A TRULY MODERN MEDIA

How do you unlock a desire to read? Persuading individuals to engage in activities they initially resist is a compelling challenge; one way to transform aversion to enthusiasm is to make an activity fun. According to the research emerging from Chinese reformers and educators prior to and during the 1930s, many Chinese people during this period considered reading of little value, though some basic literacy was needed in particular circumstances. Hayford quotes a survey of rural peasants in the 1930s of whom only about one in four valued literacy for practical matters such as book keeping, and just one in twenty saw value in reading books and newspapers.1, 147–71.") In the 1930s Shao Xunmei understood that a journey into fun could transform even the most reluctant into avid readers and demonstrate the value and edifying benefits of literacy that extend beyond the fulfilment of practical tasks and mundane circumstances. His vision was born of a unique understanding of the power of the Shanghai pictorial and a self-described desire to mobilize this popular medium to tackle literacy, one of the biggest challenges facing the young Chinese nation in the 1930s.

Literacy, specifically, how to bridge the divide between illiterate and literate was top of mind in early 20th century China. The statistics and surveys on literacy collected during the late Qing and early Republican Era echo Hayford’s findings, and when paired with the myriad attempts over the prior thirty years to address literacy can themselves be understood as part and parcel of what Luo Di has described as China’s “literacy myth.” Di’s research describes for early 20th century Chinese reformers literacy was tied to the twin goals of modernization and nation-building. Di and others also acknowledge the complexity, variability in the actual state of literacy in China.2, 116, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000146108. For information regarding the myriad political strategies and pedagogical practices see: Di Luo, “China’s Literacy Myth: Narratives and Practices, 1904-1949” (Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University, 2015), 1–2, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1430943957. For more on the contours of modern pedagogy as reflected in print culture see: Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 43–63.") The “literacy myth” was theorized by Harvey J. Graff, whose research traces a disconnect between the state of literacy and perceptions of or discourse around literacy. Both Graff and Di interrogate this chasm between empirical evidence illuminating the state reading and writing in a given cultural and historical context, and its distance from political and social discourse around the state of literacy. In early 20th century China innovations in pedagogy proliferated. Funding was secured and spent. Syllabaries were reformed. Schools were expanded. Instructors were sent far and wide. Yet, literacy, at least according to the polls conducted in the decades of the early 20th century remained stagnant.3

In 1934 Shao Xunmei launched a new pictorial magazine to do what reformers had not: make reading a fun and edifying part of daily life. 時代漫畫 or Modern Sketch published from 1934 to mid-1937 is best known as a highly influential and visually resplendent humor and satire magazine that captured the apex of China’s manhua art movement. Many scholars have studied the compelling link between the artists included in the magazine and the political and social ideas they were exploring. However, there has been little attention paid to the seminal relationship between text and image in these magazines. Shao Xunmei, owner of Modern Sketch, conceived of pictorials as a transformative tool for literacy. Unlike many of his well-educated, monied peers, he saw enormous potential in pictorial magazines to add value to society. Pictorials, meaning newspapers or magazines with pictures as a main feature, were all the rage in Shanghai at the time. They were a critical public venue for local writers and artists, and voraciously consumed by Shanghai’s middle classes.

The stated mission of Modern Sketch was to “grasp the era” and it solicited contributions from artists and writers that described all levels of society, and critiqued the fine points of life’s problems.4: 35.") The left-leaning pictorial was equal parts satire, political and social commentary, and silly humor. Everything was fair game: from the lack of affordable housing in Shanghai, the imperialist aggressions of Japan, Shanghai’s notoriously sordid nightlife, the humiliating failures of Chinese athletes in the 1936 Olympics, and even the global struggle between fascism and communism. By covering and critiquing events at home and abroad in visually compelling and entertaining ways the pictorial steered its audience to engage with politics and civic life. Yet its omnivoric approach suggested that political and social critique was distinct from the rigid strictures and unremitting boosterism published in other competing pictorials, not to mention official government discourse. It was uniquely committed to examining and representing modern life from a modern Chinese perspective.

Although there are many studies of the vibrant print culture of Shanghai during the early 20th century, few acknowledge the persistent and wide call to leaders to address a perceived stagnation of literacy levels in China at the time.5; Paul Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen, and Yingjin Zhang, eds., Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926-1945, Modern Asian Art and Visual Culture, volume 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2013); John A. Crespi, Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2020).") Surveys conducted in the early 20th century revealed that a majority of the Chinese population was unable to read in 1930. Though contemporary historians have a much more nuanced understanding of the state of literacy in early 20th century China, at the time this gap alarmed Chinese politicians, reformers, and educators. Indeed, the stakes of literacy were conceived of in existential terms by both the Nationalist Regime and the Chinese Communist Party. Closing the literacy gap was seen as paramount not only to economic development and innovation, but especially for the Nationalist Regime, for the very existence of the fledgling Republic of China. That universal literacy had not yet been achieved by the ruling regime despite their ambitious plans and goals was fodder for the Communist Party’s argument that they could more successfully support the national project of Chinese modernization.6

Shao’s approach fundamentally differed from the approaches of officials and educators. He conceived of a publication that could be enjoyed by both literate and illiterate Chinese. Moreover, he chose a popular medium, the pictorial magazine, that was often dismissed by Shanghai’s literary elite and wholly ignored by educators. In so doing he created a publication that was appealing and enriching, that probed at the contours of politics and culture, and engaged with current events. It asked its audience to think critically about the issues plaguing China, and held a mirror to the young country’s strengths and weaknesses. And, it tried to convince them that reading was a joy as well as a necessity.

This article will investigate how Modern Sketch was designed to capture and cultivate a modern, literate Chinese citizenry. The pictorial was the cornerstone of owner Shao Xunmei’s vision for a more educated, politically engaged, literate public; an ambitious undertaking tied to larger political discourses whereby Chinese elites linked literacy to national interests. For Shao, realizing this goal hinged on the relationship between text and image united in a compelling and well-designed pictorial magazine. The relationship between the visual and the textual in Modern Sketch was carefully constructed, designed both in content and form to appeal not just to the modern Chinese reader, but also to the majority of Chinese who could not yet read.

Shao’s goal relied on two different yet intersecting elements of the pictorial which will be discussed in this article. The first was quality; Shao launched a pictorial that was of the highest caliber of printing. Much attention has been paid to the way that this supported the visual elements of the publication, but it likewise represents a remarkable innovation for the Chinese character. Indeed, text was as carefully and artfully arranged as images. The second element of the plan was the ways the pictorial structured its content. The pictorial delivered ideas through both the visual and textual registers which were constructed to encourage a gentle progression towards reading, a strategy employed by language primers.7, 45.") Modern Sketch would grab people’s attention and keep them engaged. It delivered engaging and compelling content linked to the contours and contest of modern life in China. The relevancy to their lives would persuade them that perusing the publication was valuable by delivering content that was both entertaining and informative. Following a discussion of how Shao executed this two-pronged approach, the subsequent section of this article will perform a close reading of the feature “影迷“牛鼻子”如喪考妣” \[“Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning”\] a collage-photomontage published in 1937.8: 26.") Through a careful analysis of the interplay of the visual and textual, this article will reveal how, in delivering ideas to readers, Shao sought to awaken a desire to read that would slowly build towards literacy.

