Title: Introduction to Chinese Cultural History / Slides / 3. Nanjing Decade 1927–37

Front: How is The Nanjing Decade described on a slide?
Back: The Nanjing Decade (1927-1937):
- Implementation of Chiang Kai-shek’s ideas of centralized state and modern military,
- Fascist culture:
  - strong state and strong military,
  - KMT Blue Shirts, paramilitary organization modelled on the Italian Black Shirts and German Brown Shirts.

Front: What were areas of progress during the Nanjing Decade?
Back: - Strengthening of China’s political independence,
- International visibility and recognition,
- Continuing reform of education system,
- Continuing emancipation of women (although limited to main cities):
  - abolition of foot binding,
  - practice of taking concubines becomes less common,
- Economic development (Nanjing-Shanghai-Yangtze Delta region), commerce, infrastructure

Front: Who was China's power couple of the Republican era?
Back: Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling

Front: Some years in Soong Mei-lings life?
Back: - 1927: Married Chiang Kai-shek,
- 1949: moves to Taiwan after CCP takeover of mainland, she becomes First Lady and her husband president,
- 1975: Her husband dies in Taipei,
- 2003: She dies in NYC at age 105.

Front: Who are the Soong Sisters?
Back: Family background:
- Daughters of banker-industrialist Charlie Soong,
- Methodist family,
- US elite education.
The sisters:
- Eldest: Ai-ling (Song Ailing), married to K.K. Kong, China’s richest man and later ROC finance minister under Chiang government,
- Middle: Ching-ling (Song Qingling), “The Mother of the Nation”, wife of Sun Yat-sen,
- Youngest: Mei-ling (Song Meiling), "Madame Chiang", wife of Chiang Kai-shek,
Mao Zedong: “One loved money, one loved power, one loved her country”: ⼀个爱钱、⼀个爱权、⼀个爱国

Front: Which of the Soong sisters is considered China's "Ambassador" to the US?
Back: Song Meiling:
- 1943 February 18^th: First Chinese citizen and only the second woman in history to address the US Congress,
- Spends 8 months in US to gather support for China in the war effort against Japan,
- 1975 emigrates from Taiwan to the USA after death of her husband; died there in 2003, aged 105.

Front: How would you describe the political situation in 1930s China?
Back: - Warlords allied with the KMT recognized the ROC but still controlled large parts of the country,
- ROC government: corrupt, links to organized crime (e.g. control of opium; elimination of political opponents),
- 1931: Japanese invasion of North-Eastern China (Manchuria),
- May Fourth / New Culture intellectuals still active; many influenced by Marxism and underground CCP in the cities; radicalized by KMT’s violence, corruption, elitism, and reluctance to fight the Japanese,
- The CCP controlled areas in the countryside.

Front: What happened in terms of Japanese aggression in the early 1930s?
Back: - 1931: The “9.18” incident: Manchuria occupied,
- 1932: The “1.28” incident: Shanghai bombed (first bombing of civilian population in history),
- Manchuria becomes Manchukuo (Manzhouguo), “puppet state” under Emperor Puyi (the last Qing Emperor),
- Chiang neglects the Japanese invasion (“superficial wound”) to focus on violent elimination of Communists (“cancer”).

Front: What were the Communists up to in the early 1930s?
Back: - Communist Soviets (“revolutionary base areas”) = rural areas controlled by CCP, e.g. Jiangxi Soviet, est. 1930,
- Land Reform: mass mobilization (“struggle sessions”) of peasants against landlords (“enemies of the people”),
- Violent means but seen as force of change (unlike widespread perception of KMT as violent and corrupt).

Front: What did Mao Zedong have to say about the nature of revolution in 1927?
Back: Mao Zedong, 1927: “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

Front: What was the year and idea of the New Life Movement?
Back: - The New Life Movement (Xin shenghuo yundong) was launched by Chiang in a 1934 speech: "Essentials of the New Life Movement",
- Aims: discipline, order, hygiene, social cohesion, national unity, collective interest, obedience, manners (e.g. no cursing, spitting, urinating in public),
- “new and rational life” against vulgarity and lack of spirit of Chinese people (according to Chiang),
- “promotion of a regular life guided by the four virtues",
- Health of the people reflects the health of the nation,
- overseen by Song Meiling,
- enforced by Blue Shirts.

