48
THE
rgrr
REVoLUTTON AND THE
coMMoN MAN
2
94. North China Herald,5oo.
95. I draw heavily on a long description by Lim Boon-keng (Lin \Tenqing)
published in th.e North China Herald, z4 February r9r2, 5oo-r. See also
Minlibao, 16 February t9r2, r; Shengiing shibao,3 March rgr2, 4. For the
texts
of the addresses
The Republican Citizen
see Sun Zhongshan, Sun Zhongshan quanji
(Complete works of Sun Yatsen; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, r98z) vol. z,
94-7.
When SunYatsen formally adopted the solar calendar in January rgrz
it was an action that had the potential to affect the daily lives of the
entire population. Over the years the Republic came to affect not oniy
people's perception of time, but also the clothes they wore, the way they
and stood. From being conlreeted friends, even the way they moved
these were soon being inof
revolution
moment
of
the
choices
scious
processes of learning
mundane
the
schoolchildren.Through
culcated in
a set of dispoacquired
individual
life
the
how to behave in every-day
In the
natural.
seem
sitions which made certain actions and responses
new dispositions of the Republic the new Republican ideology was
embodied, turned into 'a durable way of standing, speaking, walking
and thereby of feeling and thinking'.l Children and adults learned to
bow rather than kowtow, then to walk, stand and sit in ways that
expressed their new role as Republican citizens.
A
Fashion
for Republicanism
During the spring and summet of tgtz a wave of enthusiasm for the
symbols of the Republic swept the country. JinWenzhen, a woman from
Anhui, recalls in her memoirs the curious features of the wedding organized for her student husband that year. For the central ceremony of
the wedding he wore a Western-style suit and she a costume designed
on the pattern of the court dresses of the ancient Han dynasty. The
kowtow was omitted in favour of a tWestern-style bow This dramatically
modern wedding was held in the rather conservative town ofWuhu, a
place where most people were still wearing Qing dynasty costumes for
weddings until well into the r93os.' Nevertheless in rgrz the Westernstyle costume and etiquette reflected genuinely popular fashions.
The main elements of this fashion were Western-style suits for men
and$Testern-style hats worn with these suits but also with a long gown.
Costumes worn in late Qing China had varied according to the gender,
class, official status, ethnicity and location of the wearer as well as the
time of year.The following description simplifies greatly in order to give
the reader some idea of where the new styles fitted in to this great variety
of costume. Most Han Chinese men and women wore loose trousers,
with a loose jacket over the top.The fabric depended both on the season
50
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
and on what the wearer could afford, with most people wearing light
cotton garments in the summer and thick padded ones for northern
winters, while the rich wore silk. \X/omen's clothes differed from men's
in the greater length of the jacket; in addition married women of the
wealthier classes might wear a long pleated skirt. Elite men whose occupations did not demand strenuous physical activity wore full-length
loose gowns and on informal occasions a short 'riding jacket' (magua)
over the gown. This ensemble was often topped by an embroidered silk
skullcap (Fig. ). Officials on formal occasions wore an additional
embroidered robe and an official hat. Both robe and hat varied with the
status of the official concerned.3 Hardly surprisingly, formal official
robes, embroidered as they were with the symbols of the empire, were
considered inappropriate for the new republic.a \Testern-sryle costumes
replaced official robes for the inaugurations of LiYuanhong, SunYarsen
cllAl'. U. DE8
Srtf,UTA?loNs.
Ftc. 4. Qing dynasty
etiquette and costume.
Chinese-style bow
(yr). The men wear formal
official dress and hats.
Belozr: Clasping the hands
(gong shou).The men wear
gown, riding iacket and
A b oa e:
skull cap
Soarce: Simon Kiong,
"Quelques mots sur la politesse
Chinoise " Variiti s Sinologique s
z5 (t9o6), p. 5 (Bodleian
Pl.
llL-Tso.i
et Koug-chcou
Library, University of Oxford
Chin.d.73.)
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
5I
andYuan Shikai. Moreover in tgrzWestern-style clothes were also used
for private occasions: Jin$Tenzhen's husband was married in a suit. An
old man commenting on the revolution in a county town in Zhejiang
remarked sarcastically that all the men had cut their queues overnight
and the young men had all boughtWestern-style suits which made them
look like a Pack of monkeYs.5
Western-style suits marked the wearer as a reformer or a'new person',
but they were far too expensive an investment for most people.6 Instead,
men associated themselves with the new policies by buying\Western-style
hats to go with their newly shorn hair. The Qing dynasty skullcap and
the various shapes of official hats were suddenly replaced with \Testernstyle felt hats, cloth caps and straw boaters. A diarist in Shanxi notes in
r9r3 that unlike the practice in earlier years his New Year guests no
tonger wear formal dress, and that some even wear foreign hats't The
new hats were worn, as the old had been, primarily with a long gown'
The craze was thus limited for the most part to the elite who were the
wearers of gowns. Nevertheless one newspaper commented that even
those who had trouble affording food were laying aside their old straw
hats and buying new ones; the reporter noted cynically how much more
eager people were to buy imported straw boaters than government
bonds.s'Westerners meanwhile were lamenting their failure to profit
from this valuable new trade which had been cornered by Japan.e In
Zhejiang a modern-minded member of a major lineage announced
before the regular lineage sacrifices that since the Qing had fallen participants should not wear red hats or long gowns and jackets, and provided those who had cut their queues with modern hats.r0
With these fashion items went a new etiquette' Men wearing the new
soft felt fedoras or stiffer bowler hats raised them in greeting, as was
customary among European and American men at the time. Letters
indicate the popularity of this gesture by using it as a closing phrase.
Thus a letter from a local government trainee to PresidentYuan Shikai
written in July rgrz ends with the writer's declaring that he 'takes off
his hat and stands straight'.rr Similarly a rgr3letter-writing manual suggests ending a letter with 'Your younger brother so-and-so takes off his
hat'.r2 For a more formal greeting a man held his hat in his hand and
his arms by his sides and bowed stiffly from the waist (Fig. 5). A Shanghai man's friends presenting him with a congratulatory statement on
his sixtieth birthday in r9r3 sign off 'together bow and respectfully give
their best wishes'.13 This bow (jugong, hereafter ''Western-style bow')
was the one used at Jin Wenzhen's modern wedding. A cartoonist who
wishes to satirize the new republicans for adopting only the outward
forms of the Republic shows two Chinese men in \Testern dress per-
Y
IHE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
FIc. 5. TheWestern-style bow
(Jugong). An illustration from a
primary school textbook shows
school boys and their teachers
bowing to the Five Colour
National Flag at the start of the
school term
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
53
':.:J
tgi
't+'
S,,zrcc: Zhuang Shi. Shen Qi, Liu
Ru, Xb{a guoyu jiaoheshu (New
method national language textbook;
Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan,
rgzz), vol. 3. p. r.
Frc. 7. Qing dynasty edquette
from a village manual. These
different forms of kowtow each
express precise degrees
difference of status
of
Source: [Village manual] (Historical
Literature of Sha Tin vol. 5; Hong
On To Memorial Collection, Hong
Kong University Library)
Ftc.6. The
appearance is
correct but the spirit is far off
Soarce: Frcdcrick McCormick,
facrng p. 442^
forming the etiquette of the Qing (Fig. 6): one clasps his hands to his
chest while the other removes his glasses, both gestures associated with
Qing ritual greeting. The cartoon is labelled, 'The appearance is correct
but the spirit is far off'.ra
Men acting according to the etiquette that was customary during the
Qing might have performed a bow, but in this Chinese-style bow (yi)
the arms were not kept at the sides; instead, as can be seen from Figure
4, the clasped hands fell with the motion of the body. Moreover this
Chinese bow was not, as in contemporary \Western etiquette, the only
common formal gesture of greeting available to men.t5 It was one of a
series of gestures that expressed the relative social or official positions
of the participants (Fig.7).This series stretched from a clasping of the
hands (gong shou), used to greet equals on informal occasions' to the
complex movements of the kowtow performed to the emperor which
involved standing, kneeling and touching one's head to the ground eight
times. A more common form of the kowtow used for superior offlcials,
teachers, parents or at weddings involved kneeling down and touching
the head to the ground four times. Women performed kowtows but not
the Chinese-style bow which was replaced if necessary by a slight inclination with the hands clasped at the waist (lianren).16 The new Westernstyle bo% however, was seen as being equally appropriate for women
54
THE REPUBLICAN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
and men, except that since women did not wear hats they were not
expected to doff them.
What were the causes of the sudden enthusiasm for a set of 'Republican' customs that seem to us so decidedly \il(/estern? For some years
before the revolution'Western-style customs had been associated with
revolutionaries. During the late Qing students who continued to wear
\Testern clothes after returning to China did so not for aesthetic or practical reasons but because of what the clothes represented. European
clothes of this period were stiff, tight and generally uncomfortable.
Men's suits made of woollen cloth were expensive, not easily obtainable and unsuitable for hot climates.rT In the r93os LinYutang wrote
an article on 'The inhumanity of \Western dress', specifically men's
dress, which was by that time if anything slightly more comfortable than
it had been in the r9oos. He attacks it as a 'system of suffocating collars,
vests, belts, braces and garters' and goes on to say)
The prestige of foreign dress rests on no more secure basis than the fact that
it is associated with superior gunboats and Diesel engines . . . Its superiority is
simply and purely political.t8
If this was true in the r93os when Western styles were commonplace,
it was far more true in the r9oos.'Western dress was adopted because
of what it represented. It is likely that many elements of this fashion
were in fact observed in and imported from Japan, which was accessible to far more Chinese than either Europe or America, and which had
itself adopted many 'Western styles from short hair and felt hats to
'Western-style uniforms from the r86os onwards.re However Western
styles were seldom perceived as Japanese: it was the power of Europe
and America that gave the new styles their prestige.
The primary values that\Western dress and etiquette were seen as representing were liberty and equality" Taken from European and American understandings of republicanism these had been the rallying cry of
the revolutionaries in the r9oos. After r9r2 they were constantly emphasized in intellectual discussions as the foundations of the new state.
The ideas were also repeated in school textbooks. It was clear that Qing
dynasty etiquette, with its careful differentiation of rank and status
which we have already seen in gestures of greeting, was not really compatible with the idea of equality.20 Many of the semi-mythical stories of
the early days of the Republic depict it as a moment when the old
inequality between officials and people was changed. Thus the story is
told of Sun Yatsen raising to his feet a man who had come to see him
and explaining that in a republic one need not kowtow to the president.2l Mythical though the story may be, it reflects a reality which is
also expressed
in the preamble
CITIZEN
55
to Yuan Shikai's laws on the etiquette
in the
for m""tittg. This states that the etiquette for meeting laid down
status or age.
ancient texts differentiates between individuals of different
the old etiequality
and
freedom
on
new
emphasis
the
since
Th"t"fot"
In
this case
is
needed.22
one
a
new
and
be
abandoned
had
to
lu"*" has
point
same
greeting,
but
the
gestures
of
to
th" u.gn-.nt was applied
used
also
was
which
costume
Was sometimes made when discussing
Hats,\WesternJ.rring the Qing to express official rank and seniority.z3
and
sryle suits for official occasions, taking off one's hat to one's friends
people
of
the
minds
in
the
president
were
all
symbolic
the
to
bowing
who used them of the equality of citizens under the Republic.