Shao Xunmei, Shanghai Print Culture, and Mass Literacy

Wealthy, well-educated, and well-connected owner 邵洵美 Shao Xunmei (1898–1973) himself was more influential to Modern Sketch than any other editor, artist, or contributor. \[Figure 1\] In recent years scholars have begun to recover his legacy and better understand the role he played in China’s cultural and political spheres. Studies focus on his contributions as a modern poet, literary critic, political theorist, and patron. They reveal his role as a political theorist, a Francophile, a painter, and the lynchpin between many important literary and artistic figures in Shanghai.9; Paul Bevan, ‘Intoxicating Shanghai’ – An Urban Montage: Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during Shanghai’s Jazz Age (Brill, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004428737; Tian Jin, The Condition of Music and Anglophone Influences in the Poetry of Shao Xunmei (Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2020); Xunmei Shao, Jicheng Sun, and Hal Swindall, The Verse of Shao Xunmei: Heaven and May (1927) and Twenty-Five Poems (1936), First edition (Paramus, New Jersey: Homa & Sekey Books, 2016).") Shumei Shih describes him as one of the most important allies of Shanghai’s modernist writers: “Without the capital provided by the affluent Liu Na’ou, Shao Xunmei, the Xiandai Bookstore, and many other publishers, there may not have been a Shanghai literary renaissance at all.”10, 267.") Shao’s myriad contributions to Shanghai social and cultural fabric illuminate his deep well of creativity, startling vision, boundless energy, and resilience.

Shao’s journey from poet to publisher allowed him to gain experience in almost every aspect of print media, experience that he was able to apply at the helm of his own publishing house. In 1926 Shao, recently returned from a two-year sojourn living and studying in Europe, used his fortune and connections to enter the vibrant world of Shanghai print culture. Over the next several years he was indefatigable, arguably unmatched in his contributions to the entire spectrum of Shanghai publishing. He began by publishing a single book of his own poems, eventually releasing numerous original poetry collections. He translated the works of Western authors who he admired, including Aubrey Beardsley and George Moore, introducing and disseminating their work to Chinese audiences. He jumped into the business side of publishing, relaunching the monthly magazine 狮吼 Sphinx. \[Figure 2\] He established 金屋书店出版 La Maison d’Or, a bookstore and publishing house well-respected by Shanghai’s modern artists and writers. He launched the eponymous journal 金屋月刊 which made a significant contribution to the field of modern Chinese literature by publishing both the work of important emerging Chinese writers and translating foreign authors into Chinese. He would continue to translate and publish the works of foreign writers and eventually political theorists for the next three decades.

These projects were just the beginning of his contributions to the Shanghai print world. Although some have characterized his publishing company, Modern Publications, as a strategic economic venture meant to boost his family fortune and secure his rank in Shanghai society, his writings on print culture demonstrate a far grander project.11; Paul Bevan, ‘Intoxicating Shanghai’ – An Urban Montage: Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during Shanghai’s Jazz Age (Brill, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004428737; Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945.") In the 1930s Shao emerged as one of the leading proponents of pictorial magazines, envisioning their value to Chinese culture and society in active, political terms.

Shao wanted to shape modern Shanghai society by raising the status of art and literature, and encourage a seemingly indifferent public to become invested in contemporary politics and social movements. He believed that this was uniquely possible through print media, and produced publications that attempted to shape local society and culture according to a radically modern vision that was both local and transnational. His portfolio of publishing ventures were meant to reach all echelons of Chinese society, and perhaps most strikingly, the illiterate.

Early 20th century Chinese social reformers, state leaders, and revolutionaries all defined literacy as a transformative tool for grand goals. Surveys performed at the time indicated that the illiteracy rate was as high as 80%, though today many scholars point out that the data on literacy rates is extremely challenging to verify and far more nuanced.12 However, there is evidence to describe several conditions that prevailed in the 1930s. Higher literacy rates were measured in major urban centers, and also among all Chinese men, across regional and socio-economic divides. Whereas, there was a distressingly low level of literacy in rural areas, and also among all women who were afforded less access to education.13, 62–64, http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3169/1/GaoRisenfromChaos.pdf; Denis Crispin Twitchett and John King Fairbank, The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge Eng.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 185–86.") Educationists, political leaders, and activists positioned enlightening illiterate citizens- perceived to be the majority of the population in the Republican Era- as key to the survival of the young Chinese nation. Indeed, this association between literacy and an empowered, politically engaged populace extends back to the late 19th century when the push for a constitutional monarchy began to gain traction.[14](#fn14-26058 "Di Luo, “China’s Literacy Myth: Narratives and Practices, 1904-1949” (Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University, 2015), 17, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?accnum=osu1430943957; John King Fairbank, The United States and China, 4th ed., enl, American Foreign Policy Library (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983), 43.")

In 1934 little progress had been made despite more than three decades of attempts to organize widespread literacy education and cultivate the citizenry. At this time the link between literacy, happiness, and a better quality of life for the common people was naturalized, as was the belief that it would lead to greater political engagement and widespread economic gains.15 Shao’s dedication to the potential of the pictorial as a tool for social and political reform was almost matchless and certainly controversial in its time. From the 1930s to the present the view that pictorial magazines are frivolous, banal, and not “serious” journalism or literature persists. Shao attacks this perception in “The Status of the Pictorial in the Cultural World,” an essay first published in 時代 or Modern Miscellany 6 volume 12, in October of 1934. Here he lays out the stakes of publishing only for the upper echelons of society and demonstrates a bold vision for pictorial magazines.

Shao locates a deeper understanding in images than is possible with text alone. He begins by describing the matchless way that knowledge is gained at the intersection of vision and representation. Shao argues for the powerful potential of images to convey information, pointing to the ways that photographs of World War I deepened popular understandings of the human cost of war. Photos brought the violence and suffering into sharp relief in a way that words were unable to do. “文字只能使我们知道二十年前有过这样一段惨痛的事迹，但是图画却胎使戏们领略当时那种恐怖的空气.” \[“Words can only inform us of fact of the tragedy, but pictures capture a taste of the terror felt twenty years ago.”\]16, 73.") Visuality encourages a mode of conscious, deeply felt perception, an understanding that text alone cannot match. The power of the most arresting works published in Modern Sketch relies upon this relationship between text and image.

In response to the criticism that after developing “正正經經的純文藝刊物” or “serious and pure literary publications,” pictorial magazines are beneath him, Shao questions the premise that pictorials aren’t engaged in serious discourse. To that end, Modern Sketch took on many of the most dramatic social and political issues of the day. Through text and image, the pictorial grappled with issues and ideas facing readers in their daily life, drawing them in with beguiling images and stories about modern life that they could relate to, while also attending to issues such as the rise of the Third Reich abroad and widespread opium addiction at home. Moreover, the pictorial favored China’s most avant-garde artists, creating a unique archive of responses to the world as described by the era’s most cutting edge artists.

Despite the serious content, Shao believed that a joy of reading was easily cultivated through pictorials, and this practice would refine and improve the hearts and minds of Chinese people.17 Joy was to be found in reading, in perusing the images, in considering the ideas put forth by the publication. In his view, popular pictorials were a means to encourage literate citizens to read more, whereas illiterate audiences would still be fed by the messages they found in the visual content. It was that feeling of joy that would sell his pictorial to the illiterate, and they would be better for it.

