Huang Shan

They say in China that once you have seen Huang Shan, or Yellow Mountain, there is no need to ever see another mountain. I think the main reason I would disagree with that is because Huang Shan is incredibly unique, but probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life. And finally, the uniqueness of Chinese landscape paintings makes sense, since Huang Shan’s infamous sea of clouds seemed to be directly mirrored in most Chinese paintings.
As the Lonely Planet pointed out, Huang Shan has been a tourist attraction for hundreds and hundreds of years, a popular retreat for literati and painters throughout Chinese history.

I don’t really have a lot to tell about the trip, as in this case more than anything, a picture is worth a thousand words. I will (quickly) highlight our journey. They built a new highway into Anhui province, where Huang Shan is, which means that it is now possible to get from Shanghai to the nearby town of Tunxi in just over 4 hours (where, a couple of years ago, it took more than 10 hours!) by bus. Unfortunately, from there it got a bit more complicated. We then had to take another bus for about an hour (and since it is a rural public bus, it was actually an hour and a half because we had to roam around and pick people up and drop people off in random places on the way) to the town of Tangkou, at the foot of the mountain, and then a short cab ride up to the entrance to the trail.

The hike was both easy and difficult. It was incredibly easy to follow as the path was entirely made up of stone stairs. It would be nearly impossible to stray off the path, making it very safe, even when there are no people around, which occasionally actually happened, a rarity for China. That being said, it was one of the hardest hikes I have ever been on. The hike up was about 8 kilometers, not extremely long, but it was 8 kilometers of nothing but stairs. So, while I enjoyed for the first time in months blue skies, chirping birds, and the sounds of silence, I did while huffing and puffing up the mountain, stopping to take more pictures than necessary simply for the excuse to take a break.

When we reached the summit, it was suddenly incredibly cold because there were no longer trees to block the high winds. We found our hotel and stayed in for the night simply because we were just too cold to go out. The next morning, we awoke early (5:30!!!) to see the Beihai sunrise. Huang Shan has always been famous for it’s sea of clouds (while watching the sunrise, the most common word everyone uttered was “yunhai” or sea of clouds. I am already extremely familiar with the battle with Chinese tourists for optimal picture taking opportunities, as no beautiful spot in Asia is free from Chinese tourists’ expensive professional cameras. So, even though the sunrise wasn’t until 7, I made sure to get there by 6: 15.
There I ran into some other Americans we had met the day before, and we all hiked up the nearby peak for an optimal viewing area. The most abandoned one we found only had one man with his giant camera, light sensor, and tripod all set up at the end of a plank like platform. I asked if he would share the edge of the platform, and he gave me a very long sob story about how he got up at 5 in the morning to get the perfect viewing area, and he wasn’t going to move his tripod (which did in fact take up the entire width of the platform). I gave up the battle because I could still see clearly off the edge, but this man’s battles (and mine) were not over. Eventually the platform began to fill with people pressing up against us, even taking pictures over our heads and shoulders. Another man pushed his way almost to the front with his tripod and camera, yelling at the first guy to share his spot. The first guy gave him the same story he gave me, but the second man with his tripod wouldn’t accept it. He then started yelling about how he had let foreigners near the front, but wouldn’t let him up there.
I snapped at him that we were there first, but that didn’t deter his comments. He began calling the first man a traitor to the Chinese race for letting foreigners near the front but not him, which caused me to yell at him, telling him he shouldn’t discriminate like this, we all want to take pictures and we were there first. I’ve heard of this kind of discrimination before, but never really heard it before, and I was very angry. Fortunately, others on the platform began telling him to be more civilized, and he eventually stormed off to another place, leaving us in peace to take pictures.

All that being said, the sunrise was beautiful, as was the hike down. We hiked down a different path which led us up and over some peaks, along narrow staircases carved along cliffs, giving us a fantastic view of the entire mountain range (again, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves). The stairs we climbed were somewhat treacherous, going up and down, bringing us to the highest point of nearly 1800 meters only to clamber back down again.

Finally, we reached the end and looked for a taxi to bring us back to the town of tangkou. We shared it with a friend we met on the trail as well as two others, and then transferred to a bus that would bring us back to Tunxi. This is where we learned more about the bus system in rural China: they don’t leave until they are full. So we spent nearly an hour going round and round the town looking for passengers (and remember there were dozens of buses doing the same thing. Finally, we got on a private minibus that then took us to Tunxi, where we transferred to a bus that got us back to Shanghai in only 4 hours!

While this hike left me literally bedridden for a couple of days due to sore muscles, this was one of the most spectacular places I have ever been. But don’t take my word for it, check out the pictures.
 

Chinese 牛 year *

This week, all of China and much of the Asian world went home to their families, arms full with big fruit baskets and fixings for dumplings, to celebrate the lunar new year and the coming of the year of the ox. Since Chinese new year is a time for families to get together (some poorer people take much of their savings every year to make the trek back to their home towns to be with extended families) there is often little place for foreigners, which is why I was extremely fortunate to get the chance to spend a Chinese new year with friends and their families. I thought I would just write a short post and reflect on my Chinese new year experience.

Saturday the 25th was the day before 出席, or the day before
the night before "official" new year. On Saturday, I took a bus out to Qing Pu, a suburb of Shanghai, to eat dinner with my friend and her family. Her grandma, aunts, uncles, cousins, and nieces and nephews were all there, I believe over 10 people in all, and we shared a few dozen dishes together. They mostly spoke Shanghainese to each other, so I didn't have a great opportunity to talk with people, but they all made sure I had a lot of red wine (which, according to them, is Chinese New Year drink) and would periodically signal to me to "ganbei" or "cheers." The dinner included a lot of seafood, a particularly "lucky" dish, as well as an array of beef and pork dishes (normally, duck and chicken would also be traditional food, but this family stayed away from it because of fears of bird flu). The feast then ended with fresh fruit.

After dinner, we all went back to my friend's aunt's house to play Mahjiang.
My friend told me that in her family, most of her family members do nothing but work and play mahjiang. While I know that was quite the overstatement, they played (I watched, since it is a 4 person game) for nearly 4 hours. While Mahjiang is played with tiles, from what I could understand of the rules, it could easily be a variation of Rummy if played with cards, and watching her family get so excited over it made me think of my family playing cards. For most of the nights of Chinese New Year, this is what her family did, although I only watched it this one day.

The next day, chuxi (or "new year's eve" so to speak) I had dinner with an American friend and his wife, in laws, daughter, and other friends. It was a great mix of Americans and Chinese people; fortunately, his in laws made the food, so we got to have a great Chinese feast, complete with good wine and bourbon. My favorite dishes were the kaofu, a spongy type of beancurd particular to Shanghai, and babaofan, or 8 treasure rice. After that, we watched the Chinese New Years Eve special on TV. I was told that all Chinese people watch this on chuxi (although I later found out my other friend's family did not, they were playing Mahjiang), and one in our company works in Chinese television, so we watched in and out. To me, the highlight of the program was an international riverdance group, as well as a performance by some poor American exchange student they must have plucked off the street to speak pretty poor Chinese in a skit. As the evening went on, the performances and dances got more and more colorful (probably because their audience was getting more and more drunk), and outside, people were lighting fireworks (not illegal in Shanghai).At midnight, I felt like the entire city had come out of their houses to light fireworks, and the scene was spectacular. I wish I could explain what it was like to have literally hundreds of fireworks going off at the same time all around the city, so to better illustrate, I added a video I took at midnight that at least somewhat shows the magnitude of the midnight fireworks show. However, this scene lost its luster when it continued late into the night and then started up again at 7 in the morning, not giving me much time to sleep.