Of course once the revolutionaries were in power identification with
them was also in itself advantageous. As a contemporary newspaper
suggested, many of the leading figures in the new Republic had lived
abroad and thus become accustomed to straw boaters, leather shoes
and woollen clothes. According to this account the people most keen
to use foreign goods were people involved in the government who hoped
in this way to be associated with the new policies. Ordinary people then
copied the trend-setting politicians.2a This public link between the revolution and foreign influence was of course unacceptable to some revolutionaries: Zhang Binglin, who was both a leading radical and a
renowned classical scholar, published an essay which located the origins
of the new etiquette (raising the hat and bowing) in the customs of the
Han d1masty.25
Changes in costume and etiquette were also expressions of fashion in
a highly fashion-conscious society. The old image of an unchanging 'traditional China', combined with the tendency of recent historians to
emphasize slow structural changes in society, makes it hard to imagine
late Qing China as a society where rapidly changing fashions played an
important part in people's everyday lives, but it seems that such was the
case.This was not, as has been suggested, a Republican development.26
Local historian Liu \ffenbing, looking back on his Shanxi county of
Xugou in the r93os, remembered the women's hair styles of his childhood:'cart wheels' and'fan style'in the r86os, then in the r87os a single
coil at the back of the neck which gradually increased in size and by r894
covered the top of the head. Liu also discusses changes in the cut and
style of men's outer garments from the same period." Centres of fashion
in the rgoos were Beijing, Guangzhou and Suzhou/Hangzhou.28 A
description of Chengdu in r9o9 points out that fashions in men's hats
change every year in line with changes in Beijing, while women's clothes
change each year following the fashions set by popular actors.'e In his
memoirs JiangYi, who was brought up in Jiujiang in Jiangxi, describes
56
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
THE REPUBLICAN
his mother objecting ro the nurse plaiting his hair in an old-fashioned
way, and instead insisting on doing it herself. Fashions in clothes and
hairstyles reached Jiujiang, a major porr on the yangzi, from Beijing,
Shanghai and Nanjing. JiangYi's drawing (Fig. 8) depicts some of the
various hairstyles fashionable in Jiujiang in his childhood. For special
occasions professional hairdressers came to the house to do the women's
hair in the latest style.3o Poor women too might cut their hair to create
a fashionable fringe round the face.3r Fashions changed fastest among
the rich, but fashion was not the sole prerogative of the rich. A writer
describing changing fashions among the differenr classes of people in
the inland cities of Xi'an and Lanzhou notes that middle-class women
are slow to adopt new fashions because they associate the very idea of
fashion with the rich or prostitutes. But the result of this is not that their
clothes do not change, simply that they change long after the fashions
in Beijing. Thus around ryr4 middle-class women were following the
Beijing fashion in ceasing ro wear very tightly cut clorhes but they had
taken instead to the extravagantly wide-cut jackets which had gone out
of fashion in Beijing in the r9oos. For both middle-class and lower-class
women in Xi'an and Lanzhou doing the hair in a round bun, long out
of fashion in Beijing, was the newest rrend.32 By r9r4 it was said that
fashions spreading by this time from Shanghai moved so fasr that within
two years from its initiation a fashion would have reached Sichuan and
something new would have been adopted in shanghai.33 Fashion then
was both rapidly changing and pervasive. New fashions spreading from
a few major east coast cities affected hairstyles, headgear and the cut of
ru
CITIZEN
57
rich
darrnents. Change was fastest and most dramatic among the urban
fashionable
the
as
general
such
styles,
but
3i ,n" fashion-setting cities
and high collars of the early I9oos, reached even to lower-class
,infr,
*or.n"",in the distant cities of the north-west.
By the time that the inauguration of the Republic brought full
been
Vestern dress into fashion for men, \(/estern styles had already
advertising calAn
time.
for
some
fashions
Chinese
existing
influencing
been popular
endar for r9r4 shows the main features of a style that had
cut
tight,
close-fitting
and
collar
(Fig.
The
high
9).
since the early rgoos
At
the
r9oos.
and
r89os
of
the
are both reminiscent of Western styles
colours
the
bright
from
sarne dme men's long gowns had moved away
and embroidered surfaces of the mid nineteenth century to simpler,
darker colours.3aTheWestern costumes of the Republic should thus be
growing
seen as part of a larger fashion forrJfestern styles that had been
which
revolution
rgrr
the
by
transformed
was
but
rgoos,
since the
power'
political
to
styles
proponents
ofVestern
brought the
ww
\
$
W
w
W
Frc. 9. Women's fashion
seen
W W
FIc. 8. Fashions in
women's hairstyles in
Jiujiang as recollected by
w
JiangYi
Sozrce: ChiangYee,
8"9
C hildhoo
d
r94o), p.
(Ilndon:
53.
A
Chinese
Methuen,
as
in an advertising
calendar poster for the
Xiehe Trading Company
Soarce: Claire Roberts, Ezolation and Reaolution: Chinese
Dress tToos-r9gos (Sydney: Powerhouse Publishine, r99l), p.
zo. Reproduced courtesy of the
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney,
Australia.
58
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
It was during the period when \Western costume and etiquette were
the heights of fashion that the new Republic wrote its laws on customs"
It was assumed, as it turned out incorrectly, that the full \iTestern
costume worn by elite fashion leaders at the time would soon spread to
the general population. As was the case with the calendar, it had been
customary for dynasties to promulgate new regulations for officiai
costume and etiquette when they took office. In August rgrz the government published a law on etiquette. According to this law standard
etiquette for men was to raise the hat and bow. For everyday meetings
this was to be reduced to the simple raising of the hat, while for celebrations, sacrifices, weddings and funerals men were to bow three times.
$fomen were to follow the same rules, except that the raising of the hat
was replaced by a single bowr5 That this law was following rather than
leading the fashion is illustrated by its similarity to a slightly earlier ser
of rituals for civil officials in Sichuan, which also prescribed raising the
hat and bowing, with a triple bow ro show particular respecr.36 Shortly
after issuing the law on etiquette the government also issued laws on
formal dress. Two levels of formal dress were specified: full formar, for
major state occasions, and regular formal, for other official events (Fig.
l0). Full formal consisted of the costumes then known in English as
morning dress and evening dress. Regular formal dress was divided into
two types" The first type copied \Western dress of the day with either a
bowler or a felt hat. The second type was a long gown, riding jacket and
bowler hat. officials were not supposed ro wear this latter garb for the
performance of their official duties. w'omen's dress followed the formal
dress of wealthy Han Chinese women during the eing with a long
pleated skirt worn beneath an embroidered silk jacket.37 As was the case
for the law on etiquette the law on costume reflects widespread notions
about proper official dress for the Republic. Thus in cili, a small rown
in Hunan, Republican officials in tgtz wore cosrumes entirely in the
'European' style, with felt hats, leather shoes and woollen jackets.3s
The extent to which the choice of costume was motivated by considerations of fashion and symbolism is indicated by the fact that this
was done despite considerable opposition from the silk industry. yuan
Shikai proposed that full formal dress should copy the United Srates
even as representatives of the silk industry protested to the government
at the choice.3e Western-style formal dress was made of woollen cloth,
which China did not produce, and was therefore entirely imported.
Thus, not only the new laws but also the widespread fashion for
\Western-style clothes was seen as a serious threat to the silk industry.
In response to this threat the Chinese National Products promotion
Association sent representatives to Beijing to request that the new law
59
ffi
Regular formal Tlpe A
Evening dress Morning dress
Full formal
Evening
dress Morning dress
::
.':
rVomen's formal
Frc. ro. Formal dress
as specified
c
dress
Regular formal Tlpe B
by law in rgrz
Source'. Da zougtotrg gottgbu catryqruan yijue Zhortghua
Miryuo;fualri ru (Pictures of the dress system for the
Republic of China decreed by the House of Representatives and promulgated by the President; Guohuo
weichihui, rgrz). Courtesy of the No. z Archives, Nanjing, Chrna.
6o
THE REPUBLICAN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
specify that any formal dress be made of Chinese fabric. The request
was granted. However, since China did not at this time manufacture
any woollen cloth and $Testern-style dress could not in fact be made
from silk this part of the law was simply not obeyed.ao
But then nor was much of the rest of the law. The full \Westernstyle costumes of rgrz never did spread to the general population,
perhaps because of their discomfort, inconvenience or expense, perhaps
because they conflicted too much with existing ideas of proper dress.
Full \ilestern formal dress never became more than a fashion for the
political elite, and like other elite fashions it passed. As the fashion
passed, the laws of tgtz came to enshrine an outdated vision of the
Republic. Proposals made in the rgzos for a new national costume
comment on the popularity of the \Western-style morning and evening
dress in r9rz, but say that a year later it was hardly ever used. By the
r92os not one in a hundred officials owned this full formal dress, while
scarcely one in thirty had the \Western suit and bowler hat decreed
for official regular formal dress.nt These costumes were confined to diagrams in textbooks or on the walls of schools. Instead, ignoring rules
to the contrary, officials wore gown, jacket and bowler hat. Similarly the
bow prescribed by the new etiquette was felt to be insufficiently respectful in many sistuations.a' A conservative scholar, Wang Kaiyun, who
atttended a funeral in r9r4 along with seventy members of the National
Assembly, noted that only two or three of those present restricted their
respects to the three bows prescribed by law.a3 Children continued to
kowtow to their parents, students to Confucius and devotees to deities.aa
Perhaps most telling of all is the case of Cheng Renlan, the daughter
of Jin Wenzhen, the Anhui woman whose modern rgrz wedding
was described earlier. Whereas Jin \Wenzhen had bowed rather than
kowtowed at her wedding in accordance with the fashion of the day,
Cheng Renlan faced the opposition of her in-laws and husband
when she wished to bow rather than kowtow at her wedding in the
r93os.nt
Republican Citizens
To say that the Republican symbols of rgrz were part of a fashion and
that that fashion passed is not to say that the symbols were no longer
relevantl Cheng Renlan, when I spoke to her in her r98os, counted her
refusal to kowtow at her wedding among the more important events in
her life. Rather it is to suggest that the new symbols came to have a different sort of meaning in the years that followed. Instead of marking
the transition between new and old, Republic and Qing, these symbols
CITIZEN
6T
to mark members of a group who defined themselves as Repubcitizens'
fican
Studies of etiquette in European societies have shown that manners
oneself within a parcan work as a means of orienting and integrating
partly
result
of a link comas
a
functions
This
ticular community.46
and outer
morals
inner
between
rnonly drawn within such a community
traChinese
classical
conduct. Such a link was of course central to the
well
as
dition of 'ritual' (/i ), which included manners and costume as
the performance of ceremonies and was seen as the outer expression of
the inner virtue of humanity. Chow Kai-wing argues that during the
maior approach to
Qing dynasty scholars came to stress ritual as the
one of the most
thus
became
ritual
and
that
order,
ethics and social
car1re
competed for control of public
symbols.a? Access to this tradition of ritual was through the classical
texts and therefore required considerable education. In this way education provided status both in the access it gave, through the examination system, to official positions, and by teaching the student, through
ritual, manners and costume, to present himself as a member of an
elite.a8 With the abolition of the examination system and the adoption
of a system of 'modern'Western-style academies, the classical education began to be replaced as a marker of status by the presentation of
personal modernity.The new costume, manners and customs all played
a part in presenting oneself as a modern person. These elements thus
became the means through which individuals laid claim to personal
important ways
in which groups
status.
Like the classics, the symbols of modernity were taught in schools.