Shao argued that this relationship between image and text was so compelling it would naturally awaken an illiterate reader’s curiosity and lead many to learn to read, fulfilling the goal of educating the public where so many reformers had failed.18 Reformers had long argued that one barrier to widespread literacy was simply that the common people had no need to read or write in their daily lives.19 Enter the Shanghai pictorial. Shao wrote confidently: “有一天人们读书的习惯养成，在供给眼睛及神经的享受以外，自会有心灵的食粮。” \[A day will come when people have developed the habit of reading, and besides providing pleasure for the eyes and nerves they will have food for the soul.\]20 So captivating and entertaining were the images in the pictorials he produced that, according to Shao, they would foster the habit of browsing the images. Once in this habit, they would become curious about what else was on the page. A reader’s appetite could only be fully satiated by being able to enjoy both text and image.

Executing the Vision:

When Shao joined Modern Miscellany in 1930 he transformed the way that the pictorial was printed, prioritizing the quality of the magazine. The funding provided by Shao allowed the pictorial to be printed by Shanghai publishing houses with rotogravure presses, replacing the outdated and less expensive copperplate etching. This was proudly announced in the 12th issue of Modern Miscellany:

印刷及圖版之改良 從二卷一期起改用影寫版印行並添加 雙色版、三色版、七色版等, 紙張亦改用特向外洋定造之影寫版專用紙, 可稱國內獨步.21 Modern Miscellany_ 1, no. 12 (1930): 1.")

Improvement in Printing and Picture Plates Starting with Issue 1, Vol. 2, we will begin using photogravure, plus two-color plates, three-color plates, seven-color plates, etc. The paper we use will also be changed to specially produced foreign-made photogravure paper, in what could be called a pioneering step in China \[Figure 3\].

This announcement shows that Shao was dedicated to producing his pictorials in the best quality possible, and that he also knew the impact this would have on the Shanghai print world.

Indeed, a comparison of issues of Modern Miscellany before and after the change, reveals that higher quality paper meant no ghostly images from the reverse page bled through the paper, and it is obvious that the images themselves were printed in better ink using a more precise and elegant printing method.

However, contracting with printing houses made it impossible to truly have control over the pictorial’s print quality, and Shao was exacting. In the early 1930s he invested a small fortune building his own publishing house. Shao acquired a German-made rotogravure press which would make the most of images, and located additional printing presses from publishers in Shanghai.22, 1/1/2017, http://www.nickstember.com/shanghai-manhua-society-history-early-chinese-cartoonists-1918-1938/; Jonathan Hutt, “Monstre Sacré: The Decadent World of Sinmay Zau 邵洵美,” China Heritage Quarterly 22, no. 10 (June 2010), http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/features.php?issue=022&searchterm=022_monstre.inc.") He used these to found a new venture, 時代印刷公司 The Modern Press, which was soon rebranded as時代圖書公 Modern Publications. Thus, by 1934 Shao had established a sophisticated publishing house. Modern Publications created elegant, beautifully designed and executed pictorials that would finally measure up to his exacting standards.

Although the press employed a highly skilled printer, Shao felt compelled to oversee as much of the publishing as he could. He moved from a beautiful urban villa on a fashionable street in the heart of Shanghai to a second home in the decidedly less fashionable northern district of Yuangshupu. This put him just around the corner from the Modern Publications printing office. A photo of the office appeared on the inside cover of the first issue of Vox.

A close inspection of the image shoes that a logo appears on the Modern Press Printing Offices, and is also seen in their publications. The logo for 時代印刷公司/The Modern Press evokes a design of a printing press that itself mimics the characters “時代” (Modern). \[Figures 5\]

The overall brand, including the logo and the titles used on the front and back covers of each issue of Modern Sketch are elegant examples of the kind of modern Chinese graphic design by Zhang Guangyu that also appeared in his own book, 近代工艺美术 （Modern Commercial Art ) which was published by The Modern Press itself in 1932.

Once installed in Yuangshupu, Shao’s wife and children became accustomed to the comings and goings of his collaborators, who would often meet Shao at home. He was notorious for working into the wee hours of the morning, pushing his writers, artists, and editors for the best possible results. In My Father Shao Xunmei Shao Xiaohong recalls her father’s enthusiasm and tenacity, describing his oversight of his press as approaching obsessive:

洵美作为诸多刊物的主人，每一份他都要关心，尤其在刊物创办之初，他更是费神，从制定编辑方针到挑选编辑，从组织撰稿阵容到分头约稿，乃至具体的编务、出版，他都事必躬亲，有时连封面设计、广告词都参与意见。编辑们常常到他家里来跟他讨论到深夜.23, 118.")

As the owner of many publications Xunmei must care about each one; he was incredibly troublesome especially at the beginning of the publication, from formulating editorial policies to selecting editors, from organizing the line-up of manuscripts to separate drafts, and even certain editing. He does everything by himself in business and publishing, and sometimes even has a hand in the design of the cover and advertisements. Editors often come to his house to discuss with him late into the night.

There seems to be no question that the man had exacting standards, that he was dedicated to producing pictorials with unparalleled quality both in content and execution.

Shao Xunmei himself seems to be aware of his own fixated predispositions around publishing, reflecting on it in an article entitled “Modern Talk (III): Thoughts on Publishing the Book.” Accompanying this article is an illustration of Shao Xunmei bent over a desk in a room filled with manuscript pages.24: Thoughts on Publishing the Book], 時代 (時代画报) Modern Miscellany, 1934.") \[Figure 6\] However, this self-knowledge wasn’t enough to curtail his oversight.

During its lifetime, The Modern Press was a hub of creativity for friends and colleagues Shao Xunmei, Zhang Guangyu, his brother Zhang Zhengyu, and Ye Qianyu. Shao Xunmei was the stable center while these men orbited around him, seemingly striking out on their own only to later return. Some temporarily left to start their own presses, worked with The Modern Press on their own books, juggled editorships and oversight of various publications, and often participated in each other’s projects. The Modern Press published both books and magazines, but their most successful project was the monthly pictorial magazine Modern Sketch.

This context cuts to the murky question of the organizational hierarchy of players involved within the Modern Press offices. Owner Shao fixed himself at the center of each decision made by the Modern Press; that he valued and cultivated the expertise of his editors and press managers may also be true. Yet, there is ample evidence that his publishing house and each product it printed was under his influence and bound to his vision. Shao ultimately dictated every aspect of production, content, execution, and design. As described by family and in his own pictorials, he exerted his authority and insisted on directing the minutia of each publication, from the scope of the content to the graphic variations of each cover.

In 1934 Shao was already at the helm of the well-established Modern Miscellany. Yet, this pictorial rarely evinced the level of political and social engagement Shao had argued in his writings was so crucial to a pictorial’s transformative potential. Shao launched a new pictorial, Modern Sketch. This publication became the preeminent vessel for Shao’s reformation. Modern Sketch was both an aesthetic and intellectual project that would cultivate a new generation of readers interested in contemporary politics, art, and literature. Readers were not the only group of people who would benefit from the pictorial. Among local artists Modern Sketch was seen as a sophisticated publication that provided a valuable popular platform for their artwork. This was another component of Shao Xunmei’s contributions as publisher and patron.