The next day, Monday, I went back to Qingpu to visit my friend and her family. For breakfasts and snacks, we had what was called "gao" or cakes made of sticky rice and then stuffed with red beans (see my friend next to them in the picture)
For dinner that night, it was just me, my friend, her mother, and her 85 year old grandmother, who (other than my Nana) is probably the cutest older woman I have ever met. We ate perch (the fish traditionally eaten at Chinese new year) in a fantastic soup with fish balls along with bamboo shoots, some pork, and other veggie dishes. Then, the next day, we went exploring around Qingpu, which seemed to me a fantastic community. We walked by street vendors, browsed through local shops, and passed by a local temple built in the Ming or Qing dynasty (we are still not clear). Then, for dinner, my friend's mom made 18 dishes for us and her extended family, including more perch, rice cooked in lotus leaves, eel, and chicken strips for my friend's 1 year old niece (although we all had a bit). After that, while much of the family went off to play Mahjiang, we went to sing at Karaoke, which is always a lot of fun and a great chance to practice Chinese.

Overall, I found that Chinese new year is actually a lot like Christmas in America; some go to worship ancestors, some go traveling, but everyone should be with family, and there is a huge emphasis on food. It seems the most traditional way to spend Chinese new year is with as many family members as possible, but some watch TV, some play games, some go to other countries. The traditions seem to vary, something I didn't expect. But while each family has it's own way of spending Chinese new year, it is a good chance to see family and eat a lot of food, something that many people in China don't often get to do. I was very lucky to be able to witness a part of it.

* For those who don't know, the character in the title, 牛, is the character for ox. It is pronounced "niu" and therefore sounds a lot like "new." It is a goofy and overdone play on words.

Research Notes: Who is a hero?

I remember as a child having, more than once, as an essay topic， or even interview topic： who is your hero and why? The way we define hero varies from situation to situation; oftentimes it is a parent or an adult with whom we had a very close relationship. But hero doesn't have to mean a hero like superman or even soldiers; it can simply mean someone who has inspired us to be better people.

Looking through language textbooks, however, we see that the term "hero" (英雄) was almost exclusively reserved for soldiers in the military. What is more, in some textbooks nearly 3/4 of the stories pertain to soldiers in the military. Sometimes there are female soldiers, but overwhelmingly, nearly all of the stories about battalions who overcame hardship, natural or human, to claim a victory for China.

I asked my friend the librarian about this topic, as he grew up reading these kinds of textbooks (although, if you see my post below, the textbooks he used had significantly fewer of these kinds of stories, as compared to other textbooks from the 1970s which were almost exclusively military stories).[1] He confirmed my theory, that the concept of "hero" was reserved for those who served in the military. He explained this to me, saying that when these textbooks were written, China had been at war with Western powers for nearly 100 years, and only when the Communist came into power did the Chinese finally start winning (let us remember the Opium wars, plural, the Sino Japanese war, the semi colonization, and then WWII in Asia, all of which decimated the Chinese state). However, the Communists won the civil war in the 40s, and (in Chinese accounts) the Korean war against the Americans in the 1950s. These people were the heroes of the new Chinese state. The librarian also pointed out to me that this still exists today because the PLA is involved with such things as Sichuan earthquake relief (which, by most accounts, was a very successful rescue mission, especially when compared to Katrina). He also admitted his bias, having served in the airforce.

Since I've talked about identity beyond a national sense, my first question would be, "what about women? Do they have no heroes?" But at the same time, women were a part of this struggle too. They fought against the Nationalists and the Japanese. So a lot of stories were about women. One in particular comes to mind about a girl who kills herself in front of nationalist troops rather than abandon the 8th road army (the Communist forces).

This also made me think of America. There is certainly an almost untouchable respect for our troops in America (we must support the troops) but it is not the only way to be a hero. This may be because it has been a long time since a large proportion of our male population has served in a war. More importantly, most of the veterans alive today served in wars of which our nation was not uniformly supportive. The Vietnam war, and Vietnam veterans, still serve as a point of contention amongst the population. No longer is it necessary to be a war hero, or even a veteran at all, to be considered a hero in the general sense. Obama's lack of military service was hardly mentioned during the campaign, and while McCain's experience in Vietnam was exhaustively used by the McCain camp, it's significance was largely lost on the younger generation of Americans.

What does this mean in the larger sense of what it means to be Chinese? I don't think that these textbooks are attempting to claim that the only way to be a hero is to be in the military. I think it serves more as a metaphor. The revolution claimed that sacrificing oneself for the cause was the most important thing a person can do, and military stories serve as a much more vivid example of this kind of sacrifice than stories about peasants who spend 12 hours a day farming, or children who collect nails off the street for the great leap forward. Furthermore, the formulaic story of soldiers overcoming harsh weather, dead surroundings, or an evil opposing army serves to demonstrate the common theme of overcoming hardships for the revolution. Even the "enemy" can serve to demonstrate a larger theme. In the many stories about soldiers crossing difficult mountain ranges, rivers, or surviving harsh weather, the writers of these stories send a message to children that through determination and dedication for the revolution, man can essentially overcome nature (a very radical idea throughout the history of China）. And when Chinese soldiers overcome American or Nationalist armies (I laughed a bit when we were called 美国鬼子， or American devils[2]), the authors can make strong anti imperialist or anti rightist statements.

It is still considered a respectful position to serve in the military, just as it still is in mainstream American society\. But I think these stories are not only meant to teach children to join the military; I think they wanted to teach children the greater themes about the meaning of sacrifice and the rewards of dedication.

---

[1] The textbook series that is overwhelmingly full of military stories上海市小学课本语文。 上海市中小学教材编写组出版，1972。 A few more that had at least 1/3 of the textbook include military stories are: 中等专业学校材 语文: 上册. 北京:高等教育出版社, 1959; and初级中学课本语文。上海：教育出版社，1958。

[2]上海市小学课本语文。 上海市中小学教材编写组出版，1972。

Overanalysis

When I was in undergraduate, I wrote a fun essay about a Freudian interpretation of Jack and the Beanstalk, based off a book we read for class called The Uses for Enchantment: Meaning in Fairy Tales, by Bruno Bettleheim. Basically, I took from this book ideas about how to interpret various fairy tales and argued that Jack and the Beanstalk implicitly communicates with young boys that it is ok and healthy to explore their sexuality and sexual urges. Instead of thinking of Jack and the Beanstalk the way we normally do, a young boy becoming a hero, he is instead a child who must leave his mother on a quest of his own sexuality, and after he climbs the beanstalk (doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to see the symbolism there) he comes back a man, ready to take care of his mother and move into the world of adult sexuality. As any good analytical essay should, mine included an acknowledgment of counterarguments to my thesis. The most important one was that I was simply overinterpreting the story; it really is as simple as a heroic magical tale that children enjoy for reasons that have nothing to do with adolescent confusion about sex.