This was in part a product of expectations, derived from the examination system, that education would confer status) combined with the type
of modern education that children in fact received. As well as memorizing information about the world around them, children learnt what
was expected of a modern Chinese citizen. Some of this was conveyed
by direct instruction. The first lesson of a primary school ethics textbook shows the pupils bowing to the teacher (Fig. l l). The pupils have
taken off their hats while the teacher wears a \Western-style suit. School
termr according to the textbooks, begins with an opening ceremony in
which the teacher and pupils gather in the school hall and bow to the
nadonal flag and then to each other (Fig. 5). Pupils were also instructed
on how to bow to the national flag with texts for young children showing
the correct posture and giving instructions: 'first bow, second bow, third
bow' (Fig. 11). In other lessons the teacher was told by the textbook to
tell pupils to wear a hat outdoors and not indoors, and to raise the hat
when meeting someone as a sign of respect.ae That modern manners
THE REPUBLICAN
CITIZEN
63
primary school teaching is suggested by
to shake hands as
r9z7-50 In addiin
in
Nanjing
primary
greeting
school
at
of
I L.r,rt"
primary
school texttexts
of
and
illustrations
the
teaching
tion to direct
a chapter
proper
behaviour.Thus
for
pupils
norms
with
books presented
guests,
in
a gown
one
two
shows
guest
home
in one's
on how to greet a
lWestern-style
hats
felt
their
with
suit, seated
and jacket, the other in a
(Fig.
hanging on pegs on rhe wall while the good pupil offers them tea
l1). Illustrations depicting pupils coming to school show boys and girls
in trousers and jackets, with the boys in military-style caps; parents wear
long gowns, jackets and fedora hats (Fig. 11)' By conveying norms of
costume and etiquette schools created a consciousness of symbols of
modernity shared between pupils and teachers.
These norms were new and different from what most pupils would
have been used to at home, where patterns of behaviour were set by
members of an older generation. One account of the$(/estern-style bow
claims that it only happens in schools and government institutions and
among people with very modern ideas, since many individuals still
think that it is not respectful enough.5r Similarly an account of the adoption ofWestern-style dress notes that people wore Western-style clothes
for particular occasions: calling on superior officials, or entering a
government building.52 In the domestic environment, for New Year,
weddings and funerals, most people continued to perform the various
forms of the kowtow. Thus the writer Xiao Qian, who grew up in
Beijing, recalls that as a child he kowtowed to older family members on
his birthday, but bowed to the tablet of Confucius at school.53 This difference between domestic and public behaviour worked to emphasize
the association between the modern behaviour and the Republican
indeed conveyed through
were
'a
rnafl who explained to me that he had been taught
Pupils bow to the teacher
"The teacher and the students pay their
respects to the national flag. First bow,
second bow, third bow"
state.
By observing certain rules of costume and etiquette individuals could
present themselves as members of a modern community and also identify other members. In his novel of life in a small town school the author
Ye Shengtao notes the way in which introductions and greetings during
this period gave the potential for instant assessments of modernity.
"Invite the guests in to sit in the room. I
stand by the table and offer tea to show
respect to the guests-"
Pupils arriving at school
Ftc. rr. Illustrations from primary school textbooks
&rurces: ShenYi, Dai Kedun ed., Gonghe guomiu jiattheshu xitt xiusheu (Republican citizens'textbooks New
Ethics; Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1922 (rst edition rglz) vol. r. p. 3; Zhuang Shi, Shen Qi, Liu Ru,
vol. z. p. t-z; ZhuangYw, ShenYi Gongheguo jiaokeshu xitr guowen (Republican series textbooks New
Nlcti^--l
D--i-...
f
Qh^--L-:I.
eL^*-.,..
..:-^L..-.^-
,.r:-:^-
,,^l
h
/r.
n^--w/^-
When Ni Huanzhi, the enthusiastic, modern-minded young schoolteacher, is introduced to his new colleagues, the Chinese language
teacher removes his spectacles and nods (the same gesture satirized as
old-fashioned in Figure 6), while the Japanese-educated teacher of
physical education makes a deep bow 'as if he were giving the students
a demonstration in the drill ground'.54 The moment of introduction is
described in detail as it is through these gestures of greeting that the
characters first reveal to each other their attitude to modern ideas and
64
THE REPUBLICAN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
institutions, and thus at the same time the degree to which they participate in the community of modern citizens.The handshake is perhaps
the ultimate example of the sense of community conveyed by the new
etiquette. Before the introduction of \ilestern customs the handshake
was a gesture of intimacy. A good feeling for this is given by Rong Qing,
a conservative and elderly Mongol, who noted in his diary for r913 that
on seeing an old friend he 'grasped his hand in joy'.55 Taking the
meaning of the gesture from a very different tradition, a school textbook published in r9r4 instructs pupils to shake hands when they
welcome a guest, since this is the proper behaviour for a citizen.56 The
way in which these elements combined to create a sense of camaraderie
among the young and modern-educated is suggested in Ye Shengtao's
novel when Ni Huanzhi greets a modern-minded friend by shaking his
hand.57 Shaking hands marked both men as members of a single community which had adopted foreign customs, while at the same time creating a bond of intimacy between them.
'We
should note, however, that the handshake (unlike the bow) was
not universal among all those who aspired to present themselves as
citizens of the new state. It was, and remains, a problematic gesture for
women. The handshake marked an inner community of advanced
modern citizens. The same sense of communities within communities
becomes apparent when we look at attitudes to male dress. One account
of dress written in the early rgzos claims that one can categorize people
according to the style of their clothes. The author distinguishes two
types of modernizing male dress, the 'organization style' and the
'student style'. Those who wear the 'organization style' are members of
the new groups and associations formed in the rgoos, politicians,
officials and gentrymen. They wear either a'Western-style suit or a long
gown and riding jacket. By the rgzos neither of these items of clothing
was particularly fashionable but these men wear old-fashioned clothes
partly because they are old and partly because their positions of authority require them to look old. The 'student style' by contrast consists of
'Western-style
uniforms, leather shoes and Western-style hats. Although
these men wear gowns they do not wear the riding jacket.58 The existence, and popularity, of both the jacket, gown and felt hat, and the
'student style' suggests two things. First, jacket, gown and felt hat
became the costume of Republican citizens (and thus officials) in the
early years of the Republic. Secondly, there was a group of people within
that larger group of Republican citizens who had marked themselves
off as radicals by wearing a more'Western style of dress. As was the case
with etiquette, Republican forms defined a communiry that was itself
divided.
CITIZEN
65
But if the community was divided so were individuals. The language
which individuals could
of Republican symbolism was a means by
at different times.
communities
different
within
th"*selves
I.-ocate
up in Beijing in the
brought
family
Mongol
a
wealthy
from
girl
ifr.r, "
,oro, t"*.mbers being taught by her parents to perform different
for different occasions. For visitors who were from conserva"l"etines
iiu. fu-ifi.t she learned to perform the conventional Chinese style of
wornen's greeting with hands clasped at the waist, and for more
greetings for Mongol and
rnodern people a bow. She also learnt special
Beijing during the late
in
official
as
an
Similarly,
guests.5e
Manchu
to
the\Western-style bow
accustomed
was
Bai
diarist
Jianwu
19ros, the
in r9r9 he returned
Yet
when
gesture
respect.
of
as the predominant
to his family
he
accommodated
funeral,
home for his grandfather's
of days later
A
couple
enough to spend the day kneeling and kowrowing.
he complains in his diary of how his legs ache from this unaccustomed
exercise.6o
Individuals then adopted modern customs to identify themselves with
specific communities; but most individuals were active in a variety of
communities, each of which called for different adaptations and variations. The layering of customs and identities which this produced is
perhaps best seen in people's use of the solar calendar during this
period. In February rgrz Yuan Shikai's Beijing government confirmed
Sun Yatsen's adoption of the solar calendar as the natural accompaniment to the Republican system of government.6r The authorized cal-
endar issued
by the government included the lengths of
days,
predictions for eclipses and comets with scientific diagrams and explanations. It did not include the lunar dates and or any information connected to the customs associated with the lunar calendar. This was
naturally inconvenient in a society accustomed to the lunar calendar. A
government memo which accompanied the compilation of an officially
authorized joint solar and lunar calendar for r9r5 claimed that the
simple solar calendar was too inconvenient for ordinary people who
held to the old customs, so there was no alternative to the use of the
old calendar, and that in these circumstances it was not unnatural that
privately published almanacs abounded.62 Since the government had
lost the monopoly that the Qing dynasty had to some extent maintained
over the production of almanacs, private publishers suited everyone's
convenience by providing almanacs which listed lunar equivalents of the
solar dates and other useful information.63 Interestingly it seems to have
been common for privately published almanacs illegally to claim official
authorization.6a Forced to compete with these privately published
almanacs local governments compromised and issued calendars
66
THE REPUBLICAN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
illustrated with the symbols of the new government but showing both
lunar and solar dates. One issued in Shaoxing had the president's portrait and the new national flag printed on the front page; another issued
in Chengdu showed crossed flags and an emblem with the anniversary
of the independence of Sichuan. The Shaoxing calendar included the
dates of anniversaries of the revolutionary government and days of the
week, but excluded information about auspicious and inauspicious days
and the birthdays of the gods.65 In r9r4 the central government realized the impossibility of its campaign to make everyone use only the
solar calendar and itself issued a calendar that included both solar and
lunar dates.66
As the publication of calendars with only solar dates suggests, it had
at first been assumed that all dates would immediately be fixed by the
solar calendar. Thus salaries would now be paid according to the solar
months, and it was hoped that the business community would adopt a
quarterly system for the settlement of debts, instead of the old system
which required debts to be settled at New Year, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Where this was implemented it
would force people to be aware of the solar dates, and part of the rhythrn
of the year would fall into line with the government's new calendar.
Exhortations to merchants to use the solar calendar were frequent.
These came from the government and occasionally from local chambers of commerce. In Hangzhou the city's chamber of commerce held
a debate on whether or not to convert to the solar calendar. The two
sides of the argument put forward were that as citizens it was the duty
of the members of the chamber to respect the government's decision,
but that the traditions of business practice especially concerning the settlement of debts, made this very difficult for them.67
Evidence of compliance with these exhortations tends to be limited
to announcements that from now on the solar calendar will be used by
a specific group or for a specific purpose. Thus in January rgr2 the
Shanghai naval command announced that it would begin to distribute
rations according to the solar month.68 In February Suzhou pawnshops
and Shanghai banks switched to the use of solar dates.6e In Changchun
in March the local authorities ordered the use of the solar calendar for
paying debts and for paying government employees; but in Fengtian,
while government servants were to be paid by the solar calendar, military rations would still be issued according to the lunar months.T In
April a date was set on which Shanghai bankers would switch to the
solar calendar.Tr Banks, it seems, possibly because of hear,lt foreign
involvement in the industry, did switch to the solar calendar, but as late
as 1927 petitions were still requesting the government to enforce the
CITIZEN
67
of the solar calendar for monthly receipts and the annual clearance
old calendar attitude was
Jf debts.t, As one novelist commented,'That
society'.71
hearts
of
in
the
settled
,riU nt-ty
In this situation many individuals used both calendars. As one author
the citizens of a repubof a leaflet promoting the solar calendar noted,
[c should not be divided, but
rrs€
Calendar are both used, some
Now because the National Calendar and the Old
others take the old calendar
and
standard,
calendar
as
oeople take the solar
people
want
to use both the National
who
are
also
some
There
as standard.
NewYear twice.Ta
celebrate
the
and
who
Old
Calendar
the
and
balendar
This is not iust polemic: diary entries inform us that a great many
people did indeed celebrate the NewYear twice, once on the solar and
Ltr." ott the lunar date. At first this appears puzzling and self-contradictory, but if we consider the calendar as a series of layers by which
individuals marked their membership of particular communities it
begins to make sense.
When Sun Yatsen, Yuan Shikai and others encouraged the adoption
of the solar calendar in China they saw the calendar in use in Europe
and America as a single unified whole. However a recent study of the
English calendar in the early modern period suggests that it can more
helpfully be seen as a series of layers: the natural cycle of the seasons,
the agrarian calendar, the Christian calendar, a scatter of saints' days,
the legal calendar, civic calendar and a cycle of recent political and religious anniversaries.T5 An examination of the calendar as it was lived in
Republican China suggests a similar series of layers.
In his account of life in rural Shanxi, diarist Liu Dapeng records the
holidays and festivals celebrated in his village. Basic to this village calendar is the cycle of the lunar year with its three main holidays-the
NewYear, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival-as
well as minor holidays such as the Zhongyuan Festival, when sacrifices
were made to ancestors, and Double Ninth when many people climbed
hills. This lunar calendar was particularly closely tied to business and
trade since the three major holidays were also the settlement dates for
all debts. Intertwined with this lunar calendar was the ancient solar calendar with which farmers marked the seasons of the agricultural year.