The Appeal of Modern Sketch

Modern Sketch was highly regarded among Shanghai artists because of the superior printing technology.25 As discussed earlier, Shao’s insistence on the highest caliber of printing meant that contributors to Modern Sketch could trust that their reproduced works would be true to the original. This freedom energized and invigorated the artistic engagement of the contributions, resulting in the intersection of a wide variety of genres and styles from page to page. In the field of Shanghai pictorials, it was the privileged site of medial border-crossings and hybridization, where foreign techniques were appropriated and recast according to contemporary Shanghainese principles. Images included on the pages reflect new ways of presenting, thinking, and critiquing modern urban life.

Readers browsing a freshly printed copy of Modern Sketch at a newsstand would have easily appreciated the difference between this publication and others on the shelf. The caliber of printing was unmatched at every level. The cover, always a striking composition in full color with no margins, was designed in different styles by various artists, always included the name of the magazine, the issue and date, the title of the artwork and artist’s name. The back cover also featured another full color work of art with no margins. Inside, each page was printed on thick, high-quality paper that accentuated the vibrant colors of the fine ink. Heavy paper also prevented the ghostly image from one side of a page from bleeding through to the other side. Most pages were printed in black and white, except the centerfold which was also printed in full color. All images were beautifully reproduced, even when they were converted from color to black and white. Readers of Modern Sketch were offered a visual feast that was unique among Chinese pictorials.

Modern Sketch is sometimes reductively referred to as a humor magazine or collection of cartoons that picked up where Shanghai Sketch and Modern Miscellany left off. However, the artistic contributions in the pages of Modern Sketch reflect a new project altogether. Modern Sketch is a love letter to artistic innovation, a smorgasbord of visual practices, a kaleidoscopic collection of art created by emerging Chinese artists, a panorama of modern popular visual cultures located in 1930s China. Indeed, among all Chinese pictorials Modern Sketch was exceptionally omnivorous. It published many cartoons, and also woodcuts, photomontage, lithography, painting, photography, and even photos of sculpture. The press also could produce calligraphic text down to the intricacies of brushwork, enabling the hand of the artist and the power of each stroke to shine. Moreover, the pictorial also solicited and featured a not insignificant amount of 漫文 manwen, or written content. It is also notable that the English title is Modern Sketch; “Sketch” was commonly used in the title of various periodicals in Shanghai during the early 20th century. For readers it readily recalls foreign pictorial print cultures that enjoyed a second circulation in Shanghai, available at bookshops like Kelly and Walsh, or stashed in the trunks of travelers. Like other pictorials such as 上海潑克 Shanghai Puck, Modern Sketch may have styled itself after the popular globe-trotting periodical The Sketch. The content from issue to issue might include serialized cartoons, short stories, jokes, celebrity gossip, plays, pseudo-anthropological analyses of global culture, bawdy illustrations, travel narratives, photomontage, history essays, humorous songs, and social commentary. Modern Sketch often engaged with current events both at the local and global scale, from Shanghai policing to the Spanish Civil War. It was entertaining, informative, insightful, and most importantly, appealing and thus marketable.

Modern Publications was singularly able to make the most of the Chinese character thanks to the materials, tools, and methods of printing at their disposal. The high quality of ink and paper and the high-tech presses were as important as the arrangement the page itself. Readers opened the pictorial to find articles and captions arranged in neat blocks of characters. Characters were printed in a practical size, and held to relatively new conventions. These included legible titles and subtitles printed larger than the text, simple captions paired with all images, generous line spacing, indentations and line breaks, clear punctation, free space along each article and along the outside margins; tactics that all make reading easier on the eyes. Chinese characters shone through, their legibility increased thanks to the press’ high quality ink and thick paper.

For the first issue, Modern Publications printed more than 10,000 copies in color on high quality paper, immediately setting a high standard that set it apart from other publications.26, 115.") It continued to be successful for the next several years, and mostly avoided alarming censors in Shanghai and Nanjing. Like other Shanghai magazines, Modern Sketch could be obtained via subscription, purchased at local bookstores and at magazine stands, rented at a fraction of the cover price at local lending libraries, and also was sold secondhand at bookstores and shops, and passed on to friends and neighbors.

Although as owner of Modern Publications Shao Xunmei left his mark on each issue, editor 魯少飛 Lu Shaofei (1903–1995) also exerted an important influence over Modern Sketch. The contributions chosen for publication likely reflect both of their leftist political engagements. This may also be a function of the inner circle of artists who worked with the magazine. Certainly, Modern Sketch reveals Lu’s enduring connection to the short-lived Shanghai Manhua Society founded in the late 1920s; in addition to his own work Lu clearly favored the work of these friends and colleagues whose names appear again and again throughout the pictorial archive.27, 1/1/2017, http://www.nickstember.com/shanghai-manhua-society-history-early-chinese-cartoonists-1918-1938/.") Yet the contributors did range beyond this inner like-minded circle; outsiders were welcomed to the field of manhua and encouraged to send their work to Modern Sketch.

While other Shanghai pictorials such as Liangyou also picture life in the modern city, only Modern Sketch dared to delve into its unruly tumult, and shine light into its cracks and shadows. Politics was ever at the forefront of each issue. Lu’s editorials soliciting content encouraged artists to engage with modern life and society at every level, that he hoped might expose larger truths about the modern age.28 ") Lu described the pictorial’s mission in the first issue, writing:

目下四圍環境緊張時代，個人如此，國家世界亦如此。永遠如此嗎？我就不知道。但感覺不停，因此甚麼都想解決，越不能解決越會想應有解決。所以，需要努力！就是我們的態度。責任也只有如此。這一期的封面的圖案，以後用做我們地表示，表明『威武不屈』的意思。

On all sides a tense era surrounds us. As it is for the individual, so it is for our country and the world. Will things always be this way? I for one don’t know. But since the feeling won’t go away, one desires an answer, and the more one fails to find it, the more that desire grows. Our stance, our single responsibility, then, is to strive! As for the design on the cover of this first issue, it shall be our logo. Its meaning: Yield to None.

This was a true rallying cry for artists, and a signal to readers that Modern Sketch would strike a different relationship to the times and to readership than the other pictorials published at the time.

In comparison, addressing readers in its second issue the mainstream pictorial 良友 Liangyou or The Young Companion adopts a saccharine tone, promising the readers comfort, entertainment, and companionship:

When you are tired from work, pick up a copy of Liangyou and read through it; you’ll be assured your energy will be revived and you’ll work better. When you’re at a movie theater before the music begins and the curtain is drawn up, pick up a copy of Liangyou and read it; it’s better than looking around. When at home you have nothing else to do, reading Liangyou is better than mahjong…

The construction of companionship is amplified when the pictorial itself is anthropomorphized, speaking directly to readers in the next editor’s forward that gushes:

Good morning, dear good friends: As you open the first page and meet me, I am really a little abashed, and I don’t know what to say. So I’ll just say good morning and good health… I vow to be a good person, a reliable person, and your trusted and loyal friend.29 are translated and reprinted in: Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945, 66.")

Soothing words reflecting a pictorial that was made for a reader’s enjoyment and edification. Indeed, the content of Liangyou habitually adopts a cloying tone, addressing readers as 列位良友 or “good friends” and promising comfort and companionship.30: 2.") Liangyou’s saccharine prefaces written by the pictorial’s spirit (良友之神) are a far cry from the words written by the editor of Modern Sketch.

