–68, 171; photographs of, 32, 171; pilots, 22, 88, 89, 105. See also specific modes of womanhood Women’s Eastern Times (Funü shibao), 38, 156, 180n73 work, 29, 92, 168; as desirable, 7, 45, 50, 53, 66–67, 174; changing value of, 49, 122, 125; freedom from, 44, 46, 112; ideological, 176; new forms of, 45–46, 166. See also labor workers, 8, 47, 145; as desirable, 43–45 workplaces, 14, 21, 24, 32, 47 wreaths, 8 Wright brothers, 89 wrists, 44, 53 writers, 6, 12, 44, 136 Wu Youru: Ban Zhao in her library, 59; Cai Yan and child sheltering beneath a tent, 100; courtesan mother and infant, 129; depictions of demimonde, 36; Empress Pan looking at her chariot, 49; flying Hong Xian averts a war, 88; Lady Guo on her travels, 87; Lady Wei at her desk, 27; Lady Xi with her two sons, 115; life and career of, 36–37; Lü Zhu committing suicide, 137; Nong Yu and a phoenix, 159; Qiu Shouping and, 37; Yaoniang dancing, 78; Zhou Muqiao and, 37 Xi, Lady, 114, 115 xian shou (delicate hands), 43. See also hands Xiao Die (son of Chen Xu), 38 Xiao Shi, 158 Xiaoqing, 168, 169

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INDE X

Xu Shiyan, 39 Xue Tao, 57, 58, 58, 176 Xue Yelai, 55, 85–86, 86

Young Companion (Liangyou), 112 Yuan dynasty, 56, 60 Yuan Shikai, 8

Yan Xiyuan, 34, 37 Yang Buwei, 112 Yang Guifei, 86, 184n4 Yangzi River, 64 Yaoniang, 3, 5, 5, 16, 77–78, 177n1 yarn, 53, 55, 174 Ye Jiuru, 35 Yin Mingzhu (Pearl Ing), 39

Zhang Chunfan, 141 Zhang Danfu, 12, 38 Zhang Honghong, 158, 159 Zhao Feiyan, 82–83, 83, 134, 143–44, 157; as empress, 82, 143 Zhao Hede, 82, 83,134, 144 Zhou Muqiao, 37 Zhuo Wenjun, 136, 138

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