According to this calendar the year was divided into twenty-four solar
periods. Some of these marked important festivals such as the annual
holiday for grave sweeping, Qingming, and. the\Winter Solstice, while all
were the occasion for specific agricultural activities. In addition to these
the village had a series of local holidays relating to the worship of local
deities, with occasions such as the Birth of Lu Dongbin (one of the
68
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
Eight Immortals who was born in Shanxi) and the \Welcoming of the
Holy Mother (the goddess who conrrolled the local irrigation sysrem)
being major annual evenrs in village life. Finallg individuals kept personal anniversaries, especially their own birthdays and the anniversaries
of the births and deaths of their parents. Thus the year as it was experienced was formed of the interaction of each of these calendars, and
when during the Republic the solar NewYear and National Day began
to be celebrated they were integrated as part of a new cycle of holidays
related not to religion, agriculture or trade, but to the Republic.T6
As an inhabitant of a rural village Liu Dapeng kept and noted an
intricate calendar of religious and agricultural festivals. However, an
examination of the rather fewer holidays noted by urban diarisrs suggests the same layering of solar and lunar calendars. Bai Jianwu, a diarist
living in Beijing, regularly notes the three major festivals of the lunar
year (|.Iew Year, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival) and
sometimes also the Double Ninth Holiday. The activities he takes part
in on these occasions are urban and secular: he visits parks, goes out of
the city to walk in the hills, goes to the theatre and dines well. Moreover, the emphasis is not on community activities but on his family and
friends; these are days when he feels homesick and his friends visit him.
In addition Bai Jianwu notes the major holidays of the new Republican
year, the solar NewYear and National Day. Sometimes on these holidays he took part in activities thar were specifically related to the Republican state, as for example on r January rg2o when he joined other
officials to take part in a formal visit to the governor's offices. on other
occasions he celebrated the new holidays in ways very similar to the old:
a visit to a park or a walk in the hills outside the city.77 Even where a
diarist did not take part in formal activities he might be moved to
certain emotions or resolutions by particular dates. Thus Hu Jingyi,
another North china diarist, uses both the winter Solstice and the solar
New Year to reflect on recent events.ts While use of the ancient solar
agricultural calendar marked membership of the farming community,
and celebration of the major holidays of the lunar year was especially
appropriate for the business community, celebration of the new national
holidays, especially the solar NewYear and National Day, marked one's
membership of a community of Republican citizens. An individual kept
the holidays of several of these calendars as he or she marked his or her
membership of a variety of communities.
Constant debate on the use of the new solar calendar made many
individuals aware of the political implications of their choices. Thus in
r919 Hu Jingyi opts to write his personal diary according to the solar
calendar because the use of the solar calendar is required by 1aw.7e
THE REPUBLICAN
CITIZEN
69
at the same time, a much less debated drift towards the use
the week marked the spreading influence of the structure of the solar
lives.The division of time into a sevencalendar in individuals'personal
is a feature of Christianity. As a
on
Sunday
a
rest
day
with
day week
have been familiar both to
it
would
custom
American
and
European
to those who had contact
and
abroad
spent
time
had
Chinese who
government
announcement
to
a
According
with foreigners in China.
r9rz.80 Before
in
by
schools
irrrrdryt were already commonly observed
the introduction of Sundays local cycles of work and rest revolved
around periodic markets and fairs. A village school whose holidays were
recorded around I93o gave the pupils, in addition to the New Year
holiday and breaks for the spring and autumn harvests, eleven days'
holiday each year, arranged to enable them to go to the different fairs
in the area. This was the sort of schedule that would have been common
to many schools before the introduction of the solar calendar, but the
addition had been made that Sundays were used to review lessons.8l
Schools were not the only institutions to adopt the use of the week. Bai
Jianwu and Wu Yu, another diarist this time in Sichuan, both mention
Sundays as features of their working timetable'82 Bai Jianwu went
beyond this to organize his personal life around the newly imported
week by deciding to have a bath twice a week.83
As was the case with costume and gestures, people were willing and
in some cases eager to adopt elements of the solar calendar to mark
their membership of the new national community. This national community was one among many that any given individual belonged to, and
although a few radicals might suggest that it should replace all other
communities and identities, the majority of people were deeply concerned to continue the customs and practices that marked those other
communities. The new customs then created the Republican citizen as
one among a number of identities available to the people of China, while
many other identities remained in popular use.
Nevertheless the Western-style customs that marked the Republican
citizen did also mark a group within society. Those within the group
flowever,
-of
continued to be aware of commitments to other communities and of
alternative layers of identity but outsiders, whether traditionally minded
Chinese or $(Iesterners, perceived the group as a clearly defined community and dismissed alternative layers of identity as hypocrisy. In r9r3
Liu Dapeng, who still identified personally with the Qing dynasty and
was thus very much an outsider) commented that since the'rebellion'
all the members of the 'new party' had 'completely taken on the outer
appearance of the foreign barbarians' by adopting a foreign system of
government, the solar calendar and foreign costume.8n Liu divides those
70
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
he comes across into 'the people' (min) who keep to the old ways, and
a group variously described as 'the new party', 'those who have rebellious hearts' and 'men in office', who celebrate the festivals of the solar
calendar and adopt other markers of Republican identity. On one occasion he comments that when officials celebrate the solar New Year the
people look at them and say, 'That is their year, not our year'.85 A
Western journalist trying to describe the same phenomenon in Sichuan
in the r92os wrote,
Since rgrr the new official has had two things, namely, a new hat and a new
coat, and these gave him a new conception of life, which in turn has slowly
produced what we are trying to describe as a new Society.s6
According to this author the idea of 'society' is a relatively new concept in Sichuan. It is always a minority, and in this case a minority
composed mainly of educated young men who are interested in national
affairs. In order to enter 'society' the young men 'assume a distinctive style of dress, usually a soft felt hat and a large foreign-cut overcoat. The wearer of these things in one step enters Society.'S? Although,
as this journalist points out, 'society', the community of Republican
citizens, was almost always a minority, it envisaged itself as the
whole nation. Therefore texts written by insiders seldom admit to the
degree to which this was in fact a relatively exclusive group. From
this point of view travel accounts are interesting since they can
provide an indication of the kind of people with whom the author
identified.
One of the most fascinating accounts of this kind is the diary of Ou
Zhenhua, a Cantonese man who travelled on foot through the country
as an officer in the Nationalist Party's Northern Expedition. The diary
intersperses military data with sympathetic accounts of the people he
met and what they told him of local customs. On reading the diary it
soon becomes apparent that, while Ou Zhenhua was personally sympathetic to almost everyone he met, he identified two types of people
and places, describing one as 'open minded' (kaitong) and the other as
'not open minded'. The latter are marked by the men's queues, the
bound feet of the women and the wearing of long gowns and riding
jackets. But they are also identified by their lack of knowledge of or
interest in 'the country'. Thus having spent the day marching through
part of Shandong he commented that,
The people along the route were none of them open minded. They did not
know what sort of thing a 'country' was, and they had not cut their queues,
were illiterate, lived in cramped houses and paid no attention to hygiene.s8
THE REPUBLICAN
CITIZEN
7T
In a town in northern Jiangsu he noted that the people were not very
open minded, in that when he was reading or writing official documents
they stared at the floor and did not know what to do with themselves,
and when he spoke of national or party affairs they did not know what
the country or the party was.8e In Liyang county in the south of Jiangsu,
by contrast, he comments that the people were very open minded and
rnany women had cut off their hair.eo The sense in which these distinctions underscore a feeling of community is suggested by his account of
leaving Liyang. When he came to take leave of the county magistrate
Ou Zhenhua was going to shake hands but the magistrate immediately
clasped his hands together and performed a deep Chinese-style bow.el
The image is a vivid one. The two men had got on well together and
both the Chinese-style bow and the handshake carried with them the
symbolism of equality and friendship. The failure of the two men to
come together in their gestures of friendship is a poignant example of
the exclusivity of the new national community and the gestures and
customs that marked it.
Gender and CitizenshiP
To what extent were women part of this new community of Republican citizens? Jin $(renzhen's bowing at her wedding and Ou Zhenhua's
mention of the short hair of the women of Liyang both suggest that
some of the symbols of citizenship were available to women. This was
very different from their role in the Qing when they were by definition
excluded, not necessarily from political activity, but from the symbols
that legitimated it. The Dowager Empress Cixi was a powerful force in
the high politics of the state, but she received guests sitting behind a
screen. Below the monarchy the symbols of legitimate power were
monopolized by the civil service) a career not open to women. Women
could, and sometimes like the Dowager Empress did, play an active role
in politics; but in doing so they were going against the norms of both
state and society. However, when in r9r2 the empire became a republic, the very idea of citizenship was a new one. From a stratum of male
officials dominating a homogenous mass of 'people', society was to
become a collection of individual citizens. As a concept citizenship was
still ill-defined.. \Women did not receive the right to vore for the various
provincial and national assemblies. Nevertheless that women were not
by definition excluded is suggested by the occasional incidents of
cutting of women's hair and those women's meerings that took place
during the course of the revolution. That women were not immediately
excluded was the consequence in part of the new ideology and in part
72
THE REPUBLICAN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
of social changes that affected women during the late Qing. In particular
while the education of women was not new, girls' schools introduced
by Western missionaries had created a class of women accustomed to
participating in public institutions. F{owever, although the ideology of
the new Republic left space for women as citizens, citizenship was experienced by men and women in different ways"
One of the reasons that citizenship was experienced differently was
that some of its symbols were different for men and women. \fomen
were told to express their citizenship and their affiliation with the
Republic by unbinding their feet and by allowing their daughters to
grow up with natural feet. From the earliest revolutionary announcements in Wuchang, just a few days after the revolution, women were
told to unbind their feet in the same sentence as men were told to cut
their queues.n'An order forbidding foot-binding issued by the government of Zhejiang province in rgtz condemns the practice as having
harmed the country over the centuries more than anything else. First,
as was common at the time, the announcement assumes that the weakness of women crippled by bound feet would be passed on to their
children. The custom of binding women's feet is thus described as a
direct cause of the military weakness of the nation.e3 Ideas of inherited
physique and genetics, and with them an emphasis on the importance
of strong healthy mothers, had become popular in China during the last
years of the Qing, so this part of the announcement reflected the
received opinions of the day.ea Secondly, and this is a much more radical
statement, the Zhejiang order condemns the binding of women's feet
on the grounds that
because [their] feet are bound their movements are unsteady, so they live
indoors and seldom go out, they do not receive education and know little of
the outside world, they cannot make an independent living or collectively contribute to the wider world.qs
This statement links the unbinding of feet to the presentation of women
not only as the mothers of citizens but as citizens themselves who should
be educated and understand world affairs. Through these arguments
natural feet for women) which had begun to be a reform issue largely
as a result of missionary influence during the last years of the Qing, was
tied in to the new Republican order.
One of the means by which natural feet were linked to the Republic
was the pairing of bound feet with the queue. Campaigns against bound
feet in the rgros and rgzos almost always included an element directed
against the men still wearing queues. In Shanxi,Yan Xishan declared a
carrtpaign against
opim smoking.e6
CITIZEN
73
bad customs, by banning bound feet, queues and
A folk song collected there in the r96os recalls how
for five or six years,
Now the Republic has been around
down
two commissioners.
has
sent
capital
The provincial
queues,
wear
their
people
not
to
One tells
One tells people not to bind their feet.
They post up a notice in the street.e?
