Chen Pingyuan
Professor of the Department of Chinese of Peking University, his books include "The Transformation of the Narrative Mode of Chinese Novels", "The Dream of a Literati and a Hero through the Ages", "The Establishment of Modern Chinese Scholarship", "Ten Lectures on Chinese Universities", "Touching History and Entering May Fourth", "What is a University", etc.
"Xile Greeting God" (Dianshizhai Pictorial)
"Shanghai Girl Scout Army" ("Shallow Talk Pictorial")
"Construction of railways" (Dianshizhai Pictorial)
"Balloon Breaks the Enemy" (Dianshizhai Pictorial)
"Gengzi National Shame Commemorative Painting" ("Picture Daily")
Point stone fasting
"Left Map Right History and Western Learning and Eastern Learning"
Author: Chen Pingyuan
Edition: Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore
October 2018
On August 29, 1895, the "Declaration" published an editorial entitled "On the Enlightenment of Pictorials", which discussed the new things in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and other cities - the function of pictorials in enlightening the wisdom of the people, saying that enlightenment "should take pictorials as an urgent task" and "the magic of painting" is the foundation of the entire Western civilization. So he created a pictorial newspaper, which produced several volumes a month."
Most of the founders of the pictorial were sympathetic painters and cultural businessmen, as well as a small number of revolutionaries, regardless of their status and political stance, they all emphasized at the time of their founding that the pictorial was intended to be a commoner class with a limited level of knowledge. In the actual operation process, it also pays great attention to knowledge and entertainment, and closely follows current hot topics and new social knowledge. According to the research of Professor Chen Pingyuan of the Department of Chinese of Peking University in his new book "Left Map Right History and Western Learning and Eastern Gradually", the topics covered by the late Qing Dynasty Pictorial covered the fields of war, Sino-foreign affairs, ship cannons, sound and light, new and old schools, impressions of concessions, Miscellaneous places in China and the West, culture and entertainment, overseas travel, etc., with the effects of news, enlightenment, entertainment and aesthetics.
In Chen Pingyuan's view, the study of the late Qing Dynasty pictorial is not only based on the history of illustrations, but also the cooperation between news and art, the interaction between images and words, the gradual pace of learning from the West and the East, the new changes in the mood of the East, and the presentation of civilian interests, which are also worthy of attention. Pictorials are an effective and interesting incision to enter the study of modern history, and the records left by those vivid and humorous pictures for history are difficult to replace with words.
The first nature of pictorials is journalistic
Different styles of Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing and Tianjin pictorials
Beijing News: Mei Cha, the founder of dianshizhai pictorial and British cultural businessman, was surprised that "China's newspapers have become popular, while pictorials are lacking", believing that Chinese emphasis on words and light on images, and China has had a tradition of "left picture and right history" since ancient times.
Chen Pingyuan: Formally, the biggest difference between traditional Chinese pictorials (left picture and right history) and pictorials is that the former first has text and then accompanies the picture, and the picture is annotated for the text; while the latter is mainly based on images, and the text is annotated for the image. From the content point of view, pictorial is a kind of newspaper, subordinate to the news industry, mainly focusing on current affairs, it is in the face of emerging social events to narrate, introduce and elaborate, while the previous graphics have nothing to do with news.
The first nature of pictorials is newsworthiness, which is why many pictorial newspapers in Beijing, Guangzhou and other places choose to be named after "current affairs". I regard "Dianshizhai Pictorial" as the first pictorial newspaper of the late Qing Dynasty, mainly from this point of view, while the previous "Children's Pictorial", "Huanying Pictorial", and "Pictorial New Newspaper" do not conform.
Beijing News: Can you say that the late Qing Dynasty Pictorial actually has two sources, one is the European pictorial tradition introduced by Mei cha, and the other is China's own traditional pictorials? How did these two traditions merge in the late Qing Dynasty pictorials?
Chen Pingyuan: The origin of the concept of late Qing pictorials was, of course, influenced by Western pictorials, and we can see the dialogue between Dianshizhai Pictorial and Western Pictorials, and the content of Huanying Pictorial was even directly translated from the West. However, the second generation of pictorials in the late Qing Dynasty is not necessarily related to Western pictorials, they are likely to have been inspired by the Dianshizhai Pictorial, and they also used traditional Chinese painting techniques in the production process. Although the penetration of some Western painting techniques can also be seen, it is still more of a traditional Chinese painting technique and style. Although Chinese painting has gradually been influenced by Western painting since the Qing Dynasty, this process of infiltration is imperceptible and not direct.