Modern Sketch promises no friendship or comfort, rather plunges the reader into the fray of battle led by their mascot, a curious Don Quixote pictured on the cover of the first issue. The horse, body, and lance are cobbled from a clock, rolled paper, calligraphy brush, pen, an inkwell, ruler, a drafting triangle, and pencils: the tools of writers and manhua artists. \[Figure 7\] Modern Sketch is neither a sweet reflection of a perfect (or even aspirational) modern moment, nor comforting companion to the world-weary modern reader. They were fighting battles. The pictorial showcases sharp, politically engaged critiques, content that was both in tune with global movements in art and also responsive to the Shanghainese context, entertaining as well as salacious works that range from bawdy to obscene. The pictorial was tilting at windmills: ever striving for answers and failing to resolve them to anyone’s satisfaction; ever plunging into the fray of a battle that would not be won.

Part of the fun of the pictorial was its willingness to lampoon the readership, sending up their modern anxieties and bourgeois fumbles. And, the publication didn’t pull punches when it came to sparring with influential political figures and powerbrokers. Even today Modern Sketch is simply a pleasure to flip through, its visual feast still as delectable close to a century later.

Readers of Modern Sketch patronized a publication with a serious commitment to both the global avant-garde and sharp social critique. The works chosen for publication by the editors cleaved to the theories of manhua espoused in the monthly editorials. And, the magazine also grappled with current events. Modern Sketch provided a forum that allowed for contemporary artists to engage in social and political critique that was disseminated via the pictorial to a large and diverse readership. Images included on the pages reflect new ways of presenting, thinking, and critiquing modern life. These messages were delivered both visually and in writing, where often the heart of the message can be discerned from the image alone.

A Case Study in Multivalent Messaging:

These investments in incremental steps to literacy, current events and contemporary art practice are on full display in the juxtaposition of film, fiction, cartoon in the collaboration by Xu Ruoming and Huang Yao. This collaboration is entitled “影迷“牛鼻子”如喪考妣” \[ “Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning” also known in English as “Harlow Fan, Mr. Niu Bizi, Displaces Deceased Kin for Funeral”\] a collage-photomontage published in June 1937.31: 26.") \[Figure 8\] This work enabled literati poetry from the Tang Dynasty (couplets next to the portrait) to speak directly to cinematic references (Jean Harlow) contextualized in the collision between modernity and tradition (the family’s ancestral altar) and allow the fictional world of a famous cartoon character to connect with contemporary news (the sudden death of the actress).The convergence and navigation of the Chinese and foreign through multiple registers direct representation, subject matter, and execution create an evocative experience for the viewer.

The work uses a satirical lens in order to question the impact of foreign cultural influences on traditional Chinese cultural practices, generating a heightened sense of immediacy and thus expanding the relevancy of the critique by grounding the satire in current events. The work exemplifies the coexistence and intersection of a variety of genres and styles found in each issue. By uniting text and image, cultural practices and current events, it also demonstrates the ability of a work to appeal to a reader no matter their ability to read Chinese characters.

By foregrounding the interplay between this image of the home altar from Modern Sketch, the cultural practice of ancestor worship in China, and the way that the image engages with the political and cultural fabric of its moment this research engages in the mode of triangulation suggested by Zeynep Çelik.32: 202–5.") It investigates the power dynamics that govern the appearance of vernacular sacred spaces in visual culture in order to ask questions about how and when such spaces were used to contest official norms and everyday assumptions about life in Shanghai. It also acknowledges that official or canonical interpretations of sacred space played a role in these contestations. Humor here hinges on a calculated act of destabilization; many of the jokes in Modern Sketch play on the subversion of the modern Chinese viewer’s expectations. A modern home altar dominated by a famous Hollywood actor instead of the familiar face of the patriarch; impossible everyday spaces that work as critique against power precisely because they violate the accepted norms and values of the powerful.

In order to understand the image in Modern Sketch, the viewer also triangulates between the subversive images of Shanghai and notions of personal dignity, political, social, and moral norms. These images are in dialogue with such norms and values as they infringe upon them. This lens of analysis uncovers understandings of modern life in Shanghai that are relational, contingent, and situational. Indeed, this historical approach is in harmony with the view of Huang Yao, one of the artists who collaborated to make this image.

Cartoons are not the same as ordinary painting, it is a type of weapon and it is like a short but sharp sword. Under abnormal circumstances, cartoons have certain responsibilities; it is not a forgiving medium nor a medium that is easy to influence, it is a fair platform to attack thieves, the shameless, the oppressors who have no place to hide.

Cartoons are not polite, they are fair, like a court with a humorous judge… Their form of questioning, judgement, and attitude is through the use of humor. Although they are not stern like judges who would scold, reprimand or sentence the guilty to death, cartoons are cold and in a word or a sentence without words, they can cause you to not be able to cry nor to laugh: 683–84.")

Reflecting on his medium, Huang’s own words describe not just the power, but also the responsibility of manhua to reveal larger truths, to criticize, and to hold us all accountable. Rather than resolving contradictions, humor is rendered powerful in the broader ambivalences, critiques, and questions that these images can raise about the world around us.

“Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning” combines hallmarks of the two artists’ work. Xu Ruoming’s frequent contributions to Modern Sketch were deeply engaged in social satire, focusing on everyday situations and human types. He was acutely aware of the pressure to discard Chinese tradition and morality wrought by Shanghai’s hybrid culture and capitalist ambitions. His works seized upon satire to throw a cloak over religious and moral barbs aimed squarely at the readers of the magazine.

Huang Yao was a young artist whose most famous character is 牛鼻子 Niubizi (“Mister Ox Nose”) known as “W. Buffoon” in English. W. Buffoon captured a broad range of human actions and behaviors, often of Shanghai’s wealthy merchants, through clues related to his dress, manner, and the scenes in which he appeared. W. Buffoon’s life was often imagined as part of the everyday bustle of Shanghai, such as when he is pictured as a nightsoil collector, his Tarzan-like cry rousing housewives and maids with chamber pots. \[Figure 9\] He was a humorous and wise Shanghai gentleman prone to foibles. Yet, he spoke up for the common person, embodying a spirit of persistence and resilience in the face of many of their everyday struggles.

Images of the interiors of prosperous urban homes found in popular pictorials from the 1930s suggest that many Shanghainese had been seduced by the lure of decadent urban culture, having embraced Western influences they have failed to implement the important work of transforming them for their own purposes. “Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning” is one such work; the collaboration between artists Huang Yao and Xu Ruoming is a montage of photography, sculpture, and illustration. The work depicts a sacred space within the Chinese home, the ancestral altar, where the portrait of Niu Bizi’s ancestor has been replaced by Jean Harlow. The image takes aim at the corruption of ritual and tradition by the insidious spread of Western culture.

Because Confucian practice remained a salient facet of everyday life throughout China during the 1930s, Shanghai homes often included spaces to preform rites and honor the patriarchal line. Smaller ancestral altars could be found in modest homes and apartments, while the wealthy maintained ancestral halls in their homes. These spaces were not simply a relic of times past for nostalgic conservatives. Ancestral halls were integrated into modern and even intentionally Western style homes throughout the decade; D.V. Woo’s streamline modern villa designed in 1935 by architect Lazlo Hudec featured a grand ancestral hall.