This pairing of bound feet and queues soon became widespread and
the two were much used as a metaphor for backwardness. So for
example, a traveller in Gansu criticized the local government for
not instructing the people to cut their queues and unbind their feet.e8
Similarly Ou Zhenhua, describing the Zhili countryside) wrote'
since I entered Zhili province, despite marching back and forth along the roads
for hundreds of miles, I have not seen a single woman with natural feet and
half the men have not yet cut their hair.ee
Short hair and natural feet were seen as the outward signs of compliance with the Republic. One man writes in his memoirs of how, when
his family in conservative Shanxi came to include three men without
queues and four women who had unbound their feet, the whole family
was labelled 'new people' (xinren) by the neighbours.l00
The linking of natural feet and short hair as markers of Republican
identity for male and female respectively created the illusion that the
symbolic issues involved were similar. This was not initially the case.
The queue was) as we have seen, originally a Manchu custom, imposed
on Chinese men as a mark of submission to the Qing dynasty. The
binding of women's feet, by contrast, was a custom that originated
among the Han people. It has even been suggested that it evolved partly
as a way of defining the Chinese against the nomadic peoples of the
Central Asian steppes of whom the Manchus were one.tot Although it
appears that many Manchu women subsequently accepted the aesthetic
appeal of small feet and designed special platform shoes to imitate the
practice, Manchu women's natural feet were an important part of what
defined them as Manchu. In one part of Shanxi the term Manchu actually referred specifically to the natural-footed servant girls of wealthy
families.102 Moreover the Qing had on several occasions issued edicts
banning foot binding by Han Chinese women as well as the Manchus.r03
Thus, whereas queue cutting originated in both anti-Manchu sentiment
and \Testernization, in allowing their daughters to have natural feet
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
families of the late Qing and early Republic were influenced primarily
to
confined
-On
marriage women then put their hair up, and with this it became far
u"".ptable for them to be seen on the streets and in public. So
74
by ideas ofwesternization conveyed as modernization. However, the frequent repetition of the link between the cutting of queues and the
unbinding of feet meant that this was not always how the issues were
perceived. one man reminiscing about how the women in his
family
unbound their feet claims that although the binding of women,s feet
was not a Manchu custom) the Manchus had encouraged the Han
to
do this in order ro weaken them.r.a Although the memoirs were written
in the r98os this idea with its curious mixrure of genetics and antiManchu feeling is characeristic of the early Republican period.
The issue of bound feet and queues reveals how citizenship was eNperienced differently by men and women because the symbols
of citizenship were different. However, in the case of other symbols which
were open to both men and women the experience of citizenship was
also differenr because what went before had been different. So, for
example, the fashion for short hair for women which began in the late
rgros appeared to draw parallels with the queue cutting movement.The
author Ding Ling cur her hair short at school during the May Fourth
movement. when she went home her uncle snorted in disapproval,
'Humph! You really do like to have fun.you've had so much fun you,ve
lost your tail'' Ding Ling repried to this criticism by berating her aunt
for her bound feet and comparing her own action with the revolutionary cutting of men's queues: 'Didn't you have some fun losing your tail
some time ago? If you could cut your hair then, why can,t I cut my
hair
now?'r05 A second wave of hair cutting for women was associated
with
the Nationalist revolutionary movement of the mid-r9zos. The essayist
Zhou zuoren commented in t9z6 on the way in which newspaper
reports of women who cut their hair described them as female revolutionaries. Looking back to the late eing he recalled how any man who
cut his queue was described as a revolutionary, and noticed ihat people
were now doing the same to women who cut their hair. zhou Zuoren
questions whether the cutting of women's hair can really be compared
to the queue cutting of the late eing, since unlike rhe men,s queue, the
women's long plait was not in any way a Manchu symbol.106
But this was not the only reason that short hair for women was not
quite equivalent to the cutting of men's queues. perhaps more important was the fact that for many girls it was not cutting off their hair but
putting it up that symbolized their entrance inro the modern world of
the Republican citizen. It was common practice for all children to have
the head partly shaved and to wear their hair in two or more short plaits.
At about the age of thirteen girls began to grow their hair and wear it
in a single long plait, and it was at this age that girls began to be strictly
75
the family home in preparation for betrothal and marriage.
n,or.
many girls putting
while cuttittg the hair might be revolutionary, for
of a new freedom of
their hair up like a married woman was a symbol
participate
in
affairs outside the
to
a
freedom
so
of
and
rnovement
part
uniform of most
of
the
was
thus
in
a
bun
hair
the
Wearing
horne.
r9r9, with the
home
durin9
from
girl
ran
away
who
One
schoolgirls.
first
action
was
to change
how
her
recalls
help of a radical magazine,
jacket
short
into
the
black
from her conventional trousers and long
jacket and skirt which were the customary dress of women students.
When she did this she felt like'a soldier putting on his uniform hastily
before going into battle'. Next a friend helped her to unplait her hair
and put it up into a bun which'symbolized my struggle against the convenrions'.r07\(lhile Ding Ling and radicals like her might attempt to use
exactly the same symbols as men to mark themselves as citizens, for
many girls entry into the group of Republican citizens was a gendered
experience.
Girls who came to identi& themselves as citizens of the Republic and
who entered the male world of political affairs experienced changes
similar to those their brothers experienced as they grew up and entered
the adult male world. Like their brothers, many girls now moved from
a confined domestic space to the public spaces of streets and parks,
schools and institutions. One man writing his memoirs remembers as
one of the features of the rgrr revolution that after this time women
could enter government offices, and that therefore the headmistress of
the local girls' school would visit the county magistrate's offices.t08 On
the level of high politics, a former minister in the Beijing government
records how his wife came with him to attend a formal banquet held
by the government to welcome Sun Yatsen to Beijing in rgrz.roe In
domestic spaces people still kept to the lunar calendar, kowtowed to
relatives and deities, and, for the most part, wore trousers and long
jackets. In the public world men and women marked themselves as
citizens of the Republic by using the solar calendar, bowing in the
S7estern style and adopting new styles of clothing.
However, whereas for men these changes which marked a new elite
developed out of earlier systems for marking status) for women the
new symbols had the effect of inverting earlier marks of status. In
Qing China women were central to a family's presentation of its status.
Families that could afford to do so attempted to conform to the ancient
ideals expressed in the classics.These stated that after childhood women
should remain in the inner part of the house, meeting only the menfolk
76
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
of their own family and having no contact with the outer, public
girls who received an educaschool students were girls, indicating that
world.lro Bound feet, though the custom had not been adopted until
the Song dynasty and was thus not mentioned in the classics, were a
symbol of this way of life since they made it difficult for women physically to move beyond the domestic environment. The restrictive ideals
have subsequently, as Dorothy Ko has pointed out, often been related
as if they were the realities of women's situation in late imperial
China.rrr In fact, at least in the last years of the Qing, the ability and
desire to comply with these norms was related to the wealth, background, ethnicity and even the religion of individual families. In
Chengdu in r9o9 lower-class women commonly worked as wet nurses
and domestic servants, as well as earning money by mending clothes,
collecting firewood, peddling ornaments, telling fortunes and pulling
teeth.1r2 A wealthy woman who visited Hong Kong at about this time
was surprised not that there were women in the streets but that they
were women of good family; in her home town only servants and
working women walked freely in the streets.rt3 And while some daughters of working households who were destined from childhood to a life
of physical labour might escape having their feet bound altogether,
others would sleep with the bandages off after a hard day's work, rhus
allowing their feet slowly to spread.lra As in the contemporary West,
while many women did engage in strenuous physical activity such activity was not seen as feminine.rr5The ideal of a narrowly restricted domestic life was stringently enforced only on young women of marriageable
age and the wives and daughters of the elite.
\We have seen how the new Republican customs such as the hat, the
bow and the solar calendar marked a national community, and thus
were a means of displaying personal status.\Women, like men, learnt the
new customs and behaviour by attending modern schools. Indeed one
author complained that often this was all they learned:
Usually in other places one sees a lot of schoolgirls who haven't yet learnt anything much, but who wear clothes and carry things that are different from most
people. They get to such a pitch that when they see other people they look
down on them. This is called learning to be a schoolgirl, it is not girls going to
schoollrr6
That women were slower than men to adopt the new Republican
customs was partly because girls were much less likely to receive a
modern education. In r916 only 4 per cent of pupils in non-missionary
schools were girls. As late as rg32 only 15 per cent of primary school
children were girls. However at the same time 18 per cent of secondary
77
tion *"t" disproportionately likely to come from families wealthy
years of modern eduction.rrT
,norrgtr to support them through several
were
the prerogative mainly of
women
for
of
citizenship
symbols
The
the symbols of citizenand
consequently
group
women
of
this small
their
ship came to be markers of the elite status of those women and
families.
Many of the customs that were symbols of the new citizenship and
thus of elite status were precisely the opposite of earlier markers of elite
sutus for women. So, for example' previously women's bound feet had
been symbols of the family's ability to raise its daughters without the
necessity for hard physical labour.r18 Now natural feet came to be signs,
not of the labouring classes, but of those who could afford to send their
daughters to modern schools.The same inversion of the former symbols
of status can be seen in the use of space and in clothing. Upper-class
women were now able to move freely in public spaces which had formerly been the prerogative of working-class women and servants.When
the Ritual Bureau ofYuan Shikai's government fixed the government
prescriptions for etiquette, it explained the inclusion of rules on bowing
for women by saying that in ancient times women and men were strictly
confined to their separate roles' and women did not go out of doors or
have any contact with men. But now, the bureau explains, all that has
changed: girls'schools are being established everylvhere, and women go
out to study and to see friends so they need to have some kind of etiquette prescribed for meeting.ttn Other sources reveal that whereas previously girls were told that it was the mark of a lady not to let any part
of her body except for her head and hands be seen, now schoolgirls
wore calf-length skirts and jackets with wide elbow-length sleeves.r'o
One upper-class girl who visited an amusement park in Tianjin and saw
fashionable girls wearing skirts, short jackets and ribbons on their plaits,
was told by her mother, 'No girl of good family would go about dressed
like that'.12r For the mother the immodesty of the girls'dress was a mark
of low status; for the daughter, who sees her mother as old-fashioned,
a short jacket, skirt and leather shoes was precisely the costume that
marked its wearers as members of the national community.
By influencing and changing the norms which had been used to
define elite sratus, the new ideal of citizenship came to affect the whole
definition of femininity, and thus the construction of gender. In the past
the delicacy and weakness of women had been defining characteristics.
Generations of young men sighed over such weak and sickly heroines
as Lin Daiyu in the Dream of the Red Chamber. Bound feet both empha-
78
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
sized and induced this kind of weakness. Women with bound feet found
standing for any period of time painful; their most characteristic posture
was sitting.t" When they did walk they swayed slightly. An American
girl who was brought up by missionary parents in Shandong in the late
nineteenth century writes in her memoirs about watching a Chinese
girl, whose feet had not been bound because ofher parents'connection
with the church, practising walking:
She tried to walk as those who had bound feet walked, to walk as a woman
should walk. . . She could not mince and make her body sway as the bound
footed women minced and swayed.r23
As this description implies, it was a posture and style of movement that
those with natural feet found impossible to imitate successfully.
The young women who adopted the customs of citizenship in the
new Republic had natural feet; they walked solidly and steadily. The
loud sound of 'modern young women' as they walk in their high-heeled
leather shoes is constantly commented on by male authors.r2a Moreover, instead of sitting quietly at home, they were to be seen in schools
and walking through the streets, even on occasion taking part in sports.