I thought of this today while having a conversation with the librarian at the Publishing House.When I am finished with a stack of books and leaving for the day, I give the librarian a new list, and he gets them for me either after I leave or before I arrive the next day. When I walked in today, ready to sift through a large stack of 语文 (language) textbooks from the 50s, 60s and 70s, he sat me down and said with excitement that I had requested the book he used when he was in primary school in 1959. He told me he recognized the cover, and then proceeded to show me his favorite parts of the book. He showed me a bright colorful picture of a fox and a hen, telling me about the 童话故事 (fairy tale) it depicted (below), and then showed me a picture of a medieval looking Chinese hero riding a phoenix over a pile of brightly colored jewels (seen to the right). It has been 50 years, he said, since he had seen these books, but he immediately remembered the pages where his favorite stories and pictures were. I told him I thought these books looked much more interesting than the ones I had been thumbing through before; the librarian scoffed and said "of course! Those are from right after the Cultural Revolution (pointing to a set of textbooks from 1972) of course they will be boring!"

The way he remembered so vividly these fairy tales, and the excitement with which he showed me the pictures from his old elementary school textbooks, made me think about my old essay. I spend so much time trying to analyze how various stories, pictures, and textbooks, create a certain sense of identity, nationalism, and selfhood. And while I would like to think that my research is not completely useless, maybe sometimes I overemphasize the meanings and impact of textbooks and propaganda. The pictures at the beginning of the textbooks of Mao helping children, or the pictures of Tian'anmen, equally colorful, didn't stick out in his mind; instead it was the fantastic fairy tales that have nothing to do with Communism or the revolution. And come to think of it, I'm not sure I would recognize my old grammar books from elementary school, but I remember exactly how I felt when I read Roald Dahl's The Witches, and how for my book report I spent hours making a puppet with a wig that could come off and shoes that hid square toeless feet. I don't think The Witches had any strong impact on my identity, national or otherwise, but I still remember that book, and the picture of the Grand High Witch without her mask.

I don't know why it is that these fairy tales stick out in our heads more than what the government perhaps wants us to remember; or maybe it doesn't. Maybe the reason is as simple as children like fantastic stories, not stories about red army members crossing a bridge and being national communist heroes. And maybe the librarian is not like every child. I guess this just taught me that maybe sometimes, I should just relax and not try to over analyze everything; some things are just as they are at face value.

Research Notes: Powerful literature

A couple of months ago, there was an article on Fox News about a woman who was suing the school board of her local county because her son's 8th grade literature textbook included Barack Obama's speech from the 2004 Democratic Convention and an excerpt from his memoir. She claimed that it was a blatant attempt to influence (and in the comments of the article, the word "brainwash" is more often used) her child's political opinions with the upcoming election. The editors of this textbook claim that the reason they had speeches from Barack Obama was because this textbook was used in a district that was over 50% black, and writings from a man who himself has struggled with his identity in America would help them identify in their own search for identity. And while this story may not have made huge news in America (I don't really know, I wasn't there), it certainly incensed the conservative community on the internet.

This got me thinking about the purpose of language arts, or English classes in school. I had always made the simplistic assumption that the purpose of an English class was just that, to teach English. But I guess I had never given it a lot of thought. A 语文 (which translates literally to written language, but for our purposes we should think of this as a Chinese, or language arts class in China) textbook I came across recently I think summed up the purpose of language classes quite well. It claimed:
The use of language is necessary in [understanding] economics, politics, culture, and life; it is something that every person every day cannot live without. If we study the correct use of language, the depths and creativity of our thinking and the extent of our productivity will increase and will have more meaning.
It is not about only teaching the mechanics of language. Language is the means through which we understand ideas; without properly understanding how language can communicate, we cannot fully understand the ideas by which we live (and the work productivity clearly shows communist influence from the 1960s). Therefore, perhaps more than any other class (other than history, no bias there) language arts can be a very powerful political tool. But government propaganda aside (and I would like to think that this Wisconsin language arts book was not blatant propaganda) it is also a way to encourage children to explore their own personal identity. The authors, however, have the very important, and perhaps dangerous, responsibility of creating the parameters within which children can explore their own identity.

I've been recently looking at 语文 textbooks from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and I have found some very interesting trends. One trend that shouldn't be surprising to anyone is the pervasive themes of Communism. In the 1950s and 1960s textbooks especially, the importance of communism and revolution is pervasive. Half of the stories are about Mao Zedong (in ALL of the textbooks), either songs he wrote, stories he wrote, or stories about him, about people going to see him, about his good deeds. There are also occasional stories about communist movements abroad (such as one in Canada; I didn't know there was a communist movement in Canada), or stories about the Korean war. Each textbook, from every time period, began with 1 or 2 revolutionary songs.

There were other trends, however, that I found more interesting. In the textbooks from the 1950s and 60s, there was an emphasis on youth empowerment, both male and female. There were many stories about children who stood up to thieves or landlords, about children who traveled thousands of miles to see Mao Zedong. Either way, the emphasis is on the importance of children. I would estimate (and this is a very gross estimation) that nearly 1/3 of the stories in the early textbooks are about children. Also, it is important to note that the children whom we should be imitating are both male and female.

This trend changes in the 1970s. Gone are the stories of child empowerment and instead we have stories about the greatness of adults, and there are many essays on the importance of child self criticism (a subject absent from earlier textbooks). Mao still writes many of the essays, but they are not about him as a child and a revolutionary, but instead about him as a leader (an adult leader). There also essays about the responsibility of children, which is to study for the purpose of the revolution. And, in a new twist, there is an emphasis on youth movements of the 1920s, thus looking backwards for influence from youth movements that advocated change and reform.

This shows us the parameters within which children should form their own identity. In the earlier communist period, the textbook writers wanted children to feel their own empowerment, to understand what children could do and their place in creating a new society, both men and women (which is reminiscent of stories children in America learn about following dreams and doing the best they can at anything). By the 1970s, China had learned what happened when too much control is given to adolescents, and so they held back a bit on child empowerment.

This is not unlike America. When I read stories from these Chinese textbooks, and the heroine was a woman, a felt a small surge of pride just like I did when we read about female heroes in high school (my favorite, though I can't remember her name, was a woman who during the civil war hiked up her pants and helped load cannons). Literature and language are the means through which we explore ideas, and if students can't identify with any of the literature or the authors, then we have a pretty unsuccessful class. This is why having stories with which black children, Asian children, Hispanic children, and females can identify is so important. Stories like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, and The Awakening are important (although I will admit, while I understand the significance now, I never really identified with the heroine of The Awakening. I personally felt more of a connection with Atticus Finch). This is why Obama's memoir is important, to allow minority children, black children especially, to see a current, contemporary hero (Martin Luther King, while important, I would assume is starting to get old) who also struggled with his own place in society. Shakespeare is certainly important to learn, but with nothing to identify with, children have a much more difficult time exploring the potential behind expression through the richness of language.

To connect this back with China, their language textbooks directly correlate with the sense of youth empowerment that we see in the early communist period. According to many memoirs, women had very little sense of gender consciousness, never felt unequal in school. Children felt like they were the center of the revolution, and many of them felt a very emotional and personal connection with Mao and the Communist Party. Literature with which they could identify allowed them to form this connection. Some even went the extra mile to use literature to express their own ideas (the collection Some of Us has a great piece by Xiaomei Chen, a young girl who as a young girl in the 1950s wrote an award winning essay about being a part of the Communist movement).

I never thought about any of this in high school， but it makes sense to me now. I think more than anything this research has shown me how important education is. I never thought of language textbooks being so powerful, but they in fact are.


I cannot for the life of me find this article again on the internet, but I did find a video from Fox News with much of the same information. http://www.foxnews.com/video-search/m/21258867/fair_and_balanced.htm?pageid=47147&seek=9.014

中等专业学校材 语文: 上册. 北京:高等教育出版社, 1959, p 1.
1958 59 学年度上海市高中毕业班复习参考资料语文. 上海:上海教育出版社, 1958 59; 初级中学课本语文。上海：教育出版社，1958; 周建威。 小学课本语文。 上海：华东人民出版社，1952; 上海市中学课本语文。 上海：中小学教材编， 1972; 五年制中学课本语文，上海：教育出版社，1960.

Xiaomei Chen. “From ‘Lighthouse’ to the Northeast Wilderness: Growing Up among the Ordinary Stars,” in Some of Us, ed. Xueping Zhong, Wang Zheng, Bai Di, 55–57.

The problem with language

Recently, I've been very interested recent language reforms in China, and I have had a hard time finding information about this particular subject. I've tried doing some digging, and I have come up with a somewhat comprehensive, although largely still lacking, timeline of language reform in China.

Right now, China uses a character system that is chronologically and geographically unique. Before the 1950s, the Chinese writing system was (for the most part) unified and consistent, and Chinese people in China and in the larger Chinese empire (at least those who were literate) used the same characters (I admit, I am not an ancient scholar, so I am sure there are exceptions to this, but I'm more interested in modern history, so we are going to stick to this generalization for now). China's spoken language, however, was and still remains largely diverse. While most people who have been through primary school can speak the standard mandarin Chinese (putonghua, literally translating to the normal language), almost every area in China has it's own dialect (with the exception of Beijing, simply because their dialect IS putonghua). Shanghai people will primarily speak Shanghainese. Only 60 kilometers away, in Hangzhou, is another dialect, which is different from Shanghainese, although supposedly from the same family. Each town, each village, has it's own dialect, and it has been that way probably since the beginning of Chinese history. Moreover, these dialects argue over which was the ORIGINAL Chinese; Cantonese speakers will argue probably most fervently for their own cause. We won't even get into minorities in China; while the government will argue there are 55 different minority groups in China, it is much more complex than that, and in fact in some cases, Tibetan probably being the most well known, they not only have a different language, but a different writing system altogether.

Nevertheless, Chinese writing has been largely consistent and unified since the first emperor of China unified it in the 200s BC (I met a man once who went to Guangdong and found that he could not find a hotel because no one would speak mandarin to him, and Cantonese sounded like a completely foreign language to him. He finally wrote down the characters and asked someone, and was then able to find it. He said that was the first time he really appreciated the greatness of the first emperor of China). Then, in 1949, after the communists took over, they decided that the best way increase literacy was to simplify characters. According to one of the textbooks I found, this policy was put into effect in 1956, beginning the shift. Now, I expected to see a complete shift (actually, I expected to see a shift in 1949, until I cam across an explanation in one of the textbooks about the 1956 policy). However, instead of being a complete shift, perhaps half of the characters were in simplified characters, and half in traditional. In language textbooks (similar to the textbooks we would use for middle school English), there was a dictionary in the back that showed traditional and simplified characters so children could easily transition. Then, in textbooks published in the early 1970s, the transition was complete, and it was written completely in simplified characters. I found this half and half thing quite odd, so I asked one of the librarians about it. He explained to me that by the late 1960s, almost all of the children attending school had been brought up with simplified characters, and had been taught simplified characters at the beginning of their education. Before that, many children had been first taught traditional, so the half and half thing was to facilitate the transition. He explained that he had begun school right in the early 1950s, so he began right at the beginning of the transition; therefore, most of his early books were half and half. But for children entering middle school in the 1950s, this transition was more difficult, so the half and half made it easier.

So in a general sense, we see how the transition from traditional to simplified played itself out in the classroom. I still don't know the whole picture, but this is what I was able to glean from textbooks. Spoken language reform was more complicated STILL. I made the assumption that since the Communists took it upon themselves to control and unify just about everything, I assumed that that attitude would apply to spoken language as well. However, I have come across many people (mostly cab drivers) who really can't speak a word of mandarin (makes communication really fun). So I began asking around, and once again Chen Laoshi, the librarian, gave me an explanation. He told me that beginning in the 1950s, everyone had to learn mandarin in school, but it was not a requirement to get a job or anything (although certainly helpful, especially for government positions). However, as he explained to me, many teachers could not even speak mandarin, even though they were supposed to be teaching it (he told me his mandarin teacher in primary school had very poor mandarin). Communication was certainly a problem. I found this interesting; there were still many people who couldn't understand mandarin, yet Mao, who even gave his speeches in Hunanese (although this, to me, sounds like mandarin, I understand some of his speeches), still managed to so closely unify the country in behavior and thought. I asked Chen Laoshi if there were still people who couldn't understand Mao, and he told me "of course!" I then asked why they followed him so closely, and Chen Laoshi told me "that is why local government was so important." And it is true that in a lot of cultural revolution memoirs, countryside people didn't have the time to go on pilgrimages to Beijing to see Mao or follow the Long March route out of political loyalty; all that mattered was what local cadres told them (and that they got enough to eat). They had local meetings and such, but the political fervor that swept the cities and pretty much shut down all major institutions didn't hit the peasants, since their livelihood (and that of the rest of China) depended on their continuing of their every day lives. And besides, most people in China at that time couldn't afford a radio or a TV, so they probably only knew of Mao's words through the local cadres.

However, now, it is a requirement that teachers and government officials not only speak mandarin, but know the mandarin pinyin (the English romanization) and take a test to prove it, but this legislation is only a few years old. And even so, there are still many people who cannot speak mandarin. I assume that through media this will continue to change (although Cantonese may survive through pop songs, Jackie Chan movies, and stubborn Hong Kong people), and most of these dialects will fade away. This still remains to be seen, though.

This is certainly not a complete understanding of language reform, and I would like to know more. Anyone who knows any scholarship about this, I would happily welcome book/article recommendations.

