Becoming Chinese

Passages to Modernity and Beyond

Wen-hsin Yeh

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780520222182
• eBook ISBN: 9780520924413
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This volume evaluates the dual roles of war and modernity in the transformation of twentieth-century Chinese identity. The contributors, all leading researchers, argue that war, no less than revolution, deserves attention as a major force in the making of twentieth-century Chinese history. Further, they show that modernity in material culture and changes in intellectual consciousness should serve as twin foci of a new wave of scholarly analysis. Examining in particular the rise of modern Chinese cities and the making of the Chinese nation-state, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume of cultural history provide new ways of thinking about China's modern transformation up to the 1950s. Taken together, the essays demonstrate that the combined effect of a modernizing state and an industrializing economy weakened the Chinese bourgeoisie and undercut the individual's quest for autonomy.

Drawing upon new archival sources, these theoretically informed, thoroughly revisionist essays focus on topics such as Western-inspired modernity, urban cosmopolitanism, consumer culture, gender relationships, interchanges between city and countryside, and the growing impact of the state on the lives of individuals. The volume makes an important contribution toward a postsocialist understanding of twentieth-century China.


This volume evaluates the dual roles of war and modernity in the transformation of twentieth-century Chinese identity. The contributors, all leading researchers, argue that war, no less than revolution, deserves attention as a major force in the making of

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Introduction: Interpreting Chinese Modernity, 1900-1950
• PART ONE The City and the Modern
• ONE The Cultural Construction of Modernity in Urban Shanghai: Some Preliminary Explorations
• TWO Marketing Medicine and Advertising Dreams in China, 1900-1950
• THREE “A High Place Is No Better Than a Low Place”: The City in the Making of Modern China
• FOUR Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928-1937
• FIVE Hierarchical Modernization: Tianjin’s Gong Shang College as a Model for Catholic Community in North China
• SIX The Grounding of Cosmopolitans: Merchants and Local Cultures in Guangdong
• PART TWO The Nation and the Self
• SEVEN Zhang Taiyan’s Concept of the Individual and Modern Chinese Identity
• EIGHT Crime or Punishment? On the Forensic Discourse of Modern Chinese Literature
• NINE Hanjian (Traitor)! Collaboration and Retribution in Wartime Shanghai
• TEN Of Authenticity and Woman: Personal Narratives of Middle-Class Women in Modern China
• ELEVEN Victory as Defeat: Postwar Visualizations of China’s War of Resistance
• GLOSSARY
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX