|
The
Dianshizhai Pictorial
Ye Xiaoqing
.
While twentieth-century
Shanghai has received extensive scholarly treatment, the
nineteenth century has remained understudied, even though
it encompasses the first half-century of Shanghai's growth
as a treaty port and the early years of Chinese-foreign
contact. Published in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, the Dianshizhai Pictorial provides a record of
the new urban popular culture that emerged in Shanghai's
foreign settlements during this period.
.
Ye Xiaoqing has based this
study on the Dianshizhai's detailed illustrations of
everyday life at home, in commercial establishments, and
in Shanghai's public areas. Her introduction to the more
than one hundred drawings presented here points to the
social background, lifestyle, and intellectual outlook of
the Dianshizhai's literati writers and artists, the
weakness of gentry control in the foreign settlements, and
the commercialization and 'modern' material culture that
made Shanghai distinctive.
.
The drawings and commentaries
of the Dianshizhai contrast the settlements with
"traditional" culture and urban life in the adjacent
Chinese city and vividly convey items of interest--from
the quotidian to the bizarre--highlighting local
fascination with and anxiety at the rapid changes in
Shanghai's increasingly cosmopolitan society.
ISBN 0-89264-162-2 / Paper /
$50.00. Available May 2003. |
