Body politics, modernity and national salvation: The modern girl and the new life movement

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Arif Dirlik and an anonymous reader for their comments and advice. I am also indebted to Bryna Goodman, Vivien Ng, Jennifer Rudolph and Kristin Stapleton for their suggestions on a previous version.

Notes

1. The magazine could be purchased from newsstands all around Shanghai. It had distribution agencies in Hankou, Suzhou, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Beijing, Tianjin, Shantou, Changsha, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Sichuan, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia (Sumatra). Photographs of overseas readers and their opinion pieces were printed from time to time.

2. So far only three scholars of Republican China have incorporated analysis of Linglong in their work. Leo Lee has used Linglong to evaluate the tastes of Shanghai movie audiences and for the selection of movies in his discussion of Shanghai cinema in the 1930s (1999, pp. 86–88). Andrew Field, in his study of Shanghai singing and dancing girls from the 1920s to 1949, has singled out Linglong as a valuable source for understanding the press portrayal of the Modern Girl (1999). Barbara Mittler's forthcoming article ‘“Of Elegance and Eloquence”: New Women and New Men in Linglong, a 1930s Women's Magazine’ is the first work that uses Linglong as the major source for understanding the attitudes of urban women towards gender relationships. She finds that a new type of alternative gentility to the New Woman of the 1920s developed in the pages of Linglong, and was manifested in its overt expression of misandria. However, most of the issues discussed by Mittler related to the period from 1931 to 1933. While there was indeed a sense of disapproval towards men, particularly playboys who were unfaithful to women, in the early issues of Linglong, I find such sentiments less explicit in the later issues. In fact, Linglong's early emphasis on love, courtship and female discontent was to a considerable extent replaced by discussions of childcare, family, female health and body-building in issues published after late 1933.

3. For example, in an article entitled ‘Do not be a modern toy’ [Buyao zuo modeng wanwu], the author Chen Ji condemned those educated modern girls who dressed to attract men and were willing to become “toys” for men. In another article, ‘The true modern girl’, [Zhenzheng de modeng nüzi] by Ms Hu Yulan, the definition of Modern Girl was seen to constitute education (a high-school degree), proper social manners in parties, basic dancing skills, and household maintenance (including the management of servants, sewing and cooking) (Linglong 95, 1933, p. 644; Linglong 100, 1933, p. 937).

4. The available historical literature of the New Life Movement emphasises the Movement's ideological constitutions, its organisational structure, and Chiang's political intentions. Lloyd Eastman interprets the New Life Movement as a fascist movement (1974, pp. 31–84), whereas Arif Dirlik sees the New Life Movement as a counterrevolutionary reaction to the Communist Party. He attributes the failure of the New Life Movement to its conflicting revolutionary and conservative ideological forces (1975). Stephen Averill's study sees the New Life Movement's rural reconstruction in South Jiangxi as an attempt to eradicate the local Communist influence (1981). Jinlin Hwang considers the New Life Movement's use of the grotesque in attacking the backwardness of Chinese citizens as facilitating the legitimisation of the Nationalist regime (1998). Jennifer Lee Oldstone-Moore's dissertation focuses on Confucian religiosity in the New Life Movement, and sees the movement as a continuation of a traditional, paternal Confucianism in government (2000). Carlton Benson's study of the response of Shanghai merchants to the New Life Movement is the only study that explores the potential role society played in the Movement. It shows how merchants incorporated New Life rhetoric to promote a new consumer culture that benefited their own interests (1999).

5. Hwang borrows the concept of the grotesque from Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin describes the grotesque body as the representation of the “lower bodily strata”, which contradicts the image of civilisation, order, refinement and perfection. For Bakhtin, the festive and carnivalistic grotesque has a positive function for the regeneration of society (1984). However, in applying the concept of the grotesque to the New Life Movement, Hwang has made some modifications to Bakhtin's theory. For the Nationalist government of the 1930s, the grotesque had become the norm in Chinese society; thus, only by exterminating such grotesque elements could society be regenerated.

6. On 5 April 1934, Wang Jingwei publicly denounced the Gang's attacks (Libailiu 549, p. 285). The rapid spread of Smashing Modernity vandalism victimised thousands of men and women in major cities. Rumour had it that the Gang was backed by a powerful political group. However, a report in Zhongyang ribao disputed this hypothesis as without any basis. Instead, the report suggested that Gang members were counterrevolutionaries who aimed to destroy the social order. A student-led counter group, the “Maintaining Modernity Group” [modeng weichi tuan], was formed in Beijing. Its members staked out theatres and dancing halls to catch the vandals, beat them, and send them to the police (Zhongyang ribao, 10 April 1934). After extensive police raids, the Smashing Modernity Gang was weakened by late April 1934 (Zhongyang ribao, 17 April 1934). However, it is not clear from the reports who the members of the Gang really were.

7. Interestingly, Ms Hu Yulan and Ms Yao represented a type of Chinese Modern Girl who was a fashionable social butterfly of high social status. While the discourse of the Chinese Modern Girl was closely related to the issue of class, a class analysis of the Modern Girl is not a central concern of this paper.

8. In an article entitled ‘Zu de gushi’ [The Story of the Feet], Zhao Liang cited physiologists' findings showing that the strain imposed on the body by wearing high-heeled shoes damaged the womb, and that this led to a declining pregnancy rate (Linglong 151, 1934, p. 1654).

9. This is not to say that Chinese men's focus on women's legs and feet in the 1930s is a symbol of their backwardness. The foot fetish has a long and complicated history that is not confined to China or pre-modern times. Rather, my point here is to emphasise the continuing efforts of Chinese men to assert authority over women's bodies.

10. It is possible that the popularity of breastbinding among educated urban women signified a transitional period of aesthetic standards. The new cult of breastbinding could be seen as a replacement of the prohibited footbinding, as both contained symbols of refinement and class superiority.

11. A poll to find the greatest women from history and the present was held by Shanghai's Society of Women's Voices [Nu sheng she] in October 1933. Hua Mulan was nominated as the greatest woman in history; and Song Qingling as the greatest present-day woman (Linglong 127, 1934, p. 78).

12. A picture of Li Lili in a swimsuit in the special issue on swimming showed off her healthy figure (Linglong 243, 1936, p. 1882).

13. Although I mainly discuss the conflicts between the ideal image of women that was constructed and promoted by the state and the image of the Modern Girl that was more a product of global capitalism, it would be reductionist to conclude that these were the only available alternatives for Chinese women in the 1930s. To be sure, the revolutionary women of the 1920s did not disappear. Many, such as Deng Yingchao, continued to play an important role in the Communist Party. In Guomindang-controlled areas, Song Qingling and He Xiangning were the most well-known female activists who openly opposed the right-wing policies of the Guomindang.