The implications of this in the popular mind are sarirized by the popular
novelist Bao Tianxiao when one of the characters in his novel Shanghai
Annqls (Shanghai chunqiu) is making enquiries about sending her
daughter to a church-run girls' school. She asks the teacher if it is possible for her daughter to opt out of physical educarion:
rnovement in t9z5: the girls stride out, walking upright
sffaight ahead.r27
This shift in the construction of femininity both necessitated and was
Patricia Ebrey has
rnarched by a shift in the construction of masculinity.
and looking
suggested
that the widespread adoption of the custom of binding
shifts
wJmen's feet in the fourteenth century may have been linked to
the
As
men
emphasized
Song.
gender
the
during
of
in the construction
Asian
peoples
Central
of
the
the
and
difference between themselves
steppes by presenting themselves as 'refined, bookish, contemplative) or
artistig') women had tO become even more 'delicate, reticent and starionary,.r28 In the twentieth century the increasing physical strength
of women that was required by both the symbols and the ideology
of nationalism required corresponding changes in notions of masculiniry. These changes can be observed if we look at changes in selfpresentation by men that accompanied the new ideas of citizenship.
Han Chinese men who ivere members of the elite had customarily
affected a slightly hunched round-shouldered posture. A photograph of
a group of elderly gentleman taken in the late nineteenth century (Fig.
rz) depicts this posture well. The men in the picture are undoubtedly
presenting themselves as members of the scholarly elite: they wear long
I really dislike the physical education lessons. A girl doesn't have to go and be
a soldier and fight, so why is it necessary for every single one of them to be
like a woman robber?r2s
To this the teacher, an exemplary modern \ /oman, replies that sport is
for strengthening the body so that the girls don't get ill. This reasoning
is intended to appeal to the traditionally minded morher who is concerned for her daughter's probable weak health, while at the same time
fitting into the modern nationalistic agenda of sport as a way of
strengthening the nation. It was this agenda that made the redefinition
of femininity a national necessity as well as a response to changing social
patterns. For during the early years of the Republic, and particularly
during the May Fourth movement, the 'traditional' weak, dependent
Chinese woman came to symbolized the backwardness and weakness
of the Chinese nation itself.r26 The increasing physical strength of
modern women was thus bound up with the strengthening of the entire
nation. A photograph in the North China Herald shows girl students
taking part in a nationalist protest march as part of the May Thirtieth
79
FIc. rz. Gentlemen scholars (late rgth century)
Soarce: Courtesy, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.
8o
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
gowns and carry fans, and the background is the elaborate formal
garden of a wealthy house. The round-shouldered posture, which is
emphasized by the folds of the gowns which fall forward from the shoulders, is part of this same presentation of themselves as members of the
elite. When walking, the proper gentleman would lean slightly forward
and keep his eyes fixed on the ground. This posture had its origins in
the prescriptions of the Chinese classics on the proper behaviour of a
gentleman. A textbook on rhe classics published during the Republic
reminded students that shaking the head, looking to the sides or turning
one's head to the side were all signs of bad character.r2e However,
posture and gait also resonated with Chinese men's presentation of
themselves as refined and bookish, which, since examinations in ancient
literary texts were the most legitimate route to power, was also an assertion of both status and masculinity. One working woman gave as an
example of her employer's 'rectitude and breeding' the fact that 'when
he walked it was with head lowered. He looked neither to the right nor
to the left.'r3o This round-shouldered posture was only one among a
variety of traditions of posrure available to Chinese men: officials look
straight out at us from formal paintings where they sit with legs apart
and hands resting on knees, displaying their elaborately embroidered
robes and dominating the space in front of them.r3r A crowd of young
men and boys stand in front of a village rheatre looking aggressively at
a rJ(/estern photographer, chins thrust forward, hands on hips, legs
spread.r32 Clearly aggressive and dominating postures and gestures were
available to chinese men. Nevertheless the round-shouldered style thar
was considered proper for the scholarly elite on most occasions was very
much a mark of status.
Moreover all Chinese postures were very different from those of the
contemporary West. A group photograph of the Hong Kong Executive
Council in r86o (Fig. 13) gives a good indication of Western posrure of
the period. Each man keeps his back straight, holds his shoulders
slightly back and his chest forward. The men's costume makes the
emphasis on the chest still grearer since the shirt front, tie and lapels
provide a focus for the eye. This very upright posrure is characteristic of rVestern self-presentation at this time. In America, for example,
physical exercise was assumed to be basic in the formation of good character. Out of this had grown the relatively recent direct connection
between masculinity and the strong male body.t" This view of masculinity, with its emphasis on sport and military service, resulted in the
upright posture that was so different from that of contemporary Chinese
scholars. However, Chinese educators were interested in the physical
strengthening of the citizenry and it was the upright $Testern posture
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
8r
Ftc. r3. The Hong Kong Executive Council 186o
Sdrrce: Courtesy, Royal Asiatic Sociery London.
that was prescribed by Republican school textbooks' These tell pupils
to stand up straight, and depict good pupils standing up straight,
looking straight ahead and holding their arms by their sides.t34 The
posture was also linked to the straight-backed\Western-style bow, rather
than the Chinese-style bow for which a rounded back was acceptable.
But, most of all, for Chinese men this posture was tied to sport and
military drill. Military drill techniques had been copied from the \West,
and placed considerable emphasis on the exact physical posture of participants. The straight back and shoulders were thus associated with the
physical strengthening of the nation called for by nationalists. A photograph of the young Chiang Kaishek (Fig. r+) illustrates the Chinese
man's adoption of this type of posture. Chiang stands up very straight,
shoulders back, hands behind his back. Indeed Chiang's ramrodstraight posture was one of his trademarks and was associated by him
with moral integrity.r35
The ethical and social implications of certain types of posture were
obvious to many people, to the extent that they could be used by a novelist as indications of character and politics. When Ye Shengtao wrote
his novel about the life of a rural schoolteacher he made the oldfashioned people in the book walk along looking at the ground while
8z
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
83
that men too should change.
the symbols of citizenship it was necessary
the beginnings of a major
marked
citizen
The making of the Republican
gender.
change in constructions of
iiiiii:il.:Ii
Nationalism and the Tiansformarion of Ethnicity
Government affirmation of the new customs of the Republic illustrates
a desire to realign the elements from which ethnicity and nationalism
were constructed. No longer were Chinese to be defined by their distinctive costume, their manners and customs or their celebration of an
annual calendar of festivals, based on the cycles of the lunar calendar
and sanctioned by the government. Instead China was to be defined as
a modern nation, and national identity was to be focused on this by the
modern customs that came to symbolize the Republican citizen. This
aim was shared by all Republican governments, however different their
agenda might be in other respects. While the government was not always successful in its attempt to impose the use of the solar calendar
and other modern customs, the attempts illustrate the scope of its
ambitions.
Frc. 14. The young Chiang
Kaishek
Sozrce: Courtesy, No. z Archives,
Nanjing, China.
the radicals stand up straight. At the beginning of the novel the hero
walks along 'with his eyes fixed on the ground in front of his feet' and
another teacher keeps 'his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes
fixed on the earth track'.When he takes part in the May Fourth Movement, the hero describes the righteous indignation of the citizens with
'every head held high and every chest flung out'. And when he has a
vision of a future perfect world he proclaims: 'With heads held high and
chests flung out we are striding towards it'.t36 These dramatic and
straight-backed men are very much citizens of the Republic. When
women came to be able to hold, share in and sometimes manipulate
The new national identity evolved from the importation and adoption of symbols such as the felt hat and other items of\Western costume'
the solar calendar) new gestures and new interpretations of posture.
Adaptation to this new national identity required the realignment of
previous ethnic identities. Thus, for example, national and often local
identity had formerly been tied to participation in the festivals of the
lunar calendar and to the government's authorization of those festivals.
In seeking to change the nature of the festivals celebrated, their times
and the way those times were calculated, the new Republican government was attempting to change one of the major elements of identity
as Chinese. And while it was not intended to abolish the old calendrical holidays altogether (it was assumed that people would continue to
celebrate the NewYear, only they would do it on the solar date), it was
attempting to remould them in a new form that would be consistent
with modern nationalism. Similarly the bound feet of Han women had
over the centuries become a marker of Han ethnicity.r3T Unassimilated
tribespeople, such as the Miao, did not bind the feet of their womenl
nor did the Manchu ruling class.138 Even the slightly hunched posture
of the Chinese was contrasted with the supposedly more upright and
straight-backed posture of the Manchus.r3e Each of these long-standing
markers of Han identity was challenged by the symbols of national identity and ultimately changed. In the process ethnic identity was transformed. On occasion the adaptation was made by blaming the custom
84
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
(for example bound feet) on the Manchu and thus making the modern
national and traditional ethnic identities compatible. Other adaptarions,
for example of calendrical holidays, led to resentment. Nevertheless
both national and this newly realigned ethnic identity were necessiries
for the modern state which needed both a counrry (guojia) and a race
(minzu).
However, as we have seen, the new national identity of the Republican citizen became the marker of a particular group of people who
wished to be seen as committed to modernity, and thus a symbol of
social status. The development of a group of this sort meant that people
identified themselves in particular situations as either insiders or outsiders. Since we have been considering the development of a modern
national identity we have looked mainly at the insiders. However, the
necessary counterpart was the creation of an outsider identity which
was based on the new idea of a traditional China. The notion of a single
unified traditional China was very much a product of the new political
culture of the twentieth century.t'0 As has been said of India, 'Tradition is a unif ing factor only as an abstraction; in detail, most traditions
are particular and regional or local'.rarThe intellectual development of
this sense of a single traditional China has been documented by Joseph
Levenson. Its impact, however, went beyond the intellectual sphere he
describes and came to touch ordinary people's everyday lives and
attitudes.
One illustration of its development is the crearion of the idea of a traditional Chinese costume. Clothes worn in the Qing dynasty were not
at the time seen as being Chinese costume) let alone traditional Chinese
costume. Similarities of cut and pattern were regarded simply as
normal. Instead people saw the variations of style, colour and decoration and thought of themselves as wearing the latest fashions) or a
costume appropriate to their class, occupation, locality or ethnic group.
It was only later that the contrast with imported Western costume, with
its very different cuts and patterns) came to define what was Chinese
about the costume, and that the new fusion of $(estern and Chinese
styles came to define what was traditional. This transformation can be
dated by the preservation as one of the defining features of 'traditional'
Chinese dress of the fashionably high collars of the r9oos. Stiff collars
were not a standard feature of earlier Chinese dress and may well have
been adopted in the rgoos under the influence of contemporary\il7estern
fashions.ra2 By the r93os the high collar was the single distinctively
'Chinese' feature of the national women's dress, the qipao. It was the
adoption of full \Testern dress around rgrz that transformed a contemporary fashion into a national tradition.
THE REPUBLICAN
CITIZEN
85
When we speak of 'traditional China', as with 'traditional rural
to describe an ahistorical unchanging past, whereas
Ffaflce,, we appear
infu"twe are often ignoring the slow or minor changes in the society
f..u.rr. of the drastic changes that were to follow. The term itself can
of modernity, but tends to obscure
reveal much about the construction
r43
The'traditional' ways
of
the past.
circumstances
historical
ifr. rp..in.
just
much
a construct as the
as
are
See
commentators
that Republican
simultaneously,
emerged
The
two
categories
ways.
rnodern Republican
period
there develRepublican
the
each defining the other.Thus during
ways
Republican
oped a sense of national identity tied to the modern
r..rr" of ethnic identity tied to the traditional ways. These together
"nd " a complementary pair at the heart of modern Chinese culture.
formed
The anthropologist Charles Keyes has argued that schools in rural
Thailand present their pupils with knowledge and models appropriate
not to those pupils' everyday lives but to the 'proposed world' of the
Thai state. The 'proposed world' is not one that is actually experienced
by the pupils, most of whom have never left the village, but one that is
known through a set of coherent messages that open up the possibility
for future relationships.l44 In many ways the customs adopted and inculcared among the adults and children of the new Chinese Republic in
the years following rg1z can be understood in the same way. Teachers
in country schools who showed diagrams of the new national dress, or
who taught their pupils to bow in the modern style' were setting out
just such a'proposed world'. Newspapers that used solar calendar dates
or issued special National Day editions were doing the same. However,
in the early Republic the world that was proposed by the new symbols,
a world in which a Chinese nation state was ruled by a republican government on principles of freedom and equality, was more an ideal than
a reality. Teachers were preparing children not merely for a world they
had not experienced, but for a world that hardly existed. In this situation the creation of the proposed world was also the creation of the real
world; the learned dispositions influenced not only ideas about the state
but the construction of the state itself.