Shanghai Story: A conference

East China Normal University has been home to two conferences this week; one, on the Cold War, I already wrote about, and the other, held December 19-20, was about history and visual culture in the making of modern Shanghai. The topics were quite diverse, although (mostly) centered around cultural history. Along with a lot of new information that helps us to understand modern Shanghai, the participants were able to engage in some extremely important theoretical debates.
The conference was titled "Shanghai Story," implying an attempt to illuminate how Shanghai came into being the epicenter of modern China's genesis, politically, economically, and culturally. But, as Professor Yeh Wen Hsin pointed out in the round table discussion that ended the conference, even the title "Shanghai Story" is problematic. She claimed that stories, in essence, have a beginning, middle and end. But when and where does this story start? That is a historical question that is difficult to determine.
The purpose of this conference was to look at Shanghai's story from the perspective of visual culture. One of the main topics was photography. Three great presentations that stuck out in my mind were by Professor Gu Zheng and Professor Sarah Fraser. Professor Gu's presentation outlined a photography project, commissioned by the Japanese government in 1937-1938, that was meant to show wartime China directly after the invasion. The photographs, which showed Shanghai people in a sympathetic state, was meant to be wartime propaganda, demonstrating to both Japanese and Chinese that the Japanese invasion should be welcome. However, through these photographs, Shanghai was essentially "visually reproduced" during the war, for both Japanese and Chinese, and many of the pictures emphasized China's colonization by the West and the necessity of an Asian rescuer. Professor Fraser's presentation explored photographs of Chinese people taken by Europeans in the late 19th century, and then compared them to later photographs taken by Chinese photographers of ethnic minorities in Western China. Fraser's argument is that the style, subject matter, and purpose behind both of these types of photographs were strikingly similar. While Western people took photographs of Chinese people to show their backwardness, primitiveness, and static and unmodern status. Similarly, the Chinese Republican government reused these similar types of photographs in their anthropological studies of the Tibetans, Yi, and Miao races in Western China. She claims that through these photographs, a clear understanding of the "modern citizen" was born through representation of the "other." The third presentation by professor Jin Tao was about photographs of women . She looked at photos of sing and dance girls from the 1920s and 1930s and attempted to argue their main purpose: to fulfill men's desires or to promote a healthy body image for women? She argues that there are two elements that a woman should strive for in her physical appearance: health and beauty, and sex and desire. At the same time, many of these photographs also gave a visual perception of the modern, which embraced visual examples of health and sex.
A lot of important theoretical ideas can come from these presentations. First, in a larger sense, the importance of photography as a medium should be explored (which it was at this conference). At the round table discussion, Professor Thomas Bender explained how photography can have many purposes: the can allow us to recognize what we already know, allow us to discover things missing in texts, and most importantly, they can be performative, in the sense that they make things happy. Professor Gu's presentation represented this, in that the publishing of the Shanghai wartime photos recreated Shanghai in the minds of Japanese and Chinese, giving new justifcations for war and a new self image. I also thought that professor Fraser's argument was quite compelling because I see similarities in the way that minorites are photographed today. Advertisements in China do not show them as backwards and primitive, but do maintain a certain amount of "tradition" and at the same time, appeal through the exotic and the sexual. Just like Geisha and female hostesses were photographed and advertised in the West as an exotic and beautiful reason to visit Asia, now beautiful minority women are photographed in their traditional clothes and put on display for Chinese tourists. Even the pictures advertising the Olympics and (more visible to me) the Shanghai Expo show minorities greeting the world and the Expo with traditional gifts in traditional clothes, while the Han people greet them with a modern background in expensive Western clothing. I find this somewhat echoes Dr. Fraser's argument, although I admit, I have not done enough research on ethnic tourism to completely substantiate my argument.
Another medium that was explored was film. Dr. Pickowicz did a presentation on 1920's Chinese films (which he claims have been largely neglected, which is a mistake) and Professor Jin Jiang presented on the play/movie Stage Sisters. Professor Pickowicz argued that the 1920's films, while not being particularly political, were important because of their statements about modern marriages. The three films he looked at, Oceans of Passion, Orphan in the Snow, and A String of Pearls, show that modern marriages, while being a much better alternative to traditional marriages, did not have one particular model to follow. Instead, the movies showed that the modern marriage still had a lot of problems, and that it was largely dependent on both emotional and material needs of both the women and the men. Professor Jiang's presentation explored the 1965 movie Stage Sisters and its 1998 adaptation. She argues that while the former was largely political and worked with a revolutionary discourse, the latter works backwards, eliminating the political elements and looking more closely at female and sisterly love.
Dr. Pickowicz's presentation explored some extremely important theoretical and methodological ideas. First of all, as both he and professor Bender explored, the medium of film itself is unique among many visual mediums. It is with film that an audience can more actively participate in the action, and vicariously play out their own fantasies. He called this "fantastical participation," and for a film to be popular, it had to reach people, and especially women, on this level of allowing them to actively participate in the character's struggles and positions. The ability to reach people on this level makes films unique, and it is unique to the modern world. Another concept that Professor Pickowicz explored is the importance of the national and international. He showed that in all of his films, this place called "China" was essentially absent; also, all three of these films were extremely popular throughout Southeast Asia. Therefore, these themes and ideas, as well as the possibility for audience fantastical participation, spanned across national lines. As Dr. Bender noted, oftentimes city culture can travel in a way that national culture does not. Dr. Pickowicz argued that perhaps, instead of only looking to the past 30 years for examples of globalization, we can see it much earlier than that in the ability of cultural models to transfer on an international stage. Thus, when we explore things like magazines, movies, and photographs, we should look beyond pointing to the beginnings of nationalism and look at both the global and the local levels.
Many other presentations looked at other interesting historical sources. Professor Christian Henriot presented on the creation of space through novels, an idea that I had never thought about but was incredibly revealing. He argues that in novels, time and space are created in order to both facilitate a story and to make a point about geography itself. In essence, by carefully choosing which events occur where and when, an author can make a powerful statement about his own understanding of geographic space. Professor Henriot explored 3 novels written about Shanghai, all three of which made statements about the author's understanding of the city geography and cultural construction. As another historical medium, Professor Andrew Field explored dance halls and caberets in modern Shanghai as a creation of urban modernity. Field traced the beginnings and subsequent popularization of dance halls in China from the 1910s into the 1930s. While making a series of really interesting arguments about the reformation of jazz for the Chinese setting and the politicization of dance halls, I found most interesting his thesis concerning the orientalizing transfer of dance halls from the West. Originally, dance halls in the West were meant to be sources of lewd behavior made acceptable by the presence of "oriental" women. The first dance halls in Europe were filled with Turkish harems and other women from the east, making the more sexualized behavior appropriate because of the inclusion of the "other." However, when caberets and jazz bars were imported to the east, they were packaged as the epitome of class and society in the West. In essence, the East comes to the West and then circles back to the East as a Western import. I believe this happens a lot, if not through popular cute toys and even cheesy souvenirs now sold in the East only to Western tourists.
Another interesting topic was the creation and architecture of public parks, as presented by Dr. Dorothee Rihal. She explained that parks are "purely Western and modern." They have a variety of purposes: recreation, relaxation, aesthetic beauty, and a recreation of natural landscape. But, as Professor Rihal pointed out, in China they inhabited a unique space. They became a symbol not only of Western modernity but also of racial and colonial tensions, as their purpose of "public" space brought them to the forefront as far as racial tensions. Similarly, they became a method for Western colonial powers to absorb space which were not included in the original concession; many of the parks lay outside the international concession boundaries. To that effect, they also were important to budding artists at the time, as while they had recreational purposes, they were also aesthetic, offering an ideal natural landscape in the modern city.
These are only some of the "精彩" (a word used by almost every Chinese professor or student who asked a question) presentations, and of course there were more. These presentations stuck out in my head because of some of the issues they raised: the performative role of photography, the tension between the local, national, and global, important non literary sources, new ways of looking at literary sources, etc. I also think that these presentations stuck out in my mind because I found them as related to both my past and present research. It also opened my mind to sources yet to be fully explored. I wish I could have understood more of the discussion, and I wish I had had more time to talk to all of the professors. But I guess I will have time for a lot of this in grad school.