To carry out Confucian practices and to build their home altar, people turned to the afore mentioned Family Rituals compiled by Confucian philosopher 朱熹 (朱子) Zhu Xi (1130-1200 CE) for guidance.34 Even today the liturgical text is true to Zhu Xi’s goal of making rituals easy to practice; it remains a very readable text, succinctly outlining the proper way to execute rites. The text describes how to construct an ancestral hall or simple ancestral altar in the home. First, the offering hall and its uses throughout the year are described. Next, the hall itself is described in greater detail:

When a man of virtue plans to build a house, his first task is always to set up an offering hall to the east of the main room of his house. In setting up the offering hall use a room three chien wide. In front of the altars is the inner door and in front of it the two staircases, each with three steps. The one on the east is called the ceremonial stairs, the one on the west the western stairs. Depending on how much space is available, below the steps should be a covered area, large enough for all the family members to stand in rows. On the east there should be a closet for books, clothes, and sacrificial vessels inherited from the ancestors, and a spirit pantry. Have the wall go around them and add an outer door, which should normally be kept bolted…

Some editions included both text and illustration, as in the ancestral hall from a 1602 edition of Family Rituals reproduced in Ebrey’s text. The abbreviated descriptions reference important cultural principles that shape Chinese cosmology, especially the patriarchal family system. It continues to be an important reference for all families, rich and poor, practicing Confucian rites, describing both large ancestral halls and smaller, more modest altars. These details, of both the ritual practices preformed in the space, and the specifics of how to create the space within the home informed ancestral halls and altars in homes in China through the 1930s.

Patricia Ebrey calls Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals a “militantly Confucian book” that was meant to combat the practice of Buddhist rites and other foreign cultural practices and promote proper execution of Confucian rites. Family Rituals, Ebrey writes, is “a culmination of efforts to revive, purify, and expand Confucian family rituals” that were easy to follow, and could be performed by rich and poor.35, xxi, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400862351. Emphasis is my own.") Amending, modernizing, or casting out the proper execution of rituals goes against the fundamental principle of continuity that guides the practice. It also undermines the core function of the conservative text, which was to preserve Chinese traditions and culture, calling into question the project of national modernization and its link to changes taking place in the homes of Shanghai’s urban elites.

The way that this image pictures a Shanghai patriarch upending customs is a lens through which to view the cultural collision between tradition and modernity in 1930s Shanghai. “Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning” focuses on his family altar, dominated by an alluring, nude photographic portrait of the Hollywood actor Jean Harlow between two calligraphic scrolls. Harlow, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, died suddenly of liver failure earlier that month.36 The traditional altar clashes with the contemporary image of Harlow, a collision between ancestor worship and Hollywood fandom. Before the scrolls is an altar with incense and candles. A statue of W. Buffoon, dwarfed by the monumental altar, is imposed on the foreground, facing the viewer, his back towards the altar.

The incongruity of the work is underscored by enumerating the ways the scene upends the traditions associated with ancestor worship, transgressions that would have hit home with Chinese audiences in the 1930s. The wide-spread cultural practice, which stresses proper execution, relies on maintaining an altar in the home and ongoing ritualized practices of veneration. If the patriarch of the family, W. Buffoon, remembers and makes sacrifices to the soul of a deceased male relative whose photo or name is on the altar, then the 魄 “spirit/personality soul” of the ancestor may survive. The properly venerated ancestor gains power and influence, answering questions and requests of its descendants, ensuring the welfare of the family.37 in Family Rituals. Ebrey offers robust insight into the cultural context for ancestor worship in China that informed this study. Xi Zhu and Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals: A Twelfth-Century Chinese Manual for the Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals, and Ancestral Rites, Princeton Library of Asian Translations (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1991), XVI, 31, 165.") W. Buffoon has replaced his ancestors with a seductive image of Harlow that radiates sexual power; a radical act with calamitous consequences for the entire Buffoon clan – past, present, and future.

Altering this sacred space within the home is profane, offensive, and ludicrous. What spiritual center would Shanghainese protect from the sinister creep of Hollywood, if not the one in their own home? “Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning” gestures to cultural fragmentation and displacement, an untenable fusion of traditional values and new practices encouraged by urban life and culture in a transnational Chinese city. The decline of filial piety implied by the heretical altar is a transgression that, in Confucian terms, would sever the ties between the filial line and living descendants. In this cultural context substituting a Hollywood actress for W. Buffoon’s father or grandfather meant that the connection between ancestors and their living kin would be ruptured for all time.38

Up to this point the examination of this work and its critique is based solely in the visual elements of the work. As the analysis demonstrates, the audience would be able to follow these ideas through the visual register alone. The two elements of the work that haven’t yet been discussed, the calligraphic couplets and the caption, lend further weight to the argument and enhance the critiques as well as the fun.

On either side of Harlow’s portrait are calligraphic couplets rendered by a clear, steady hand. The couplets are from “The Song of Everlasting Regret/Sorrow” (长恨歌), a poem to one of the five great beauties of China written during the Tang Dynasty. The couplets speak of both the chasm between the living and dead, and perhaps also the chasm between Hollywood stars and their fans, “Years had passed since the dead and living parted./ Not once did her spirit come to his dream and comfort his heart.”39_ It can also be translated as, “The living and the dead became separated one drawn-out year ago, Her soul had not appeared to him in his dreams.”") This excerpt from a classical Chinese poem highlights the irony of the scene, and makes W. Buffoon even more ridiculous. The poem was very well known, and in 1933 was famously set to a modern cantata by influential Shanghai composer Huang Zi. The popular poem’s widespread popularity likely made it all the more readable for readers who were on the cusp of literacy. They might be able to fill in gaps with deductive reasoning to read the couplets. Or, if they learned the phrases their aural familiarity might have made them more likely to recognize or remember them a second time. Reading the couplets and connecting their elevated cultural context to the joke at work in the image is not only enriching, it’s funny. The couplets are fun to read.

The bold title and smaller caption are simple, the characters neatly laid out in white against a black background below the image. The hyperbolic description was likely to bemuse the reader, and with just two brief sentences offers a narrative that plays on the scene on display. As if the blasphemous change to the ancestral altar wasn’t ludicrous enough, the caption describes W. Buffoon as the despondent widower (未亡人) of Jean Harlow now living an empty life bereft of spiritual sustenance. The characters themselves are printed clearly with generous margins and punctuation. Legibility was prioritized in the composition of the page and choices about font. Beyond design, the execution by Modern Publications was characteristically exacting and sophisticated. The Chinese text is not only communicative, it shines.

The beloved W. Buffoon was a blundering and foolish figure. Readers were delighted by his botched attempts to navigate modern society even as they identified with him. Huang Yao and Xu Ruoming mobilize W. Buffoon to lampoon the celebrity obsessed popular culture of Shanghai, and also the willful forgetting of one’s own past. His antics unveiled the ludicrous inclinations and contradictions present in the character of Shanghai’s petty urbanites. The home altar is an important staging area for this debate, especially targeting men who are imagined to be susceptible the siren call of popular culture. “Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning” is a criticism of the uncritical, fatuous obsession with Hollywood, and the fragmentation of cultural norms and traditional values. The comical antics of W. Buffoon are on full display mirroring our own foibles; replace Jean Harlow with Chadwick Boseman and the endurance of the critique is laid bare.

Modern Sketch is part of a movement centered around the creation of uniquely Chinese cultural and political modernity, a theme with which the magazine itself grappled. There was no exact consensus on what it meant to be “modern.” Moreover, too often when looking to non-Chinese models, “modern” was conflated with “civilized.” Cultural exchange could be transformative, but works like this ask questions about the contours of that transformation. Critics like Lu Xun and here, Xu and Huang, believed it was important to seek out positive sources that would cultivate Chinese culture rather than those forces that would stamp it out or sever it from the thousands of years of history that preceded the modern moment.

