Initial Shaping of Social Public Cultural Spaces at the End of the Qing Dynasty

Abstract

The formulation “social public space” is frequently encountered in the writings of modern figures, and the concept is basically taken from Western scholars. It refers to social spheres outside governmental and private domains and is used in the sense of political studies. The “social public cultural space” I refer to here differs in meaning from the above, and is used in the sense of cultural studies. It denotes spaces formed in society for the dissemination, exchange, convergence, and innovation of culture. Social public cultural spaces gradually took shape in the wake of the proliferation of social contacts in modern times, and the formation of social public cultural spaces is a major issue in the modern transformation of culture. The culture of China’s old, traditional society basically consisted of two systems. One was the cultural system dominated by the government, such as the loyalty-to-the-ruler and reverence-for-Confucius cultures that basically served the needs of government rule. The other was the nongovernmental [folk] system consisting mainly of traditions, beliefs, customs, and habits which played a dominant role in households, clans, township communities, and indigenous villages. One cannot say that public cultural spaces did not exist beyond the two systems mentioned above. There were, for instance, the urban teahouses, theaters, and markets, and in rural areas there were the various religious ceremonies and processions, festival activities, and so forth. There were also the contacts during the general and provincial triennial civil service examinations, the contacts among small coteries of literati in certain localities, and so on. However, none of these possessed modern social characteristics, and their participants were incapable of cohering into groups with constraining capabilities. Moreover, the groups had no clear-cut objectives and were devoid of innovative mechanisms. Modern social public cultural spaces were formed by certain organized groups and had common objectives based on common understandings. These communities or groups were, among themselves, competitive and mutually complementary, and possessed innovative mechanisms. Examples of these are newspaper offices, scholarly associations and various social groups, public cultural facilities, and cultural activities as well as libraries, newspaper-reading societies, lecture meetings, performing arts venues, and so forth. (The performance venues were of a truly socialized nature, unlike the performing arts activities of traditional society which were held for the most part only in private venues or in temporary facilities during temple fairs and religious processions; only the storytellers’ venues were relatively permanent.) The forming of these social public cultural spaces had an important effect on the dissemination, exchange and creation of culture, as well as on changing the concepts of the majority of people and shaping new concepts, and thereby directly or indirectly played an indispensable role in social advance.