Beijing News: According to your research statistics, the late Qing Dynasty Pictorial is mainly concentrated in the four major cities of Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing and Tianjin.
Chen Pingyuan: In terms of business methods, most of the pictorial newspapers in Shanghai are used as gifts for large newspapers to promote the sales of large newspapers, so it is easier to issue. Most of the pictorials in Beijing are small workshops and difficult to distribute, so they have a relatively short existence. This is related to the city's commercial atmosphere, cultural environment, in the late Qing Dynasty, Shanghai and Guangzhou's commercial level is higher than Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou advertising is very clever, and Beijing's advertising is mostly naked "hard wide", relatively small sales scope.
From the content point of view, the content of Guangzhou's pictorial newspaper is the most radical, there are several reasons: first, it is far away from the imperial capital, "the mountain is high and the emperor is far away", the Qing court is more difficult to manage; second, it is related to the political stance of the founders themselves, many of the founders of the Guangzhou Pictorial are members of the League, like Gao Jianfu and Pan Dawei, who followed Sun Yat-sen in the revolution, and are more radical in politics, for example, the "Civilian Pictorial" published images commending the Huanghuagang Uprising two months before the Xinhai Revolution, which is impossible elsewhere; third, there is a "retreat" in Hong Kong. After the "Current Affairs Pictorial" was banned for a while, they withdrew to Hong Kong to continue to run it, and the Qing court could not control it. Relatively speaking, Beijing's pictorials are the most conservative, and several pictorials such as the Enlightenment Pictorial are stamped with the seal of the "Imperial Palace of the Two Palaces", which is to be sent to the imperial palace, and it is impossible to have particularly radical content. The most international vision is Shanghai, because Shanghai has a high degree of modernization, the city is large, and the early pictorials are related to European and American pictorials.
The characteristic of Beijing Pictorial is that it only talks about the surrounding social news, although it is conservative, but the advantage is that it retains a lot of historical materials and details of daily life, as well as the customs and customs of the people. However, after 1910, the authority of the entire Qing court was disintegrating, and the style of the Beijing Pictorial also changed greatly. After the Wuchang Uprising, the pictorial initially called the insurgents "bandits", later changed their names to "rebels", and then later changed their names to "Southern Army", and the change in political stance can be seen from the titles.
Because Tianjin is close to Beijing, the flow of personnel and media between the two places is convenient, so the style is relatively close to Beijing, but overall, Tianjin does not have a particularly good pictorial.
The original intention is that women and children can read and understand
The underlying care and market demand of the pictorial
Beijing News: In addition to the "Dianshizhai Pictorial" that we know was founded by the "Declaration" and the "Current Affairs Pictorial" has the support of the Alliance, what kind of people and institutions are the founders of other pictorials?
Chen Pingyuan: Some pictorials are backed by a newspaper or publishing group, such as "Picture Daily" backed by Shanghai Global News Agency, "Current Affairs Newspaper Guan Pengshen Year-round Pictorial", "Minhu Daily Pictorial", "Times Attached Pictorial", etc. are pictorial periodicals attached to the newspaper, and all pictorials that rely on a large group will be relatively secure in their editing, distribution and future preservation; some pictorials have the support of partisan forces, such as "Current Affairs Pictorial"; and more rely on the enthusiasm of painters, newspapers and businessmen. For example, Peng Yizhong, a newspaperman in Beijing, also founded the "Enlightenment Pictorial", "Beijing Dialect Daily" and "Zhonghua Bao" (the latter two are not pictorial newspapers), of which "Zhonghua Bao" is aimed at readers and writes in mandarin; "Beijing Dialect Daily" is aimed at ordinary readers and writes in vernacular; "Enlightenment Pictorial" is aimed at women and children, and can be used as a teaching reference for children. The first newspaper that Peng Yizhong discontinued was the Enlightenment Pictorial, but it is also it that really has lasting influence in the future, such as Liang Shuming, Guo Moruo and others mention the "Enlightenment Pictorial" in their reminiscence articles, and many people will still save it and bind it into a book after many years to continue learning for children.
However, the funders behind most of the pictorial newspapers are difficult to say clearly, because it is difficult to find the information. Generally speaking, the materials of large publishing houses such as the Commercial Press are relatively well preserved, while the internal materials of most newspapers in the late Qing Dynasty are mostly scattered, and the parties do not pay much attention to this type of archive. Including "Dianshizhai Pictorial", its financial annual report, printed quantity, sales status and other information can not be found, so the real reason for its suspension is still unclear. Fortunately, most of the manuscripts of the Dianshizhai Pictorial have survived and preserved in the Shanghai History Museum, which is already remarkable, and other pictorials cannot find relevant archives. Therefore, it is difficult for today's researchers to make elaborate examinations of the sociology of literature or the sociology of art.
