Shanghai Women - 1920s and 30s

Love Lane in central George Town is so called, they say, because in former times it was the district in which Chinese businessmen were inclined to keep their mistresses. Today it is a fashionable street of terraced ‘link’ houses full of boutiques, tea houses and coffee shops, many with a nostalgic theme invoking the romance of this former era. The present author is staying in a cheap hotel just around the corner and not far from the Sunrise Sweetheart Café, a venue famous for ladies of easy virtue. It is in many of these shops and cafes on Love Lane - such as the very commodious number 41, the entrance of which is pictured below - that one can find reproductions of posters, advertisements and calendars from the golden era of Shanghai fashion, the 1920s and 30s – Chinese nostalgia. This ‘Out of Phase’ post is accordingly dedicated to the same. George Town is not all Chinese temples.

It was the fashion designers of Shanghai who transformed female attire and the Chinese female image under the Chinese nationalist Republic during the 1920s and 30s. After the turmoil of the revolution in the 1940s these same designers shifted to Hong Kong and Singapore and other outposts of Chinese culture, such as George Town, but by then the transformation they started had been complete. The attire of the Chinese woman had been changed forever. Chinese women were brought into modernity. The communists tended to regard the new fashions as ‘Western imperialism’ and, ironically, female attire after the revolution reverted to older, utilitarian, and hence more conservative styles. This regression into dowdiness reached its peak during the catastrophic Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s. In more recent times, the increasingly open policies of the People's Republic have re-embraced the fashion revolution of the early XXth century, which is to say they have rediscovered style and good taste and the great sartorial revolution of the 1920s and 30s is at last widely acknowledged in mainland China.

At the centre of the Shanghai style is the garment called the cheongsam. This is a single-piece, tight-fitting full-body dress that became the characteristic garment of the modern Chinese woman. Contrary to claims that it was an importation of Western styles, its roots are in older Chinese garments and so is a continuation, or a modern adaptation, of distinctly Chinese traditions. The genius of the Shanghai design houses was to create a modern garment that is as Chinese as it is modern. Either way, the Moaists frowned upon it as bourgeois while, conversely, it has been a symbol of the anti-communist pro-capitalist Chinese, a badge of modernity and liberation. Here is a picture of the typical modern cheongsam:

Here is a picture of traditional women's attire - the forerunner to the modern cheongsam - from the period immediately before the Shanghai design houses reinvented the garment in its modern form:   

As still prevails in Islamic attire, the traditional Chinese garment was designed to completely obscure the female form and allowed no naked skin to be visible at all. The modern cheongsam, in contrast, is tighter fitting, accentuates the waist, makes a virtue of the feminine form, celebrating female beauty, and shows bare arms. The original Shanghai cheongsam is full length and goes down to the feet; later versions became knee length or three-quarter length.

The liberation of the female form from the dowdy sacks of past styles was then embraced and celebrated in Chinese popular culture. Women in the cheongsam began to appear in advertising and in items of popular visual culture such as wall calendars. Some examples:

Images from that golden era - China in the 1920s and 30s - are now highly collectible and are regarded as the finest fruits of early Chinese modernity. The blossoming of China, later interupted by the Moaist revolution, is on display in these images. They show the Chinese creating their own distinctive modernity. A similar blossoming occured in Japan too. These were closed societies, long insulated from modernity. Then - often with trauma and upheaval - they belatedly decided to embrace modernity on their own terms. This, finally, is what such images as these are really about. They are not just 'nostalgia' and even less are they 'soft porn'. They are a record of how the oriental genius came to terms with the realities of the modern mode, and even more so, confidently set out to forge a modernity of its own. 

There are many modernities. In some cases it is a mode imposed by European civilization upon others. The Chinese, like the Japanese, were never going to be content to receive modernity passively like that. After resisting modernity for a long while, when they finally opened their societies to the new modern world they were determined to do so in their own way, with their own aesthetic values. They were never going to be mere imitators. They were going to appropriate and transform. Insofar as these images show a Westernized sensibility, it has been appropriated and transformed.

Below readers can find a selection of pictures from the Shanghai golden era - advertising posters, calander girls, erotica - images that adorn the shops and tea houses of George Town, setting the high-point and standard of modern style in Chinese women's attire and conventions of beauty.

It is worth adding here that the Chinese (Asians in general) continue to have fine taste and that Asian women are undoubtedly among the best dressed in the world. This has been very noticeable to this present writer on his travels. The Indian/Hindoostani world has been nowhere near as succesful in creating its own modern aesthetic. Hindoo women remain beautiful in traditional attire but on the whole have not made a succesful transition to modern dress. There has been no equivalent to the modern cheongsam in India. (And Indian men, let it be said, are almost uniformly badly dressed, whereas the Asian gentleman's appropriation of the business suit has been entirely succesful.)

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Kongsi - the Clan Houses of Penang

The Khoo Kongsi - the largest ancestral shrine in George Town and one of the largest outside of China. 