Front: What are the four virtues?
Back: An idea of regular life that was promoted with the New Life Movement:
- li (ritual or decorum),
- yi (rightness or duty),
- lian (integrity or honesty),
- and chi (sense of shame).
One of the goals of the virtues was a mor military-minded people.

Front: How big of a success was the New Life Movement?
Back: The impact was weak, even in the cities. Seen as out of touch with precarious conditions of most of the population.

Front: How did Linda Jaivin, James Carter and Frederick Wakeman succinctly describe the New Life Movement?
Back: - Linda Jaivin: “quaint blend of New Testament Christianity, Confucian rectitude, authoritarianism, and Emily Post–style etiquette” (Chiang was a Christian)
- James Carter: “weird mix of Christianity, Confucianism, and Fascism”
- Frederick Wakeman: “Confucian Fascism”

Front: What are some slogans from New Life political posters?
Back: - A residence should be tidy,
- Do not visit prostitutes or gamble, do not smoke or drink to excess,
- Eating should be clean,
- Everyone should receive military training,
- Everyone should receive citizen education,
- Maintain orderliness,
- Don't smoke or eat while walking, and say sorry if you bump into someone on the street,
- Remember to line up when buying tickets, boarding ships or leaving public places,
- Eat with dignity,
- Don't curse or fight and keep you rvoice down when at the tea house.

Front: Name two movies that picked up tropes of the New Life Movement.
Back: - Queen of Sports (Sun Yu, 1934),
- The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934).

Front: When was the Long March?
Back: 1934–1935

Front: When was the Xi'an Incident?
Back: 1936

Front: When is Mao Zedong born and what is his family background?
Back: Born in 1893 to a wealthy peasant family in rural Hunan.

Front: When does Mao meet other future communists?
Back: 1918: Mao moves to Beijing and works at Peking University Library, meets CCP co-founders Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu.

Front: What are the titles, years and main points of two early Essays by Mao that challenged Marxist orthodoxy?
Back: - 1926: “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” – Mao argues that the peasants, as the “semiproletariat” of China, will “provide the revolution with its numbers”, opposing CCP orthodox (Soviet-influenced) view of urban proletariat as leading force of revolution,
- 1927: “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” – further develops rural-based doctrine, optimist toward peasant revolutionary consciousness, violence as necessary to free rural areas from oppression.

Front: What is the Long March?
Back: CCP military retreat from Jiangxi to Shaanxi (Yan’an):
- Begins October 1934,
- 358 days,
- 10,000km,
- 11 provinces.
Significance for Mao Zedong:
- Jan 1935: Zunyi conference,
- Marks rise of Mao Zedong as CCP leader,
- Mao’s “unorthodox” ideas of guerrilla warfare and rural-based revolution prevail over USSR political line.
October 1935: End of LM (only 10% of Red Army forces left);
CCP establishes main base in Yan’an Long March and Yan’an Years as CCP foundation myth and heroic narrative (historical accuracy of details/events disputed)

Front: What's the significance of Yan'an for the party?
Back: - Leaders and followers live in basic cave dwellings (yaodong) and lead a spartan lifestyle
- The “Yan’an Spirit”
- Political and cultural reforms undertaken in Yan’an will set a model for the future PRC
- Yan’an still seen today as the cradle of the Maoist revolution

Front: Name two movies with release date about the Long March.
Back: - The Long March, dir. Zhai Junjie, 1996
- The Warriors, dir. Ning Haiqiang, released in 2016 on 80th anniversary of the Long March

Front: How did the Second United Front come to be?
Back: - Communists propose the KMT a Second United Front against the Japanese,
- Chiang Kai-shek refuses, more focused on fighting the Communists than Japan despite popular calls and student protests (Beiping/Beijing, 1935) for intervention,
- “The Japanese are a disease of the skin, but the Communists are a disease of the heart”,
- Xi’an Incident, December 1936: Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai convince warlord Zhang Xueliang to kidnap Chiang in Xi’an with the help of a Nationalist general. Chiang held until he agrees to cooperate with the Communists.