Society and Culture during the Cold War: A conference at ECNU

I had the privilege this week to attend a conference held by East China Normal University on society and culture in the background of the Cold War. The conference was held in Chinese, which was an interesting surprise for me. I learned a lot, and I got to practice a lot of Chinese. Below, I would like to list some of the more interesting topics from the conference. I admit, the topics I found interesting are slightly biased, not only because of my own areas of interest but also because of what I was able to understand; a few of the presentations I really struggled with. But a lot of great ideas were presented, and I am glad to see a lot more research on Chinese social and cultural history in the Communist period.
I found Karl Gerth's presentation really interesting because of the more theoretical issues it raises. He argues that the attack on capitalists and consumers by the Communist party cannot be understood simply in the context of early Communist policy; in fact, much of the justifcation for the anticonsumer/anticapitalist policies and the main reason it was so accepted was because of earlier practices and situations of market capitalism in the 1930s and earlier. That is to say, much of the justification the Nationalists gave for high spending and buying national goods was recycled to justify state ownership of all market activity in the 1950s. This is important I think because much too often we make a clear break from before 1949 to after 1949, refusing to acknowledge the fact that much of Communist policy was borrowed from earlier political and cultural models.
A few presentations taught me events and ideas that I had never even known about. Sen Pingchong's 森平崇's presentation talked about the cultural figure Ah Fei, a symbol of rowdy and disobedient children (from what I understood of the presentation). He shows how the figure Ah Fei and his stories, which cropped up in movies and books, represents a cultural model based upon American culture, a wanton unfilial lifestyle that should be avoided. In pictures, he reminds me of Elvis, with high hair that looks like an airplane, holding a cigarrette and mainly being immoral. The Ah Fei campaigns became most popular in 1950 and 1957. He argues that Ah Fei was important in 1950 because of the early communist campaign to wipe out American and Guomindang influence, especially through movies. There was a resurgence of Ah Fei's story again in 1957 because, while American movies and other media influences had mostly been elimintated, there still existed many of the institutions associated with Ah Fei's American deviant behavior, such as coffee shops; also, rock and roll had become popular, and it was immediately associated with Ah Fei. One of the professors during the free discussion time pointed out that the "Anti Ah Fei culture" was not exclusive to China, and in fact this cultural stereotype was equally attacked in the United States at the same time.

Another interesting fact I learned through these presentations was that in 1969, the Communist party, fearing a Soviet nuclear attack, evacuated a large portion of Tianjin's population and dispersed them throughout the countryside. In this process, they lost their urban residence cards, thus making them ineligible for higher living stipends and other benefits. Jeremy Brown's presentation explores this dynamic, showing that the Communist's reasons for this campaign was not only national defense but also domestic.

There were a few great presentations on Soviet-Chinese relations and comparisons. You Ji's presentation explains how the alliance deteriorated over the 1950s, explaining this deterioration over a battle for control and the Chinese desire to maintain autonomy in decision making. Izabella Goikhman's presentation explains the academic interactions among Chinese and Soviets. I found it interesting that, as Goikhman explained, there were limits on both sides as to how much they would share or use, but many of the limits were determined not by the government, but instead by the scientists themselves. The Soviet scientists were not given clear instructions on how much to share with the Chinese, and it was up to their judgment. Martin Dimitrov, the non historian of the group, compared Soviet and Chinese models in dealing with ethnic minorities. He showed that because of certain factors, it is not surprising at all that racial tensions led to the downfall of the USSR while China has maintained its sovereignty over its minority populations. These factors include: the percentage of minorities (Russia is only 51 percent Russian while China is 92 percent Han); the right of minorities to secede in the constitution (the USSR constitution gave that right to minorities, China's constitution does not); levels of urbanization (in China, the level of urbanization is much lower in provinces with many minorities whereas in the USSR it was much higher in high minority regions); and levels of education and social programs (in the USSR many minority groups had education levels above the national average while in China the level of education for minorities is below the national average. Interestingly, health care and welfare benefits is much higher for minority provinces than the national average).

There were also a few presentations which I found interesting and unique. Li Peide 李培德 from Hong Kong University gave a presentation on Hong Kong movies during the Cold War. In the 1950s, when the Hong Kong film industry was really taking off, Hong Kong was stuck at a crossroads between Taiwan and the PRC. While the Hong Kong film industry was influenced by a certain competitve atmosphere, the largest struggle it had to contend with was political pressure from Taiwan and China, both of which wanted to influence the movie industry in this critical location. Another interesting presentation, simply because of my past research, was Chen Yan's 陈雁 presentation on the New Chinese woman. She compared magazine pictures from the 1930s and from today, showing how in both these times, femininity and fashion were admired, and the ideal woman was one who presented her femininity through her clothes, makeup, and decorum. In contrast to that, in the women's magazine "New Chinese Woman" (新中国妇女）the ideal woman was quite difference. Femininity was not emphasized. Instead, women were shown as leaders in the new China, they drove trains, they worked in fields, they defended their countries, and the reared good revolutionary children. One problem I found with Professor Chen's argument, however, is that I found a lot of crossover from the 1930s woman and the New China woman. She used the magazine Ling Long for her comparison (a magazine with which I am quite familiar), and she claimed that Ling Long only emphasized this feminity like today's women's magazines. However, while they were few in number, there were still a substantial number of articles in Ling Long that emphasized female patriotism, female soldiers, and most importantly, female education; in fact, the emphasis on education was not slight, but a prevalent theme throughout the magazine. Thus, as Karl Gerth pointed out, making a clear break at 1949 doesn't work, as there is always a lot of cultural overlap between the two periods.

The conference was fascinating, and I learned a lot from these professors. I am now looking forward to another conference, beginning Friday, where I hope to absorb even more information.

Research notes: The creation of a citizen through the control of time and space

One of the themes that is prevalent throughout textbooks, especially the hygiene and everyday knowledge textbooks, is the emphasis on a controlled sense of time and space. Culp mentions this briefly in Articulating Citizenship, in which he claims that the Nationalist government instituted strict control over the school day in terms of schedules, classroom arrangement, free time, etc. He claims that this strict control over time and space contributes to creating an environment that mirrors a transition to industrialization. He claims "such organization an control of time as a valued resource, and the coordination of simultaneous collective activities, reflected the shifting conceptions of time that have accompanied industrialization, with its commodification and synchronization of labor." Similarly, Culp claims that a control of space allows an individual to understand his "generic self as an individual citizen in relation to the composite whole of a wider community."[1]
I believe it goes beyond this, as it not only represents a shifting perception of time and space, but a control over the body. By controlling the body, the government can create and mold a certain sense of citizenship that is very real and tangible. Being a citizen was not only imagined, it involved a bodily participation in ritualistic behavior, and the body existed within a certain space and time with others; this new perception of space and time in essence changed the body, conforming it to the "Chinese citizen," which was defined by the government.
This is evident in textbooks. Hygiene and everyday knowledge textbooks both give children a certain sense of controlled time and behavior. They often begin with chapters that tell children to get up early. The first few chapters of each book then bring a child throughout his or her day: get up at a set time, brush teeth and wash face, go to school on time, return home on time, eat dinner at a set time, and go to bed early. Also included in some hygiene textbooks are that children should defecate at the same time every day, that children should learn how to tell time (in later textbooks, when clocks were more common) and how to keep a schedule[2], and what children should do during set time periods, such as "this is what we do during recess time." This sense of controlled time is also expanded to include holidays; most everyday knowledge textbooks include an explanation of certain rituals and activities on important holidays, including October 10th (GMD National day) Children's Day in April, and Sun Yat Sen's birthday. All of these contribute to this controlled sense of time, where children are forced into a certain understanding of time wherein their experience is limited to that of the ideal Chinese citizen, thus compelling them to assume that role.[3]
There is a similar attempt for control of space. Everyday knowledge textbooks include many chapters that describe "the place that I live" "my home" "our classroom" "where we eat" "how to decorate our rooms" etc. Similarly, hygiene textbooks emphasize the environment and cleanliness of the classroom, and chapters on "public hygiene" (公共卫生） talk about the importance of classroom organization. Similarly, teachers’ manuals demonstrate the importance of designing the classroom in a specific way so as to ensure a controlled sense of uniform space.