Modern Sketch as material object and as an archive of 1930s Shanghai cultural production is an elegant illustration of these very ideas. “Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning” is a call to caution where foreign appropriation is concerned. Its lighthearted critiques of the wholehearted adoption of foreign influences is silly, absurd, and of course entertaining. It is also embedded in a broader discourse around how to be a modern Chinese person that many felt was existential.40: 589–618.") W. Buffoon asks the audience to think about their responsibility to preserve and cultivate indigenous cultural practice, and in so doing reveals new voices participating in a national cultural conversation debating the new, the foreign, and the modern.

Works like this one represent just one small part of the rich, layered, and entertaining experience of flipping through a new issue of Modern Sketch. The two artists incorporate different narrative elements that help readers at all levels of literacy access the message of the work. While the most complete understanding would unite the image, the caption, and the couplets, the critique is clearly and primarily leveled through the visual register. The Chinese characters included as part of the image and in the brief caption add cultural references and storytelling that playfully enhance the work. The pictorial was designed to be consumed and enjoyed by all audiences, literate, illiterate, or somewhere in between. Reaching these different groups meant that the pictorial had to be as stunning visually as it was textually. It also necessitated an approach to text that would encourage incremental progress towards literacy; indeed the simply written, clearly printed captions under the image are well in line with Shao’s mission to create a new generation of Chinese readers. And, works like this one that could be interpreted and enjoyed at any level of literacy were essential elements of this progression.

Shao wrote about the potential of the pictorial during what was dubbed the “Year of the Magazine,” envisioning the marriage of text and image in the pictorial as a realistic path towards literacy, political and social engagement, and the overall good of modern Chinese citizens. “要养成人读书的习惯，从画报着手应当算是最好的方法。用图画去满足人的眼睛；再用趣味去松弛人的神经；最后才能用思想去灌溉人的心灵。” \[“To develop the habit of reading, starting with a pictorial ought to be the best way. Use pictures to satisfy people’s eyes; use fun to relax people’s nerves; and finally use thoughts to irrigate the human mind.”\] Cultivating literacy was a monumental task, and one that was hotly debated by intellectuals, by reformers, and by politicians. There was a consensus that without achieving a higher rate of literacy China would never be able to compete with other modern nations like Japan or the United States. Shao’s unorthodox approach to this existential problem was to make learning to read fun and relaxing while still edifying.

Conclusion

Modern Sketch is full of works that are entertaining and thought provoking, complex in execution and elegantly reproduced on the page. Works that can be enjoyed without reading the caption, yet are enhanced and refined by the paired words. The pictorial supported Shao’s vision for cultivating a politically engaged, well read, and sophisticated Chinese public based in a popular pictorial where text and image have a concomitant relationship. Thanks to Shao, the pictorial uses the best technologies from abroad, including advanced printing presses, the best paper and ink, and so on, in order to create and disseminate artworks by local artists that are uniquely responsive to the times, relevant to the audience, and often thought provoking.

“Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning” by Huang Yao and Xu Ruoming, a case study in the application of a multivalent approach to readership, showcases Modern Sketch at its best. It mobilizes multiple approaches to representation, marries compound modes of text and image. Calligraphy, Chinese characters, sculpture, photography, and cartoon are all present and at play on the page. It works both through popular visual culture, everyday religious practice, and high traditional culture. These components evoke a reading that is dependent on cultural references from China’s past and present. The artists’ work is representative of Modern Sketch’s appropriation of the foreign, which is transformative, playful, and moves beyond passive adoption. In this pictorial foreign technology and processes are used as a jumping off point to create a more sophisticated and uniquely Chinese final product.

Modern Sketch engaged on equal terms with numerous, sometimes competing nodes of a transnational web of modern artistic practice and theory. The pictorial is a shining example of the possibilities of the concomitant relationship between text and image, and also how that relationship works for the pictorial’s audience. This publication envisioned a wide range of modern audience members, some of whom couldn’t read, but might be drawn to text with the right opportunity. As this image demonstrates, the messages elevated by the pictorial could be sophisticated, culturally relevant, and critically engaged on multiple levels. Modern Sketch often used entertainment and visual pleasure to appeal to its illiterate readership, but that didn’t necessitate content that was watered down or muzzled for their benefit.

The pictorial’s mission was both to grasp the era and respond to the vicissitudes of modern life with a deliberate focus on Shanghai, as the editors claimed. It was also to bring a whole new cohort of the Chinese public along, to captivate them, to convince them that they wanted more from the publication than just the visual feast it offered; to persuade that Shanghai print culture was a door to a new, modern life waiting be opened and explored.

For historians of Shanghai, Modern Sketch presents a vision of life in 1930s China drastically different from newspapers, from conservative mass media such as Liangyou, and from the accounts of politicians and powerbrokers. This unique outlet of popular print culture deserves careful study as it provided an alternative public space for Chinese voices to describe and tell stories about the cultural, political, and social landscape of Shanghai, and more broadly, China during the 1930s.