Front: When does Japan's full-scale invasion of China begin?
Back: 1937 July

Front: Three Shanghai literary groups of the late 1920s and the 1930s.
Back: - The Creation Society (Chuangzao she),
- The Sun Society (Taiyang she),
- The League of Left-wing Writers (Zhongguo zuoyi zuojia lianmeng).

Front: What's the Creation Society?
Back: A literary group in Shanghai.
- From radical individualism to radical Marxism,
- From “art for art’s sake” to “art for life’s sake”,
- Guo Moruo, Cheng Fangwu, Yu Dafu, Tian Han,
- Cheng Fangwu, “From Literary Revolution to Revolutionary Literature” (1928),
- Creation Monthly.

Front: What's The Sun Society?
Back: A literary group in Shanghai. All CCP members (e.g. Jiang Guangci).

Front: What's The League of Left-wing Writers
Back: A Shanghai literary group.
- 1930-1936 led by Lu Xun,
- promote literature from a Marxist perspective,
- literature to speak for the proletariat.

Front: How would you describe the literary scene of the Nanjjing Decade?
Back: - Polarized intellectual community: leftists and sympathizers vs. “reactionaries”
- Questioning ideals of the May Fourth: elitism under scrutiny
- Questioning role and power of writing
- Questioning role of bourgeois intellectuals in the revolution
- Class-based view of revolution replaces culture-based revolution
- Promotion of leftist/revolutionary literature: concern for the lower classes; critique of causes of class oppression; realist orientation
- Leftists and sympathizers were major force in 1930s and 1940s, but not the only players on the literary scene

Front: How was Shanghai in the Nanjing Decade like?
Back: - Modern metropolis, one of the largest cosmopolitan cities in the world
- “Paris of the Orient”, “Hollywood of the East”
- Ruled by mix of colonial and local powers: foreign government institutions and police in the International Settlement (British and Americans residents) and French Concession, principle of extraterritoriality for their inhabitants
- Far ahead of the rest of China in industrial infrastructure and material modernity
- Domestic and international migrants
- New lifestyles, new cultural activities, new forms of artistic expression
- Centre of avant-garde culture and modernist literary and cinematic experiments
- Centre of leftist politics: presence of large urban proletariat stimulated labour activism, development of Marxist ideas, advocacy of international socialism
- Popular urban culture
- Decadence

Front: Examples of popular urban culture in Shanghai of the Nanjing Decade.
Back: - “roaring twenties”,
- jazz age,
- commercial culture,
- Hollywood films,
- dancehalls,
- literary salons,
- bars,
- clubs,
- theatres,
- popular literature,
- magazines.

Front: Examples of decadence in Shanghai of the Nanjing Decade.
Back: - prostitution,
- drugs,
- gambling,
- illegal joints,
- criminal organizations and mobsters,
- symbol of decadent and exotic “Orient” in the West.

Front: Gender, modernity, and Shanghai?
Back: - Modern woman – modern city (moral polarities)
- Woman – Nation (gendered nation)
- Leo Ou-fan Lee: “the display of the female body [in China] had become part of a new public discourse related to modernity in everyday life.”
- Images of stars as “modern girls” “consumed” in/through popular culture (e.g. advertising, magazines, pictorials)
- Media exploitation of stars’ private lives (and deaths)

Front: What are the New Sensationists?
Back: - The New Sensationists (Xin ganjue pai) are a group of experimental writers in Shanghai in the late 1920s to mid 1930s
- Gathered around journal Les Contemporains (Xiandai), published 1932-35, ed. Shi Zhecun, apolitical position
- Depiction of urban life and psychological activities of people leading a modern lifestyle

Front: Name four members of the New Sensationists
Back: - Liu Na’ou (1905-1940)
- Shi Zhecun (1905-2003)
- Mu Shiying (1912-1940)
- Dai Wangshu (1905-1950)