However, that which is most evident was the government attempt to control the way that children use and handle their own bodies. This concept has been discussed by scholars before; Wang Zheng and Susan Brownell (to name a few) have talked about the importance of the body in creating the ideal citizen. In fact, Mark Elliot discussed the connection of body, time, space, and identity in early China. However, while “hygiene” to us implies cleanliness, to these textbooks it implies much more. Of course there is a heavy emphasis on keeping one’s body clean and free of disease, but there are also chapters on posture, on how to walk in a straight line, on how to exercise, which clothes to wear in the winter, how to greet guests, etc. This echoes a few ideas. First, it echoes Henrietta Harrison’s idea of public ritual in creating the modern citizen through dress and behavior. Similarly, it is reminiscent of a current Chinese public campaign that was put into full swing around the time of the Olympics. The purpose behind this particular campaign was to teach people to be very “文明” or civilized in order to show the world how “first world” China was. This included a smoking ban, harsh penalties for spitting areas where one shouldn’t spit, and to get on and off the subway in a 文明 sort of way. All of these ideas (the subway, obviously, excluded) are included in these textbooks as a way to control behavior through the body. In some ways, this process almost echoes the process explained in Elias’ Civilizing process, with one large difference: all of these changes are not compelled by society, but are compelled by a government desparately wanting to create a modern Chinese citizenry.
There are a few more important points to consider. One of these points is that the control of time, space, and behavior is not limited to the school day; many of the chapters attempt to control behavior and time at home. A teacher’s manual[4] claimed that children spent nearly 2/3 of their time at home, and thus, that time needed to be controlled within the house. This shows the government’s attempt to create this sense of controlled space both at school and at home. Another important point to consider is that much of this control of the body was not only to control personal behavior, but to place one’s body into a group dynamic. Even chapters such as “大家的东西” and “大家的事”imply an attempt to create a collective identity among children. This collective identity would change depending upon where the book was published and when; the Guomindang books emphasized the importance of Chinese collective, while those published for overseas Chinese, especially after 1949, emphasized a more multiracial and international collective.

A final point to consider is that almost all of these examples come from early textbooks, for children ages 7 to 9. In the upper volumes of the elementary school textbooks and in the middle school textbooks, there is less blatant instruction on how to behave. For instance, instead of telling children to brush their teeth and use the bathroom at certain times in the day, the chapters explain the scientific reasons behind maintaining oral hygiene. This shows us that this sense of space and time was to be established very early on, and once the parameters of a citizen’s existence were created at a young age, hygiene became much more of a physical science class rather than a behavioral class.

There are, of course, other examples I did not list here, but this shows an overall attempt to create a certain kind of citizen by limiting the space within which a child can create his own sense of time, space, behavior, and bodily action. By manifesting citizenry in this very physical way, a child’s entire outlook on life is determined by the parameters set. This is not foreign to us today. Americans are still shocked when they go to China and hear others spitting; in fact, the sound itself creates a Pavlovian response of nausea or discomfort. Similarly, we take for granted how on time we are expected to be. For us, classes start at a certain time, buses come at a certain time (as opposed to many places where buses leave when they are full). Desks in a classroom are consciously organized in a certain way; a circle implies discussion, rows facing towards the front imply lecture. This is not just for practical reasons, it is meant to create a certain type of behavior. And even in college, if desks are in disarray, the first students who arrive often spend time managing the desks into an “orderly” fashion. This understanding affects our identity; we are the product of a “modern” nation, and we are prepared to be as such because our schedule determines it that way. However, in China, it was not maintaining a system, but creating it, which is why these rules and ideas had to be a part of the curriculum. It was through this curriculum that all children could be on the same page, prepared to accept an identity as a modern citizen.

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[1] Robert Culp. Articulating Citizenship. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007: 167-169.

[2]南洋书局编。南洋初小常识教学法 (第三册). 新加坡：南洋书局有限公司，1948。

[3] All of this information comes from the following textbooks, unless specifically indicated: 最新南洋华侨小学常识课本教学法。新加坡：中华书局， 1939；徐允昭。小学卫生课本。 中华， 1933。上海图书馆；杨？如。 卫生课本 （高等）。世界书局印行。1933；文堇. 卫生课本 （初等）。世界书局印行。 1933。

[4]赵楚为。小学教育参考书 （上）。上海商务， 1925。上海图书馆

Working at the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House

Thus far, I have conducted almost all of my research at the Shanghai Library, China's largest provincial level library. Their holdings of textbooks is quite impressive, and I've found extensive amounts of material there. However, I read in Culp's book that the largest holdings of textbooks is in the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House, known in Chinese as the 辞书出版社图书馆， or for short the 辞书 (cishu). Since I am in Shanghai, I thought I should take advantage of such a wealth of material. I spoke with my adviser, Dr. Jiang, who told me she knew someone at the Cishu; I only thought I needed a letter of introduction, but it seems that Dr. Jiang's connections were much more important than I previously realized. Dr. Jiang spoke to her contacts, a former classmate named Wang Jihong, and I subsequently made an appointment to meet with her at the Cishu.

The building is in a small courtyard near West Nanjing Road, which is much closer to where I live than the Shanghai Library. It shares this courtyard with the Mansion; I haven't figured out what the Mansion is yet, but it is built in colonial architecture and dates back nearly a century. The archive itself is a small dusty building made of cement (which makes it quite uncomfortable to look through the card catalog located near the door in a hallway where small heaters cannot reach). I asked for Wang Jihong, and a woman in a white coat paged her. Wang Jihong was a bustling and very sweet middle aged woman who asked me a lot of questions and was quite complimentary of me in a very sincere way. She and I chatted about education here and in America, about Fulbrights (a program with which she was quite familiar) and how she knew my advisor. Another man then came in and asked what I was doing my research on, and I told him in a vague way. He pressed me further， attempting to understand exactly what kind of material I wanted to look through. Finally, I understood that he was not making polite conversation and actually wanted to get me my materials, so I asked for elementary and middle school changshi and weisheng textbooks; he swiftly left the room and came back within 15 minutes with a stack of books, which I then proceeded to look through.