NOTES
r. The quotation is taken from Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of
Practice
(Cambridge: Polity Press, r99o), 5z-65.
z. Cheng Jin'Wenzhen, W'ode huiyi (My recollections; Detroit, 1965), 3r-2.
3. Valery M. Garrett, Chinese Clothing: An lllustrated Guide (Hong Kong:
Oxford University Press' 1994); A. C. Scott, Chinese Costume inTiansition
(Singapore: Donald Moore' r958).
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
86
4. For official costumes see Schuyler Camman, China's Dragon
Robes (New
York:The Ronald Press Company, r95z).
Menglin,'Minchu zhi shehui dongtai' (General trends in society in
Jiang
5.
the early Republic), in Cao Juren (ed.). Xiandai Zhongguo baogao wenxue
xzar (Selections from the iournalistic literature of modern China; Hong
I(ong: Sanyu tushu wenfu gongsi, r968), vol. z, 165.
6. Dagongbao (Tianjin), r June r9rz, 3-4.
7. Liu Dapeng, Tuixiangzhai riji (Diary from the chamber to which one
retires to ponder;Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, t99o), 175.
8. Dagongbao (Tianjin), r June r9r2,4.
9. Edwin J. Dingle, China\ Revolution, rgrr-Igl2: A Historical and Political
Record of the CioillYar (Shanghai: Commercial Press, rgtz)' zz.
ro.
Shenbao, T January
rr. No
rz.
from Wang Zhengting).
Gonghe xin chidu (Republican new letter writing manual; Shanghai, r913),
vol. r,
13.
rgr2, r houfu 3.
rr July rgrz, Wang Zhengting cheng (Petition
z. Archives: roor.48r5,
14.
Pingshu et al., Li Pingshu qishi zishu, Ouchu wushi zishu,IVang Xiaolai
shulu (The autobiography of Li Pingshu at seventy, The autobiography
of [Mul Ouchu at fifty, An account of \7ang Xiaolai; Shanghai guii
Li
chubanshe, r989), 68.
14" The association of Western-style clothes and etiquette has evidently continued to the present day. Maris Gillette's field notes in Xi'an record one
old man who associated the pre-r949 long gown and jacket with bowing
and head nodding, while the more recent SunYatsen suits are associated
with hand shaking.
15. Western men also doffed their hats and shook hands on meeting
but neither of these were as formal. Herman Roodenburg, 'The "hantl
of friendship": shaking hands and other gestures in the Dutch Republic',
in Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, A Cuhural History of Gesture
from Antiquiry tu the Present Day (Cambridge: Polity Press, r99t)' r5z89.
16. Simon Kiong, 'Quelques mots sur la politesse Chinoise' Varietes
Sinologiques z5 $9o6), p. 5. I use the term kowtow as a convenient notation. Readers should however be aware that the action as performed in
China in the early 2oth century did not have the sycophantic connotations generally imptied by the use of this term in English.
17. Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (London: Hurst
and Co., 1996),44.
r8. LinYutan g, The Impo,tance of Lhtirtg (I-ondon:\7illiam Heinemann' r938)'
z8r.
19. Shibusawa I(eizo and Charles S. Terry, Japanese Life and Cuhure in the
Meiji Era (Tokyo: Obunsha, ry58)' zt-37.
zo. Hattori lJnokichi, Shirm kenkyzr (Researches on China; Tokyo: Meiii
shuppansha, 1916), r79.
8t
printed version is
21. several people told me this story in Nanjing in rgg4. A
Yatsen;
Guangdong
(Anecdotes
gishi
of
Sun
Zhongshan
Sun
Lianhai,
Li
renmin chubanshe, 1985), 16o-r'
zz. Xiangiian /f (Etiquette for meeting; Zhengshitang lizhiguan, r9r5),
petition from Xu Shichang.
lizhiguan (Beiyang government: Ritual
23. No. z Archives: Beiyang zhengfu:
(Opinions
yi
on a dress code).
(roo8):
Fuzhi
roo8.7,
Bureau)
r9rz,
(Tianjin),
r
June
3.
24. Dagongbao
(Complete works of Zhang tiyan;
25. Zhang Taiyan, Zhang Thiyan quanji
1985)' vol. 5,52-4.
chubanshe,
renmin
Shanghai
Shanghai:
Politics,
Culture and Class in rhe
China:
in
Awakening
Fitzgerald,
26. John
Nationalist Retolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), z4-5,
argues that before the Republic dress and hairsryle varied with place rather
than with time.
Liu lVenbing , Xugou xianzhi (Xugou County Gazetteerl Taiyuan: Shanxi
renmin chubanshe, r99z), 298-9.
28. Qu Bannong,'Jin shushi nian lai Zhongguo ge da duhui nannu zhuangshi zhi yitong' (Similarities and differences in the dress of men and women
in each of the large cities in China over the last tens of years) in LiYuyi
et al., Qingmo minchu zhongguo ge da duhui nannu zhuangshi lunji (Collected discussions of the dress of men and women in each of the large
cities of China in the late Qing and Early Republic; Xianggang: Zhongguo zhengjing yanjiusuo, r97z fist edition c. rgz4f),38; Scott, Chinese
27.
Costume in Tiansition, 6t.
29.
Fu Chongju,
Chengdu tonglan
(An overview of Chengdu; Chengdu:
Bashushe, 1987 (rst edition r9o9)), vol. z, 66,7r' rr2-r3.
3o. ChiangYee, A Chinese Childhood (London: Methuen, r94o), 47' 53.
3r. Ida Pruitt, A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working
IVoman Q.{ew Haven:Yale University Press, 1945), r95.
32. Quan Bohua, 'Jin ershiwu nian lai Zhongguo xibei ge da duhui zhi
zhuangshi' (The dress of each of the large cities of North-west China in
the last twenty-five years), in LiYuyi et a1., Qingmo minchu zhongguo ge da
duhui nannu zhuangshi lunji, zo-r.
33. Qu Bannong,'Jin shushi nian lai Zhongguo ge da duhui nannu zhuangshi zhi yitong', 39.
34. Antonia Finnane, ''What should Chinese \Women \Wear: A National
Problem', Modern China zz.z (igg6), ro7-8; Verity \Wilson, Chinese Dress
(London: Victoria and Albert Museum, ry86), 49.
Faling
35.
daquan (Complete laws and ordinances; Shanghai: Shangwu
yinshuguan, r9z4), rsot.
36. Sichuan dudu fu zhengbao huibian (Collected gazettes of the Sichuan
Military Governor's Office), in Sichuan xinhai geming shiliao (I{istorical
Materials on the rgrr Revolution in Sichuan; Chengdu: Sichuan renmin
chubanshe, rg8r), 592-3.
5/. Da zongtong gongbu canyiyuan yijue Zhonghua Minguo fuzhi rz (Pictures of
88
THE REPUBLICAN
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
'<8. Qu
shi zhi tntong" 4r-2.
tgtz).
for Margaret
-59. LiangYen
(I-ondon: Souvenir Press, 196r), z7'
r99z), 92.
43. \7ang I(aiyun, Xiangqi lou
riji (Diary of the Xiangqi Hall;
Shanghai:
Shangwu yinshuguan, r9z7), vol. 3r, 3ob.
\Wieger, Chine Moderne (Hsienhsien, rgzz) vol.
44. Leon
3,295i Hu Jingyi,
Hu Jingyi riji (The diary of Hu Jingyi; Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1993), ro7.
45. Cheng Renlan, interview Nanjing zo May t994.
46. Norbert Ehas, The Ciz,tilising Process (New York: IJrizen Books, 1978);
Anna Clare Bryson, 'Concepts of Civility in England c. 1560-1685'
(Oxford D. Phil., 1984).
47. Chow Kai-wing, The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China:
Ethics, Classics and Lineage Discourse (Stanford: Stanford lJniversity Press,
199D.
48.
Briggs), The House of the Golden Dragons
(pseud.
39. Shenbao, z7 Aptil r9r2,2.
4o. No. z Archives: r.1743, July r9z8 Zhonghua guohuo weichihui weiyuanhui changwu weiyuan, Jiang Zhe sichou jizhi lianhehui cheng (Petition
from the members of the standing committee of the China National Products Promotion Association, Jiangsu and Zhejiang Silk\Teavers Joint Association); 17 August [1928] Jiang Zbe ge iizhi hehui dian (Telegram frorn
Jiangsu and Zhejiang \(/eavers Joint Association). The only exception I
have found comes from a photograph of Yuan Shikai's funeral which
shows a figure, perhaps an undertaker, in a top hat, long black coat and
trousers, ofa thin, creased fabric. Eric Baschet, China t89o-t9j8: From the
Warlords toWorldWar (Zug: Swan Productions, 1989), r5z.
4r. No. z Archives: roo8.7 Fuzhi yi (Opinions on a dress code); Zhang Hua
shuotie (Proposal by Zhang Hua).
42. Shenbaor 3 March rgz5, t2.
Arthur H. Smith, Village Life in China:
Fleming H. Revell, 1899),92-4, t3z-3.
6o. Bai Jianw u, Bai Jianwu riji (Tlne diary of Bai Jianwu; Jiangsu guji chuban-
she, tggz)' zt8.
6r. Zhongguo Guomindang Fujian sheng zhixing weiyuanhui wenhua shiye
weiyuanhui (Chinese Nationalist Party Fujian Province Executive Com-
mittee Cultural Tasks Committee) (ed.), Fujian xinhai guangfu shiliao
(Historical materials on the rgrr Restoration of Fujian: Liancheng,
Fujian: Jianguo chubanshe, 19 4o), 2 58 62. No. z Archives: roor.5523, z8 December r9r4' Cheng da zongtong
(Petition to the President).
63. National Archieves roor.5523, z8 November r9r4, Niding jiancha lishu
tiaoli (Rules fixed to investigate calendars); Richard J. Smith,'A note on
Qing dynasty calendars', Late Imperial China,9.r (t988).
6+. E.g. No. z Archives: roor.4827, rz October r9rz, Jiaoyubu ziqing chajin
famai yinli er shu (Two letters from the Education Ministry requesting
the investigation and banning of the sale of lunar calendars).
12 February r9r2, 7i PRO FO zz8lr838' z6 Feb. tgrz
lfilkinson to Jordan.
66. No. z Archives: roor.5523, 28 December r9r4, Cheng da zongtong
(Petition to the President).
67. Shenbao, 5 March rgr2, 6.
68. Shenbao, 25 January r9r2,7.
6g. Shmbao, 23 February rgr2, 7.
70. Shengjing shibao,8 March r9r2' 5i zr March r9tz,6.
7r. Shenbao, z9 April r9r2,7.
na No. z Archives: r.1796, r8 July r9z7,Lin Dakui cheng (Petition from Lin
65. Shenbao,
Dakui).
73.
A
Study in Sociology (NewYork:
49. Qin Tongpei, Gongheguo jiaokeshu xin guowen jiaoshoufa 6a ce (Republican
series textbooks rnethods of teaching the new National Readers in eight
volumes; Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1916 edition), vol. 3, rzb.
<n YMCA Liyi yantaohui (Seminar on manners) rz May 1994, Nanjing.
5r. Shenbao,3 March t925, 12.
52. No. z Archives: roo8.7, Fuzhi yi (Opinions on a dress code).
53. Hsiao Ch'ien, TiaztellerWithour a Map (London: Hutchinson, r99o), z, 13.
54. Ye Shengtao, Ni Huanzhi (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1954), zr"
55. Rong Qing, Rong Qing riji (Tlne diary of Rong Qing; Xi'an: Xibei daxue
chubanshe, 1986), zo6; Xiangjian li.