Front: Who is Liu Na'ou?
Back: Liu Na’ou (1905-1940):
• A New Sensationist
• born in Taiwan, educated in Japan
• translator of Japanese Shinkankakuha literature (main inspiration for Xin ganjue pai)
• precursor of modernist literature in China
• assassinated in 1940 (probably by KMT for collaborating with Wang Shiwei regime)

Front: Who is Shi Zhecun (1905-2003)?
Back: Shi Zhecun (1905-2003):
• A New Sensationist
• Influenced by psychoanalysis
• Studied French literature
• 1937: gives up creative writing, turns to academic research (classical literature)
• 1950s-1980s: literary works banned
• 1980s: rediscovery

Front: Who is Mu Shiying (1912-1940)
Back: Mu Shiying (1912-1940):
• A New Sensationist
• depictions of nightlife, jazz culture
• stopped modernist writing mid-30s
• assassinated in Shanghai a few months before Liu Na’ou (same reason)

Front: Who is Dai Wangshu?
Back: • A New Sensationist
• A modernist poet

Front: What's special about Modernist narration?
Back: • Unreliable, “neurotic” narrators
• Stream of consciousness, fragmentation, surrealism
• Influence of Freudian psychoanalysis (obsession, repressed desires)
• Alternative understanding of reality and ”truth” (vs. dominant realism)
• Influence of popular urban culture, e.g. music (jazz) and cinema (Hollywood) on their writing (rhythm,
characterization)
• Ambivalence toward the city and urban life (excitement/anxiety)
• Emphasis on the senses, sensorial approach to modern city life
• Smells, sounds, sights etc of the city
• Search for “language that could account for the new sensations of modernity” (Shih Shu-mei)

Front: Describe One Evening in the Rainy Season
Back: “One Evening in the Rainy Season”, Shi Zhecun (1929):
- A flâneur in Shanghai: a man strolling on city streets
- Setting the scene: rainy day, dusk, sensorium of the city
- Chance encounter with woman whom he accompanies home
- Interior monologue and stream of consciousness
- Not much plot, but state of mind (fantasies, sexual desire, guilt, imaginary projections > Shih Shu-mei:
- “urban eroticism”)
- Description of urban environment
- Observing the city but detached from its imposed rhythms
- Observing others for amusement
- City (and woman) as both attractive and repulsive
- Anxiety of inter-subjective lack of understanding; the unintelligible woman
- The unattainable woman
- Problematic relationship between the urban male and female subjects
- Nervous condition of male protagonists
- Economic condition: “the emasculated urban man without money” (Shih Shu-mei)
- Use of punctuation: no quotation marks in the original: blurring boundaries between psychological space and reality

Front: Describe Five in a Nightclub
Back: “Five in a Nightclub”, Mu Shiying:
- Ambivalence toward the city: Shanghai, “heaven built on hell”
- fast urban rhythm, hectic life in the city (cars, crowds, neon lights, revolving doors)
- Opens with five flashbacks focusing on each character, then turns to the evening of the same day at a nightclub
- “The world of Saturday night is a cartoon globe spinning on the axis of jazz”; jazz = time
- Characters’ inability to catch up with time (fast pace of the metropolis) and to act at the right moment (“seconds crawled like ants over his heart”)

Front: Describe Shanghai Foxtrot.
Back: - Decadent urban life, dance clubs, cabarets
- Materialistic/immoral human relationships
- Fragmentary visual images
- Blurred boundaries between reality and illusion
- Parallel editing (film technique applied to fiction writing): multiple scenes that happen on the same night in different locations in Shanghai
- Repitition

Front: Who is Cao Yu?
Back: Cao Yu (1910-1996)
- An author
- Pseudonym of Wan Jiabao
- Grew up in Tianjin
- Attended prestigious Nankai Middle School (also attended by future CCP leader Zhou Enlai)
- 1928 Played female roles in school