1. For a more extensive discussion of surveys that tracked subjective perceptions regarding reading and literacy, see: Charles W. Hayford, “Literacy Movements in Modern China,” in National Literacy Campaigns, ed. Robert F. Arnove and Harvey J. Graff (Boston, MA: Springer US, 1987), 147–71. 
2. For an overview of literacy see: Heidi Ross et al., “China Country Study,” in Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2006; Literacy for Life, EFA Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO, 2005), 116, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000146108. For information regarding the myriad political strategies and pedagogical practices see: Di Luo, “China’s Literacy Myth: Narratives and Practices, 1904-1949” (Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University, 2015), 1–2, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc\_num=osu1430943957. For more on the contours of modern pedagogy as reflected in print culture see: Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 43–63. 
3. Luo, “China’s Literacy Myth: Narratives and Practices, 1904-1949,” 120–56. 
4. 魯少飛, “編者補白,” 時代漫畫 Modern Sketch 1 (1934): 35. 
5. Among the most influential studies of pictorial magazines in Shanghai are: Christopher A Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876-1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004); Paul Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen, and Yingjin Zhang, eds., Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926-1945, Modern Asian Art and Visual Culture, volume 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2013); John A. Crespi, Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2020). 
6. Luo, “China’s Literacy Myth: Narratives and Practices, 1904-1949,” 123. 
7. Peter Zarrow’s fuller theorization not only of the relationship between text and image in literacy primers, but also their explicit connection to concepts of citizenship and nation building provides an important concomitant lens on pedagogical approaches. Zarrow’s research examines textbooks on civics and history as well as literacy. Peter Gue Zarrow, “Reading Modern China,” in Educating China: Knowledge, Society, and Textbooks in a Modernizing World, 1902-1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 45. 
8. Xu Ruoming 許若明 and Huang Yao 黃堯, “Yingmi, niubizi, ru sang kao bi” 影迷“牛鼻子”如喪考妣 \[Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning\], 時代漫畫 Modern Sketch 39 (August 1937): 26. 
9. Recent studies of Shao Xunmei include: Paul Bevan, A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938, Ideas, History, and Modern China, volume 12 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016); Paul Bevan, ‘Intoxicating Shanghai’ – An Urban Montage: Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during Shanghai’s Jazz Age (Brill, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004428737; Tian Jin, The Condition of Music and Anglophone Influences in the Poetry of Shao Xunmei (Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2020); Xunmei Shao, Jicheng Sun, and Hal Swindall, The Verse of Shao Xunmei: Heaven and May (1927) and Twenty-Five Poems (1936), First edition (Paramus, New Jersey: Homa & Sekey Books, 2016). 
10. Shumei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917-1937, Berkeley Series in Interdisciplinary Studies of China 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 267. 
11. Shao Xunmei’s contributions are discussed by historian Leo Ou-Fan Lee and recently by Paul Bevan whose translation of excerpts of Shao Xunmei’s writings has had an enormous impact upon this research, and is especially revealing via Shao Xunmei’s perspective on the state of print and literacy in Republican Era China. For more insight into his life and contributions see: Paul Bevan, A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938, Ideas, History, and Modern China, volume 12 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016); Paul Bevan, ‘Intoxicating Shanghai’ – An Urban Montage: Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during Shanghai’s Jazz Age (Brill, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004428737; Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945. 
12. Ross et al., “China Country Study,” 3. 
13. Pei Gao, “Risen from Chaos: The Development of Modern Education in China, 1905-1948” (London, England, The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2015), 62–64, http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3169/1/Gao\Risen\from\Chaos.pdf; Denis Crispin Twitchett and John King Fairbank, The Cambridge History of China_ (Cambridge Eng.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 185–86. 
14. Di Luo, “China’s Literacy Myth: Narratives and Practices, 1904-1949” (Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University, 2015), 17, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc\num=osu1430943957; John King Fairbank, The United States and China_, 4th ed., enl, American Foreign Policy Library (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983), 43. 
15. Luo, “China’s Literacy Myth: Narratives and Practices, 1904-1949,” 32–33, 53. 
16. Shao Xunmei 邵洵美, “Huabao zai wenhua jie de diwei” 画报在文化界的地位 \[The Status of the Pictorial in the Cultural World\], in Yi ge ren de tanhua 一个人的谈话 \[One Person’s Conversation\] (Shanghai: Shanghai shu dian chu ban she, 2008), 73. 
17. Shao, 75–76. 
18. Shao, 73–74. 
19. Luo, “China’s Literacy Myth: Narratives and Practices, 1904-1949,” 32. 
20. Shao, “Huabao zai wenhua jie de diwei,” 76. 
21. “Yinshua ji tuban zhi gailiang” 印刷及圖版之改良 \[Improvement in Printing and Picture Plates\], 時代 (時代画报) Modern Miscellany 1, no. 12 (1930): 1. 
22. Nick Stember, “The Shanghai Manhua Society: A History of Early Chinese Cartoonists, 1918-1938” (MA Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2015), 1/1/2017, http://www.nickstember.com/shanghai-manhua-society-history-early-chinese-cartoonists-1918-1938/; Jonathan Hutt, “Monstre Sacré: The Decadent World of Sinmay Zau 邵洵美,” China Heritage Quarterly 22, no. 10 (June 2010), http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/features.php?issue=022&searchterm=022\_monstre.inc. 
23. Shao Xiaohong 邵绡红, Wo de baba Shao Xunmei 我的爸爸邵洵美 \[My Father Shao Xunmei\] (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2005), 118. 
24. Shao Xunmei 邵洵美, “Shidai jianghua san shai shu dei ganxiang” 时代講话（三）：曬書的感想 \[Modern Talk (3): Thoughts on Publishing the Book\], 時代 (時代画报) Modern Miscellany, 1934. 
25. Shen,”Lianhuanhua and Manhua,” 115. 
26. Kuiyi Shen, “Lianhuanhua and Manhua; Picture Books and Comics in Old Shanghai,” in Illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor Magazines, and Picture Books, ed. John A. Lent (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 115. 
27. For more on the Shanghai Manhua Society see: Nick Stember, “The Shanghai Manhua Society: A History of Early Chinese Cartoonists, 1918-1938” (MA Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2015), 1/1/2017, http://www.nickstember.com/shanghai-manhua-society-history-early-chinese-cartoonists-1918-1938/. 
28. For the first issue Lu Shaofei wrote 編者補白an “Editor’s Filler” expanding on his hopes for the pictorial. It has been elegantly translated by John A. Crespi (see: John A. Crespi, China’s Modern Sketch: The Golden Era of Cartoon Art, 1934–1937, MIT Visualizing Cultures, 2011.)  
29. “Words from the Editor,” (Laingyou Volume 1 issue 2, March 15, 1926; and Liangyou Volume 1 issue 3, April 15, 1926) are translated and reprinted in: Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945, 66. 
30. As an example see: Liangyou zhishen 良友之神 \[Spirit of Liangyou\], “Jua tou yu” 卷頭語 \[Preface\], 良友 The Young Companion 1, no. 3 (March 1926): 2. 
31. Xu Ruoming 許若明 and Huang Yao 黃堯, “Yingmi, niubizi, ru sang kao bi” 影迷“牛鼻子”如喪考妣 \[Cinephile W. Buffoon in Mourning\], 時代漫畫 Modern Sketch 39 (August 1937): 26. 
32. Zeynep Çelik, “Colonialism, Orientalism, and the Cannon,” The Art Bulletin 78, no. 2 (June 1996): 202–5. 
33. Huang Yao quoted and translated in: Carolyn Wong, “Huang Yao and His Cartoon, ‘Niu Bizi,’ in China, 1934-1947,” International Journal of Comic Art 10, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 683–84. 
34. With recent revival of interest in Confucian political and social order by Xi Jinping’s government, Chinese elementary school children are again learning and reciting Family Rituals. 
35. Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China: A Social History of Writing about Rites (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), xxi, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400862351. Emphasis is my own. 
36. Dropsy, now more commonly called edema, excessive water retention, often leads to heart or liver failure. Harlow likely died of liver failure, which had a very high mortality rate before the advent of liver transplants. Much like celebrity news today, her tragic death was sensationalized in and beyond American media. 
37. This analysis benefitted from Patricia Ebrey’s close reading and nuanced explication of sacred rituals that take place in the home based on the writings of Zhu Xi (or Chu Hsi) in Family Rituals. Ebrey offers robust insight into the cultural context for ancestor worship in China that informed this study. Xi Zhu and Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals: A Twelfth-Century Chinese Manual for the Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals, and Ancestral Rites, Princeton Library of Asian Translations (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1991), XVI, 31, 165. 
38. Zhu and Ebrey, 79, 105. 
39. 悠悠生死別經年/ 魂魄不曾來入夢. (yōuyōu shēng sǐ bié jīng nián, húnpò bùcéng lái rùmèng.) It can also be translated as, “The living and the dead became separated one drawn-out year ago, Her soul had not appeared to him in his dreams.” 
40. One of the most influential cultural theorists was Lu Xun. Though famously no friend of Shao Xunmei or Modern Sketch, Lu wrote eloquently and persuasively about the tension between preserving and maintaining China’s indigenous culture and the potential for selective cultural appropriation, which he called “grabbism,” to benefit Chinese culture. For more on his theories see: Eileen J. Cheng, “‘In Search of New Voices from Alien Lands’: Lu Xun, Cultural Exchange, and the Myth of Sino-Japanese Friendship,” The Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 3 (2014): 589–618.

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Article Image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, "Encode/Decode", 2020. Used with permission from the artist.