I didn't realize how lucky I was to be able to use these archives, however, until I went to the archives with a fellow history student from California who I had met through a mutual friend. She and I had both read Culp's article about the Cishu, and thus both assumed that a letter of introduction would suffice for being able to use the archives. When we went together, however, she and I were tossed around to a few people until they finally told her that, even though this was not open to the public, they would allow her to look at only a few materials as long as they were in good condition and were easy to find. Ms. Wang then explained to us that normally, it was necessary for her to have Chinese connections to be able to use this private archives, and part of the reason they allowed it is because she knew me, who knew Dr. Jiang, who new Ms. Wang. Such is the importance of 关系 (connections) in China.

All that being said, the staff is incredibly friendly and knowledgeable. They are also quite proud of their library, and are often engaging in conversations about how many foreign people come to their library. The staff and other researchers also love to engage me in conversations; one older man who often gets my materials had a long conversation with me about Japanese electronics (since my camera is a Nikon); he also found it funny that I wrote everything in traditional characters. The rules are not strict at all, like some other archives; they will fetch materials at any times of the day, they don't force us to leave during lunch, and while we cannot photocopy, we can take pictures for a small fee (half the price of the Shanghai library). Finding materials is slightly more difficult because the card catalog is only by title, although for earlier materials it is possible for them to do a subject search on the computer (this is not, however, possible for later materials, as they are only cataloged on the cards).

It is very clear that the library has a lot of material, and (as Culp's article suggests) anyone interested in education should definitely make use of their collection. It seems that having the support or letter from a Chinese professor, especially one that they know, is helpful in facilitating the process. Similarly, knowing exactly what kind of material you need to use seems to make them more likely to let you in. It is a great place, and I am excited to do more research there, as I know I will continue to find things that I could probably not find elsewhere.

An introduction to this archive can be found in:
Culp, Robert. "Research Note: Shanghai Lexicograhpical Publishing House Library's Holdings on Republican Period Popular Culture and Education." Modern China (2), 1997: 103-109.

Research Notes: Textbooks of the early Communist period

I was fortunate enough to come across some changshi (everyday knowledge) textbooks from the late 1950s at the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House. I thus far found two sets of textbooks: one was published in Shanghai and the other in Hong Kong. The one published in Hong Kong was meant for huaqiao in Southeast Asia, and was published by the Commercial Press (still located in Hong Kong), which had to flee to Hong Kong after the civil war. This particular textbook was based off of the new curriculum changshi textbooks from the 1930s (one of the sets I have used in my other postings) though clearly has been edited for content. The changshi textbook that was published in Shanghai by the People's Education publishing house (from what I can fathom from the back cover). In this textbook, much of the old curriculum has been completely overturned, although the themes remain quite similar. A comparison of this two is quite interesting, but unfortunately, incomplete; most textbooks come with either 4 or 8 volumes, and while the huaqiao changshi textbook is complete, I was only able to find one of the four volumes of the Shanghai one. But I will do my best to show some interesting phenomenon seen in these two books.

In the huaqiao changshi textbook, many of the chapters remained the same as the similar version from the 1930s. The importance of waking up early, studying, being respectful to teachers, and staying clean and hygienic remain. There are still chapters on the various systems of the body, on the importance of vaccinations, and the history and geography of China.

The differences, however, reveal much about the kind of identity these textbooks wanted to create. The new curriculum textbooks of the 1930s were meant to give the huaqiao in Southeast Asia the impression that they are also part of China. Thus, there were many chapters on the flags of the GMD, Sun Yat Sen's biography and contribution to the building of a new China, the dangers of imperialism, and the importance of making China strong (one of my favorite chapters in the old textbook included a hierarchy of the world's strongest countries, simply to show what China had to strive for, seen on the right. I was disappointed that America was number 5). In the new textbook, all of these chapters are absent. In the history section, there is mention of Sun Yat Sen, but it is brief. The chapters about the various races of China remained, although edited with Communist information (instead of 5 races, there are now 56, seen below). However, the modern battle for China is largely ignored, and instead is replaced with ancient Chinese history, Chinese geography, chapters on Southeast Asia, and more and more chapters on bugs.

What I think we can take from this is that these textbooks wanted these huaqiao to feel Chinese, but perhaps Chinese in a Hong Kong sense. At this point, Hong Kong had no loyalties to either government, and instead prided itself on being an international section of greater China, committed to the greatness and richness of Chinese culture that developed over 3000 years, but entirely divorced from the battles of the present. This is also made evident through the pictures. One picture that immediately stuck out to me (probably because it seemed so American) was a picture in a chapter about children's day that showed 3 white children, 1 Chinese child, and a black child all holding hands and being happy (seen to the right). The only time in any other textbooks non Chinese people get photos is when there are chapters about the races of the world. This, however, showed a clear commitment to international harmony. Also, the clothes had changed drastically. The skirts were much shorter for women, and qipaos were rare (see morning exercise below). Instead, they almost looked like small American or British children. In a sense, the huaqiao's identity was now in the hands of Hong Kong; aware of China's vast geography and natural resources, aware of it's long history and Confucian culture, but not necessarily a nationalist or communist.

The Shanghai published textbook, however, took a very clear political stance; this shouldn't really surprise anyone since by 1961, when this textbook was published, everything was controlled and created by the Communist party. There are major themes we see in this volume of this textbook. The beginning few chapters are all history of China. The next few chapters are about basic science and elements, such as water, air, metal and steel. After that, the chapters are on physiology and health. Finally, the last few chapters are on astronomy and science, including the rotations of the earth, seasons, and the lunar calendar.

The history section was largely rewritten. The first man ever was actually found outside of Beijing. We then had the Shang dynasty which led to 10,000 years of feudalism, and apparently history was stagnant up until the 1840s when China had a threat from imperialist nations. The communist narrative for history shouldn't surprise us. But all of the information about science was equally politically revealing. There is a chart included in the book of Chinese steel production, seen on the lower right; since this textbook was published right around the time of the Great Leap Forward, steel was currently an important subject. However, there was also important historical ties that were created to steel; not only was it considered most important to our "socialist revolution" but bronze (which was the next chapter) was important culturally and historically in the bronze age. Although the textbook was important to point out that bronze was important for different things today (such as creating electrical wires), I believe this connection to the "bronze age" of Chinese history was meant to show the importance of these materials to Chinese people all throughout history. While the communists eschewed much of what came before them, they still took pride in the long history of their country. Similarly, all of the sections about astrology and science were crucial to a country trying to leap forward in modernity; before the Cultural Revolution, science was considered the most important of all subjects. Health was also important, because as Mao said: "a health body allows us to study and work well."

While it is possible that more ties to the Communist party and nationalism are made in other textbooks, or perhaps other volumes of this textbook, it seems that those ties have already been made quite clear. Instead, changshi has become "everyday knowledge we need to be productive members of the nation." The difference between cows and horses, and fun activities on children's day are no longer important. All of our knowledge comes back to making people working cogs of the communist nation.
These two textbooks create two very interesting discourses of what it means to be Chinese at this point. One is very clearly tied to the communist narrative, while one is very cultural and historical, but completely divorced from politics and more immersed in an international kind of environment. I believe, however, that as I find other textbooks, other narratives will begin to come forth.