Front: What are the main works of Cao Yu, with years?
Back: - Thunderstorm, 1934
- Sunrise, 1936
- Wilderness, 1937
- Metamorphosis, 1940
- Peking Man, 1941
- Family, 1942 (adaptation of Ba Jin Novel)
- Bright Skies, 1954
- Wang Zhaojun, 1978

Front: What is chracteristic about Cao Yus literature and theatre?
Back: - Long, intricate plots, "novelistic",
- Large number of charaters, with complicated relationships,
- Poetic language, especially in his stage directions,
- Recurring focal points/themes:
  - Ills and oppression of both traditional and modern societies,
  - Gender dynamics, especially under patriarchy,
  - Juxtaposition of "primitive" elements of humanity and human emotions with the "civilized",
- Influence of Western classics such as Hippolytus and Phedre, as well as playwrights such as:
  - Henrik Ibsen,
  - Anton Chekhov,
  - Eugene O'Neill.

Front: What is considered Cao Yu's masterpiece?
Back: His first play Thunderstorm (Leiyu, 1934)

Front: Describe Thunderstorm.
Back: Thunderstorm is considered Cao Yu's masterpiece:
- Cao Yu’s first play, completed when he was at Tsinghua University (24 years old)
- Published in Literary Quarterly in 1934
- Thunderstorm and two other plays in the so-called “trilogy” – Sunrise (1936) and The Wilderness (1937) – mark the maturity of European-style realist spoken drama (huaju) in the 1930s (Chen Xiaomei)
- “Thunderstorm heralded the arrival of Chinese spoken drama’s golden period, in which the best of Western drama was melded with compelling Chinese situations and characters” (Chen Xiaomei)
- Cao Yu performed in the 1936 premiere in Nanjing
- Prologue and Epilogue as “chorus” and distancing devices
- Three unites of time, space, action (Aristotle, Greek tragedy)
- Compared to Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts: love triangles, incest, family secrets, references to natural elements, etc.
- Compared to classic Greek tragedies such as Euripides’s Hyppolitus and Racine’s Phedre (1677) (stepmother-
stepson incest); Medea
- Traditional (Confucian, patriarchal) Chinese family
- New women
- Romantic love
- Fate (Greek tragedy)
- Incest (Greek tragedy / Ibsen)
- Retribution
- Significance of natural / weather symbolism; fury of nature (“force of nature”; “cosmic cruelty”)
- Thunderstorm as agent of justice, purification (of sins), destruction (of the old society)
- “Will of heaven”, symbol of guilt of the family and of “purifying water”
- Theme of oppression, continuous references to oppressively hot weather (closed windows; intention yet impossibility to leave – Lu Xun’s “iron house”?; patriarchal oppression)

Front: Describe Sunrise
Back: Sunrise, 1936, is a play by Cao Yu:
- tragic story of student turned courtesan Chen Bailu,
- reaction to high-profile suicides of actresses in Shanghai, esp. case of Ruan Lingyu,
- themes of moral decline of modern individual against corrupt society,
- women as victims of society,
- feminism.

Front: Describe The Wilderness.
Back: - The Wilderness, 1937 is a play by Cao Yu
- only work set in the countryside, peasant’s revenge against family of landlord
- Expressionist motives (nightmares, hallucinations)
- Themes of fate, “cosmic cruelty” (= Thunderstorm),
- female oppression, suicide (= Sunrise).

Front: Describe Peking Man.
Back: - is a play by Cao Yu
- set in Beijing in the 1930s
- Intricate family relationships
- Unhappy / arranged / oppressive marriages
- Decline of scholar-official family stuck in traditional society
- Debts, opium addiction
- Unwillingness to change
- “Chekhovian” + echoes of Dream of the Red Chamber and Ba Jin’s The Family
- Theme of primitivism (vs corrupt civilization) in reference to the “Peking man” (excavated in 1928)

Front: Describe Family (not the novel).
Back: Family, 1942, is a play by Cao Yu:
- Adaptation of Ba Jin’s novel (1933)
- Exploration of generational conflict
- Crisis of traditional values
- Theme of free love
- Patriarchal family as “prison” (May Fourth theme)