Beijing News: The imaginary readers of the pictorial are illiterate groups, so that women and children can read and understand, with the purpose of "opening up the wisdom of the group and invigorating the spirit", different from the pure intellectual reading, the pictorial has the underlying care from the beginning of the design, is the enlightenment effect of the pictorial on the underlying group greater than other newspapers and periodicals?
Chen Pingyuan: The original intention of the pictorial was to target groups with relatively low social status and knowledge, including women and children who were not literate, but the actual effect was not entirely the same, and these people alone could not really support it. The actual communication effect is that people who are not low in knowledge will also read and recite, which will form a spillover effect, beyond the original idea of the newspaper operator. For example, some things are common sense in Shanghai, and when they arrive in Beijing, they are likely to be novel, and when they arrive in Xi'an, they may become completely unfamiliar with new knowledge, so in the information transmission chain, the reader's cognitive ability and receptivity are not the same.
It is precisely because of the people's ability to accept that more than a hundred years later, looking back, the pictorial retains more details of social life. Slogans such as "freedom", "democracy", and "science" are easy to cliché, but the details left in the pictorial can give us an understanding of all aspects of the time.
The audience of pictorials is difficult to estimate, and can only be speculated based on a few words, which is often unreliable. Sometimes newspapers exaggerate in order to promote it to the public, and you can't find data that really stands up to scrutiny, but only with the help of feedback from a certain general audience. Only the memories of some writers can be seen, such as Lu Xun, Bao Tianxiao, Liang Shuming and others who have a special love for pictorials and are deeply influenced by them. In the future, some distributions may be found through large-scale electronic searches, but even so, I don't think it will be too complete.
Beijing News: Except for a few publications such as "Dianshizhai Pictorial" and "Current Affairs Pictorial", most of the pictorials have a short survival time, and there are very few publications that can exceed two years.
Chen Pingyuan: In order to achieve economic and social benefits in the media, it is very difficult to achieve economic and social benefits in order to be long-term, but in fact, it is very difficult to "double harvest", and there are very few pictorial newspapers that are really profitable in the late Qing Dynasty. The reason for the whirlwind cannot be said that the operators do not have the desire to please the audience, and they will also use various ways to attract readers, but the entire business environment and the reader market have not yet been cultivated. Most of the people who run the pictorial newspaper are people with feelings, they hope to inspire the people, pass on knowledge, transform the country, as the "Picture Daily" said, the newspaper is "to increase the wisdom of the people, and there is no heart for trade", but it is not enough to have enthusiasm, we must consider the market.
In this process, it can be seen that they sometimes hesitate, hovering between enlightenment, entertainment and aesthetics, and the content of the production is close to the lower layer, and will use prostitutes, schoolgirls, anecdotes, and fruits as selling points, but even so, there is no particularly vulgar content. For example, a painting in the Awakening Pictorial called "Civilized Prostitute" depicts a prostitute who is reading a newspaper, but the figure Chinese writes that the prostitute "does not have any habits of the Qinglou, and it is very open, all Beijing newspapers, all read and read, and the guests they make are also people of good quality, and it seems that civilized people are everywhere." Praising prostitutes for their love of reading newspapers and using them as a sign of "civilized people" may be a marketing ploy, but it is also a kind of cultural popularization and ideological enlightenment.
Most of the war narratives in the late Qing Dynasty pictorials, as well as the new knowledge of current affairs, the imagination of speeding cars, news and ancient events, science and technology and folklore, children and women's studies, imperial capital and scenery, agitation of trends and writing revolutions, etc., mostly adhere to the position of enlightenment, opening up, orthodoxy or awakening. What is particularly valuable is their attention to women and children, who believe that women and children also need to know the outside world, so they will consider the receptivity, fun and vision of this group.
Low-key gentle enlightenment gesture
The "second hand" of spreading new knowledge and enlightening people's wisdom
Beijing News: You put forward the concept of "low-key enlightenment" in "Left Map, Right History and Western Learning and Eastern Gradually", what is the difference between it and the "high-profile enlightenment" of reformists and revolutionaries?
