Culturing Modernity: The Nantong Model, 1890-1930 - Hardcover

by Qin Shao (Author)

This is a multidimensional study of a socially engineered simulation of modernity that transformed Nantong, a provincial town, from a rural backwater to a model of progress in early twentieth-century China. The author analyzes this transformation by a depiction of new institutional and cultural phenomena-for example, a museum, cinema, theater, sports, parks, name cards, paper money-employed by local elite to exhibit the modern.

Front Jacket

This is a multidimensional study of a simulation of modernity that transformed Nantong, a provincial town, from a rural backwater to a model of progress in early twentieth-century China. The author analyzes this transformation by depicting the new institutional and cultural phenomena used by the elite to exhibit the modern: a museum, theater, cinema, sports arenas, parks, photographs, name cards, paper money, clocks, architecture, investigative tourism, and public speaking. In focusing on this exhibitory modernity and its role in reconstructing this local community and in promoting "the Nantong model" nationwide, the book sheds intriguing new light on the connections between local and national politics and rural and urban experience.

Back Jacket

[Shao's] book is the most complete and best history of Zhang Jian and Nantong available.--The China Review
"Shao's book is based on a wealth of archival and interview sources, and provides a thoughtful reassessment of how 'modernity' was experienced in China outside the big cities."--Pacific Affairs

Author Biography

Qin Shao is Associate Professor of History at the College of New Jersey.