Exotic Commodities Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China 1st Edition by Frank Dikötter ISBN 0231141165 978-0231141161

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Product details: 

ISBN 10: 0231141165 

ISBN 13: 978-0231141161

Author: Frank Dikötter

Exotic Commodities is the first book to chart the consumption and spread of foreign goods in China from the mid-nineteenth century to the advent of communism in 1949. Richly illustrated and revealing, this volume recounts how exotic commodities were acquired and adapted in a country commonly believed to have remained “hostile toward alien things” during the industrial era.

China was not immune to global trends that prized the modern goods of “civilized” nations. Foreign imports were enthusiastically embraced by both the upper and lower classes and rapidly woven into the fabric of everyday life, often in inventive ways. Scarves, skirts, blouses, and corsets were combined with traditional garments to create strikingly original fashions. Industrially produced rice, sugar, wheat, and canned food revolutionized local cuisine, and mass produced mirrors were hung on doorframes to ward off malignant spirits.

Frank Dikötter argues that ordinary people were the least inhibited in acquiring these products and therefore the most instrumental in changing the material culture of China. Landscape paintings, door leaves, and calligraphy scrolls were happily mixed with kitschy oil paintings and modern advertisements. Old and new interacted in ways that might have seemed incongruous to outsiders but were perfectly harmonious to local people.

This pragmatic attitude would eventually lead to China’s own mass production and export of cheap, modern goods, which today can be found all over the world. The nature of this history raises the question, which Dikötter pursues in his conclusion: If the key to surviving in a fast-changing world is the ability to innovate, could China be more in tune with modernity than Europe?

Table of contents: 

1. Introduction

Material culture in modern China

The fictions of ‘authenticity’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘acculturation”

The limits of ’emulation’, ‘consumption’ and ‘representation’

Things and people

Worship of the tangible

The sources

PART I DISSEMINATION: NETWORKS AND MATERIALS

2. The Domestication of Foreign Goods

Exotic commodities in late imperial China

Export commodities in late imperial China

Copy culture and the Movement for National Goods

3. The Dissemination of New Objects

Retailing the modern

Recycling the modern

Exhibiting the modern

The graphic revolution

4. From Water to Wheel

Motorcycles in waterland

Highway to heaven

Rickshaw China

On your bicycle

Cars to die for

The ubiquitous omnibus

Riots at the station

Flying chariots

5. Changing Cityscapes Cities

Factories

Schools

Offices

6. Electricity, Telephone and Water

A nation electrified Water from the dragon’s mouth Electric words, wonder of all wonders

PART II APPROPRIATION: PEOPLE AND OBJECTS

7. Dwelling

The permeable house survives

A glass world

The solid house spreads Locking up Changing interiors Kerosene, torchbearer of modernity The hidden powers of domestic objects

8. Clothing and Grooming

Cotton, the fabric of everyday life From bound feet to leather shoes A whiff of modernity Trinkets for the poor, watches for the rich

9. Eating and Drinking

Eating modernity

Eating out

Drinking cultures

10. Seeing and Listening The camera and the second I Magic lanterns and moving pictures Singing machines: the gramophone and the radio

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Tags: Frank Dikötter, Exotic Commodities, Modern Objects