Among the Confucian virtues none is so important as filial piety, a religious sense of duty and loyalty to one’s family. It is conspicuous that exactly this virtue has declined in the modern West under the corrosive influence of liberalism where the “individual” – the rogue – is glorified and “freedom” – selfishness – comes before duty. Indeed, filial piety is one of the main things that separate societies that still retain a sense of tradition from those that have fallen into anarchic modernity. It has been very noticeable to this present author throughout his travels, first through India and Hindoostan, and now more recently through the Sino-Asiatic world. To the Indians, and to the Chinese, family is first. In Benares, for example, the author encountered a young man whose mother had become ill; he had to abandon his university studies to assist with the family business. He did so without hesitation and with no complaint. He knew that his first duty was not to pursue his own dream but to help the family, no question. Such a strong sense of family has almost disappeared from the modern West. In India, and among the Chinese, and among the Malays, the Japanese, and others too, even where modernity is fully embraced the traditional hold of family is not so eroded as it is in the West. These peoples pursue a modernity without anarchic liberalism, different models of modernity than that which has ravaged social cohesion in the West.

The centrality of family is especially underlined to the present author during his current sojourn in the old Chinese enclave of George Town, for George Town is the home to numerous clan associations or Kongsi. Upon arriving in George Town the taxi driver related that the great majority of tourists to the town nowadays are from southern China. They come here to visit the Kongsi of their ancestors. Clan, which is to say extended family grouped under one surname, remains an important feature of traditional social cohesion for the southern Chinese, even after several generations of state communist rule. In fact, there is now a strong movement among the southern Chinese to “search for roots” in order to repair the damage down by the Cultural Revolution. They travel to places such as George Town – Chinese settlements that avoided the Cultural Revolution and where traditional family organizations were strong - in order to renew their links with their past. It is called the Xungen movement - the movement to repair family lineages. There is a strong religious element involved. Family progenitors are revered and accorded sacred status. A Kongsi is not only a clan association but a religious organization. Families have their own preferred deities, along with so-called 'ancestor worship'. The Kongsi clan house acts not only as a meeting place for clan members but, most importantly, as a temple and as a place of worship. 

George Town features numerous outstanding  and illustrious traditional Kongsi. The Chinese clans have played an important role in the history of the city. There was a time when then tended to operate as secret societies, underworld fraternities, and there were several episodes of clan warfare. The British, very wisely, outlawed secret societies in the mid XIXth century and helped the clans become open, cooperative societies that made a positive contribution to the social good. In this, the clans operated as social welfare agencies, loci for trades, places of education, employment agencies, immigration offices and often as adjuncts to the judiciary and law enforcement. Clans acted to keep their members within the law and to settle disputes. On the whole, their contribution to George Town society was and continues to be extremely productive. 

In organizational terms, a Kongsi is like a cooperative or a corporation. The extended family is ruled by the elder males - the bearers of the surname (a clan is patrilineal)- and they hold property in common. They invest in worthy projects and they distribute dividends to clan members. At times of economic downturn or fraying political life members can fall back upon the clan for common support. It is, in effect, what we might call a “distributist” system that combines the best features of a de-centralised capitalism with non-state collectivism, based at every point upon blood ties and the enduring reality of family. It is an impressive and time-honoured model of social organization and remains one of the foundations of traditional Chinese life.

The pictures on this page illustrate aspects of some of the major Kongsi found in George Town.

THE CLAN ELDERS

A clan is patrilineal and its organisation patriarchal. Clans are organised under surnames. In the photograph above we see the current elders of the Khoo Kongsi in George Town (with the gentlemen dressed in traditional Changshan rather than Western business suites.) 

ANCESTRAL ALTAR

In each Kongsi there is an ancestral altar. The names of ancestors are recorded on bamboo slips which are displayed on the altar. Worshippers pray to and revere the ancestors with the main devotional device being the lighting and offering of joss (incense). 

In this picture, ancestors are recorded on tokens arranged in large conical pillars. 

THE CLAN GODS

As well as the altar to the ancestors there is usually a main altar devoted to the preferred deity or deities of the clan. The deities are usually from so-called 'Chinese folk religion' (Confucianism), from Taoism or from Boodhism. Worship is syncretic.

THE ZUPU

The Zupu - the genealogical book. Each clan keeps detailed geneological records in a tome called a Zupu. Tracing and recording the lineage of the clan is an important duty of the Kongsi. 

DISPLAYS OF ANCESTORS

Within each Kongsi there is usually a visual or a written display of deceased members of the clan. In some cases there are very extensive displays where visitoprs can come and search for photographs of their direct ancestors. 

The ancestral hall of the Kongsi will often include memorabilia where the clan boasts of the achievements of its members. Higher education and positions of political power are especially noted. 

VIEWS OF KONGSI

The Kongsi clan houses of George Town are beautiful examples of traditional Chinese architecture. Many of them are masterpieces of Chinese aesthetics. 

As well as places of worship, the Kongsi are also places of recreation, with kitchens and meeting halls (and in the past - up until the Second World War - opium dens.) 

THE CLAN JETTIES

In George Town several clans have settled along the waterfront, constructing their own jetties. There now remains numerous 'clan jetties' where members of the clan live in housing constructed on the jetties themselves. Much of their income now comes from tourism, but in the past it came from sea-trade and fishing. 

* * * 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black