Culturing Modernity - by Qin Shao (Hardcover)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

"[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

Review Quotes

"[Shao's] book is the most complete and best history of Zhang Jian and Nantong available."--The China Review

"Qin Shao's project has ambitious new dimensions. She has not only taken advantage of newly published sources and archives and repeatedly visited Nantong to look with new eye and make extensive interviews. She thoughtfully draws on an eclectic variety of theory to comment on the pitfalls of the concept "modernity," the role of reform models in modern China, and the interplay of the national vs. local and past vs. present... In short, then, Shao's volume is an exemplary monograph, and an important contribution to the study of China's modernity."--China Quarterly

"Shao Qin's monograph deserves praise for its deft handling of theory and its emphasis on the domestic roots of Chinese urban reform."--Histoire Sociale-Social History

"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

About the Author

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