Merry Laughter and Angry Curses: The Shanghai Tabloid Press, 1897–1911, by Juan Wang

Abstract

Merry Laughter and Angry Curses: The Shanghai Tabloid Press, 1897-1911 by Juan Wang. Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 2012. X, 232 pp. $95.00 Cdn (cloth). As Juan Wang tells us, Merry Laughter and Angry Curses represents the way tabloid writers identified their own satirical, witty writing style. Satirists' critique of the late Qing officials' corruption aimed to create an aesthetic populism, whereby pleasing and entertaining the readers was fundamental. Wang shows us the politicization of tabloid culture, but also how politics was presented in a way to amuse the readers and blur the boundaries between fiction and news. Unlike many other magazines, tabloids predominantly catered to male readers championing flower elections, in effect contests to elect the most accomplished courtesans, while simultaneously bashing the moral degeneration of the Qing officials, even likening it to prostitution. Wang highlights the serialization of Officialdom Unmasked in 1903 as a first instance of early pop culture partaking in national politics (p. 83). Part of Wang's narrative is how tabloid writers like Li Boyuan and Wu Jianren appropriated, but also departed from, Liang Qichao's version of nationalism that was popular in highbrow press. These tabloid writers shared Liang's anti-imperialist concern, but were also critical of both reformers like Kang Youwei and even revolutionaries such as Qiu Jin. Wang illustrates well the tabloid writers' criticism of reformers, but she does not always highlight the inconsistencies in their own approaches. It seems to me such critiques were more related to envy of the opportunities afforded by studying abroad, which were not readily available to writers, such as Li Boyuan, rather than to a philosophical incompatibility. Where Wang's account is less persuasive is her insistence that tabloid writers shared a different concept of the role of the people than Liang Qichao did. Liang's idea of active collectivity does not seem so different than the one that tabloid writers advocated, apart from the apparent distrust of tabloid writers in the state as Wang stresses, which was upheld by Liang. For Wang, tabloid writers advocated traditional ethics, which subverted the individual to the common good. Wang insists that unlike Liang, Wu Jianren and Li Boyuan were very skeptical of western learning and that they shifted from a reformist to a conservative outlook, a move that I would add is also evident in Liang's later thought after his European Journey. While Liang's thought had evolved from Darwinism to statism, and toward a more conservative ethics, so did the ideas of the tabloid writers exhibit apparent tensions: they encouraged thrift, although they also promoted hedonistic lifestyles. Another tension arises between Wang's assertion that unlike Liang the tabloid writers did not display ethnic strife, and their obvious sympathies against Chinese discrimination in the US (p. 107). Even while contrasting the tabloid writers' views with Liang's promotion of the nation, Wang maintains unlike Barbara Mittler, that tabloid writers were actively creating a sense of nationalism through their printed activities. …