Chen Pingyuan: The "enlightenment" in the eyes of the late Qing Dynasty is not as complicated as Kant's "What is Enlightenment" or Foucault's "What is Enlightenment", but only the introduction of Western learning, the opening of people's wisdom, the dissemination of new knowledge, and the entry into a new era. Compared with the "Xinmin Cong Bao" and "Min Bao" that were highly discussed in Tokyo, or the "Declaration" and "Oriental Magazine" that were in the limelight in China, the late Qing Dynasty Pictorials were mostly more vulgar, plain and low-key. This involves the characteristics of the medium, the positioning of the reader, and the ability and interest of the author.
The main purpose of the pictorial is to tell current affairs and introduce new knowledge, which requires mass production, such as the "Dianshizhai Pictorial" with a total of 528 issues and 4666 pictures; the "Picture Daily" published a total of 404 issues, each issue of 12 pages; "Current Affairs Pictorial" and "Shallow Talk Pictorial" are also voluminous and impossible to carve carefully. Even famous painters can't afford to work so day after day. For pictorial writers, it is necessary to cooperate with news events and meet market demand, and it is impossible to have too much "revolutionary consciousness" or "home and country feelings". In terms of disseminating new knowledge and opening up people's wisdom, the role of pictorials is that of "second-hand", less radical than political books, nor as deep as cultural magazines, and even different from the daily newspaper's vigorous innovation, which is largely determined by their own intended readers.
Politically, with the exception of the "Current Affairs Pictorial" in Guangzhou, the late Qing Dynasty pictorials were all too moderate, and rarely left generous and sad songs worth remembering. These plain and secular painters do not emphasize "the text to carry the Tao", but are both old and new and elegant, highlighting the visibility and interest. In the tide of knowledge renewal and social transformation in modern China, the pictorial did not "solo" or "lead the singing", but actively cooperated with the performance. The color and sharpness of criticism of social politics are not as good as daily newspapers, and most of them are also daily newspapers that are rectified for violating politics. Pictorials are more about embodying the middle ground, focusing on urban style, civic fun and ordinary time.
Beijing News: Is the attention of the academic community to these two different enlightenments also very different?
Chen Pingyuan: In the past, the academic circles would pay more attention to high-profile enlightenment for the ideological scholarship of the late Qing Dynasty, such as the state, political system, spirit, philosophy, from Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao to Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi and others, the study of modern intellectuals is a prominent science, but the cultural cultivation and knowledge change process of the lower groups in society are less concerned.
In a sense, high-profile enlightenment is the enlightenment of the readers themselves, they discuss macroscopic political, economic, scientific, cultural, moral, ethical and other issues, while the low-key enlightenment is to use current events and new knowledge to educate the people, such as the late Qing Encyclopedia dictionary, textbooks, pictorials, etc. are taking a more moderate attitude. In the past, there was a lot of research on the history of intellectuals or the history of ideas, but we actually did not know much about the daily life of ordinary people, so the focus of research shifted from court politics and opinion leaders to the middle and lower classes of the people, and began to pay attention to social daily life, women and children, and the spiritual world of ordinary people in the late Qing Dynasty, which is a new trend of historical research, and pictorial is a good entrance.
Beijing News: In the Liberated Areas and after the founding of New China, pictorials such as "Jin-Cha-Ji Pictorial", "People's Pictorial", and "People's Liberation Army Pictorial" emerged, which are important forms of propaganda.
Chen Pingyuan: After 1913, the camera gradually replaced the brush, and in 1926, the "Beiyang Pictorial" (Tianjin) and "Liangyou" (Shanghai) appeared with photos, and this tradition continued into the "Jin-Cha-Ji Pictorial" in the Liberated Areas period and various pictorials after the founding of New China, the biggest feature of which was that they were mainly photographs, which was also an image narrative.
Over the years, the external propaganda and internal introduction of "People's Pictorial" is actually a research topic of great significance in the history of journalism and photography. When I was a child, I liked to read The People's Pictorial, which was also mainly news, but it was more attractive than ordinary newspapers. Although, behind the choice of images, there will also be ideological connotations, political positions and policy needs, but it itself has a relatively independent appreciation interest. The pictorial newspapers I read when I was a child were not current, but several years or even more than ten years ago, but it did not matter, it was interesting in itself, and the interpretation of pictures was not necessarily the side that the government wanted to emphasize, because good painters, photographers and editors will have other subtexts when choosing images, and the language of the layout also has important artistic considerations. Unfortunately, many people are very good at writing, but their ability to read, appreciate and interpret images is not enough, which can be trained from pictorial research.
Written by/Beijing News reporter Xu Xueqin