56. Hua Hangchen, Xin jiaoyu changge / (Collected songs for modern education; Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, tgr4), 16.
57. Ye Shengtao, Ni Huanzhi, t53"
8g
Bannong,'Jin shushi nian lai Zhongguo ge da duhui nannu zhuang-
the dress system for the Republic of China decreed by the House of
Representatives and promulgated by the President; Guohuo weichihui,
38. Yan Changhong, Zhongguojindai shehuifengsu sfri (A history ofthe sociery
and customs of modern China; Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe,
CITIZEN
BaoTianxiao, Shanghai chunqiu (Shanghai annals; Guilin: Liiiang chubanshe, r987), r.
74. Jiaoyubu tongsu iiaoyu
yanfiuhui (Education Ministry Committee for
Research into Popular Education) (ed.), Guomin yingdang zunyong guoli
qianshuo (Brief explanation of why citizens should respect and use the
National Calendar, n.d. [prob. r9r5-zz]),5b.
75.
David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant
Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London: \Teidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1989), r.
Liu Dapeng, Titixiangzhai rqe, passim.
11 Bai
Jianwu, Bai Jianwu riji' 4o,386.
78. Hu Jingyi, Hu Jingyi riji, So' 89.
76.
79. Ibid., 36.
8o. Shenbao, z3
April r9r2,2.
8r. Sidney D. Gamble, North China Villages: Social, Political, and Economic
Activities before tgjj (Berkeley: lJniversity of California Press, r963), r8o.
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
9o
82. E.g. Bai Jianwu, Bai Jianwu riji,
38;\Wu
Yu, Wuyu riji (The diary of \ilfu
Yu; Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, ry84), z5z.
83. Bai Jianwu, Bai Jianwu riji,389.
84. Liu Dapeng, Tuixiangzhai riji, 175.
85. Ibid., 17S, t9o, zor-2, z7o.
86. North China Herald, zr July 1928, roo.
rgrr
'"-
ro7.
9T
Beiiing:
r,27o.
vol.
1992),
guangbo
chubanshe,
dianshi
Zhongguo
chow chung-cheng,The Lotus-pool of Memory (London: MichaelJoseph,
ry6r), r49-5o.
Zou,,Yangzhou guangfu qianhou de huiyi pianduan' (Brief recoll..,io.r5 of before and after the Restoration inYangzhou), Jiangsu wenshi
ziliao xuanji (Jiangsu selected historical materials) 7 Q98r reprint), z3'
,x;g. TangZaili,'Xinhai yihou deYuan Shikai' (Yuan Shikai after rgrr), in Du
Chunhe et al. (eds.), Beiyang junfa shiliao xuanji (Selected historical
materials on the Beiyang warlords; Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue
chubanshe, r98r), vol. r, 87.
rro. Hattori Unokichi, Shina kenkyu,56+-5.
rrr. Dorothy I{o, Tbachers of the Inner Chambers: women and cuhure in
S ev ente enth-C entur y C hin a (Stanford : Stanford Universiry Press, r 9 94)'
r12. Fu Chongju, Chengdu tonglan, vol. r, rrz-r3.
rr3. $fong Su-ling and Earl Herbert Cressey, Daughter of Confucius: A Personal
Hisnry (London: Victor Gollancz, 1953), 92.
r14. Pruitt, A Daughter of Han, zz.
rr5. Stephanie L. Twin, 'Women and Sport', in Donald Spivey (ed'), Sport in
-^o iuo
'""'
87. Ibid.
88. Ou Zhenhua, Beifa xingjun rii (Diary of the Norrhern Expedition;
Guangdong yinwuju, r93r), rz7.
89. Ibid., 352.
9o. Ibid., 385.
9r. Ibid., 4r9.
92. Yan Changhong, Zhongguo jindai shehui fengsu shi, zz9.
93. Zhejiang sheng xinhai geming shi yanjiuhui,Zhejiang sheng tushuguan
(zhejiang Province Association for the Study of rhe rgrr Revolurion,
zbejiang Provincial Library) (ed.), xinhai geming shiliao xuanji (Selected
materials from Zhejiang on the
renmin chubanshe, r98r), 547-8.
IHE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
,n(r. Zhou Zuoten, Zhou Zuoren sanwen (Essays of Zhou Zuoten;
Revolution; Hangzhou: Zhejiang
94. Lu Meiyi and Zheng Yongfu, Zhongguo funu yundong (tg4o-r9zr) (The
Chinese $/omen's Movement (184o-r9zr); Henan renmin chubanshe,
r99o), 164-5.
95. Zhejiang sheng xinhai geming shi yanjiuhui, Zheiiang sheng tushuguan,
America: New Historical Perspectiztes (\Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985),
r93-2r7.
116. Speech given at the founding of a girls' higher primary school in Huaiyin
in t9zr. Li Gengsheng, Li Gengsheng xiansheng yan xing /al (A record of
the words and deeds of Mr Li Gengsheng; Yangzhou: Banjing xiang
shengye yinshushe, fr9z8l), z4b.
547.
96. Shanxi sheng zhengxie wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui (Shanxi province
Political consultative conference Historical Materials Research cornmittee) (ed")' Yan xishan tongzhi Shanxi shishi (Historical facs about how
Yan Xishan controlled Shanxi;Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, rggr),
70 r.
97. Zhongguo minjian gequ jicheng, Shanxi juan (Collected Chinese folk songs,
Shanxi volume; Beijing: Renmin yinyue chubanshe, rggo),7g7.
98. E.g. Xie Xiaozhong, Xinjiang yoz 77 (Notes on a journey to Xinjiang;
Zhonghua shufu, r9z5), 58.
99. Ou Zhenhua, Beifa xingjun rtji,358.
roo. Wu Lingchu,'Wo zai xinhai nian de suo jian' (tVhat I saw in rgrt) Shanxi
wenshi ziliao (Shanxi historical materials) 19 (r98r), 68.
ror. Patricia Ebrey,'\(/omen, Marriage and the Family in Chinese History', in
Paul S. Ropp (ed.), Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspecth.tes on Chinese
Ciztilisation (Berkeley: University of California Press, r99o), 22o-r.
roz. Liu Wenbing, Xugou xianzhi, 298.
ro3. Lu Meiyi and ZhengYongfu, Zhongguo funu yundong, 73, t6zi Howard S.
I-rvy, Chinese Footbinding:The History of a Curious Erotic Custom (London:
Neville Spearman, ry72), 66-7.
ro4. Wu Lingchu,'\Wo zai xinhai nian de suo jian', 68.
ro5. Ding Ling, Ding Ling wenji (Collected works of Ding Ling; Changsha:
Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1984), vol. 5,32r-2.
r
r7. Helen Foster Snow,
Women in
Modern China (The Hague: Mouton, 1967),
176.
rr8. For a slightly earlier period see I(o, Teachers of the Inner Chambers' r7t.
tr9. Xiangjian li.
rzo. LiangYen, The House of the Golden Dragons, z7; Guangdong sheng funu
lianhehui, Guangdong sheng dang'anguan, Guangdong funu yundong lishi
ziliao (Historical materials on the Guangdong women's movement; r99r)'
2.
rzr. Chow Chung-cheng, The Lorus-pool of Memory) r3o-r.
tzz. Lu Reny"uan, Xingshan bei you / (Xingshan's notes on a journey northl
r9z5), roa-b.
rz3. Ida Pruitt, A China Childhood (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center,
r978), 89.
rz4. Jiang Menglin,'Minchu zhi shehui dongtai', r7r.
r25. Bao Tianxiao, Shanghai chunqiu,85.
126. Kor Teachers of the Inner Chambers, t_2.
r27. North China Herald, 20 June 1925,469.
rz8. Ebrey,'\7omen, Marriage and the Family in Chinese History', 22o-r.
I29. \Wieger, Chine Moderne, vol. r, 27r.
I3o. Pruitt, A Daughter of Han' tt5.
92
THE REPUBLICAN CITIZEN
r3r. Lin Zongyi,
Thiwan
Lin Benyuan jia
wenwu
ji
ziliao (Cultural items and
materials from the Lin Benyuan family ofTaiwan; [Taiwan]: Dingjing tang
congshu, 1976), plates of Lin ancestors.
r3z. I. Dyer Ball, The Chinese at Home or the Man ofTbng and his Land (I-<tndon:
The ReligiousTract Sociery rgrr), z8r.
r33. Michael Hatt,'Muscles, Morals, Mind:The Male Body inThomas Eakins,
Salutat', in Kathleen Adler and Marcia Pointon (eds.), The Body Imaged,:
The Human Form and Visual Culture Since the Renaissance (Cambridge:
Cambridge Universiry Press, r993), 57-69;loe L. Dubbert,l Man's Place:
Masculinity in Tiansition (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1979).
r34. E.g. Gonghegua jiaokeshu x'in guowen, vols. z-3.
t35. Julia C. Strauss,'\Tartime Stress and Guomindang Response: Xunlian as
a means of statebuilding' (American Association of Asian Studies Annreal
Meeting, r996).
136. Ye Shengtao, Ni Huanzhi,33,36,73, r47.
r37. Mlron L. Cohen, 'Being Chinese: The Peripheralization of Traditional
Identity', Daedalus: Journal of the American Academg of Arts and Sciences
rzo.z (r99r).
r38. Harry A. Franck, Roving through Southern China (London: T. Fisher
IJnwin, ry26),494-5.
r39. LiangYen, The House of the Golden Dragons.
r4o. Dorothy Ko (in Tbachers of the Inner Chambers) has discussed the impact
of this idea of traditional China on understandings of women's place in
socrety.
r4r. Brian Durrans, 'Handicrafts, Ideology and the Festival of India',
Asia Research z.r (r982), 16.
South
r42. Wilson, Chinese Dress, 49.
r43. Dorothy I(o makes very much the same argument in her discussion of tfie
image of the 'victimised Chinese woman'.
r44. Charles F. I(eyes, 'The Proposed World of the School: Thai Villagers'
Entry into a Bureaucratic State System', in Reshaping LocalWorlds: Formal
Education and Cuhural Change in Rural Sourheast lsra (New Haven:Yale
University Southeast Asia Studies, r99r).
3
The Republican State and the National
Community
If the rgrr revolution created a new image of the republican citizen,
it also created a new model of the state. Theoretically the model of
the state was embodied in the new republican system of government.
However it was clear that the elected local, provincial and national
assemblies did not in fact have sufficient power to dominate the country
politically. The offer of the presidency to Yuan Shikai, even before he
had come over to the revolutionary cause, made the weaknesses of the
Republican political system abundantly clear.r Open manipulation culminating in the massive bribery which led to Cao Kun's election to the
presidency in 19r8 further undermined the legitimacy of the democratic system of government adopted in t9tz.2 Instead, turning away from
the democratic system as a source of legitimacy, claimants to political
power at every level used the manipulation of symbols of the nation to
legitimize themselves. In a process similar to that which Carol Gluck
describes as taking place in Japan during the Meiji Period, political
actors created a set of symbols of the nation which were seen as being
separate from, and above, politics.3 Central to the symbols that legitimated the Republic was the idea of the participation of the people.
Ordinary people took part in the ceremonies of the state. They used
the new symbols to give legitimacy to events as varied as a national
military review or an anti-government demonstration. When they did
this they presented themselves as the citizens of the Republic thus legitimizing not only the symbols they used but also their presentation of the
national community.
National Day
In rgrz both the
state council and the National Assembly produced
formal proposals to rhe effect that the solar anniversary of the\Tuchang
Uprising should be commemorated as National Day. The assembly
agreed to a proposal that ro October should be kept as National
D"y, *hil" r January, the date on which the Nanjing government was
founded, and rz February, the date on which the north and south
of the country were united, should be memorial days. In effect this
was to celebrate events atWuchang and then the accession of SunYatsen