This article focuses on the early Republican theater as a popular site of experiments with love and discusses the significance of pengjue courtship between actresses and male patrons. It argues that while the literati still played a role in shaping theater patronage culture, employing the discourse of qing and the scholar-beauty romance, the popularization of pengjue enabled a more flirtatious mode of love that combined male homosociability and heterosexual desire. Male patrons’ courtship of actresses was marked by frivolity and performativity, as well as economic calculations. It deviated from the traditional ideal of qing and the New Culture notion of romantic love and thus aroused intense criticism from conservatives and reformists alike. However, this article argues that the practice of pengjue created an alternative affective sphere for performing gender, contesting social norms, and exploring new forms of love in the public space of commercial theater and in everyday life.

Paying attention to the research of Daniel Hanbury (1825–75), whose scientific practice revolved around names, languages and their translations of Chinese materia medica, this article discusses the centrality of names development of drug knowledge in nineteenth-century Britain. Along with the collection of material specimens, names both in transliteration and in Chinese characters were gathered locally through correspondence networks. On the other hand, names within older texts that had hitherto remained disparate were reclaimed by the nineteenth-century effort to consult and collate earlier accounts of each item. As such, the collection, identification and translation of names constituted an integral part of the process of making Chinese materia medica recognizable within a new system of universal scientific knowledge. Hanbury’s extensive efforts collating and streamlining numerous names demonstrates that the early makings of scientific drug knowledge relied heavily upon a series of textual practices and peculiar modes of knowledge brokerage that straddled distant points of time and space.

The policemen in the French Concession of Shanghai were mainly composed of French, Russian, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Through a comparative study of recruiting conditions, training courses, salaries, welfare, and job turnover, I establish that the police were a hierarchical institution based on a differentiated treatment according to race and nationality. The French policemen stood at the top of the pyramid, with the lowest number but the most influence. The Russians were cheap white labor forces and constituted the second highest class of the police. The Vietnamese and Chinese policemen were at the bottom of the pyramid and constituted the majority of the policemen in the Concession.

Known as the wife of the famous British merchant Mr. Archibald John Little, Mrs. Archibald Little left many writings on local Chinese customs and cultures. However, more renowned is her consistent advocacy for Chinese women’s emancipation from foot binding, not only by establishing a “Natural Feet Society” in Shanghai, but also by giving numerous anti-footbinding speeches in Chinese cities. One particularly noticeable speech was given in Hong Kong in 1900. It received significant reactions from different social groups. Using Mrs. Little’s own memoir and Hong Kong media coverage, we may be able to reveal the intertwined discursive competition surrounding the anti-footbinding movement. Motivated by a sense of mission to “enlighten,” Mrs. Little was a self-aware “civilized” savior. However, local newspaper reports on her anti-footbinding tour reflected little about the clash of civilizations but their exaggerated concern on the national subjugation and genocide. These two interpretations joined a competition to explain the anti-footbinding movement in late Qing China.

During the May Fourth New Cultural Movement, three debates on new/Western and old/Chinese cultures were respectively carried out between the journal New Youth and Lin Qinnan, Chen Duxiu and Du Yaquan, as well as Zhang Dongsun and Fu Sinian. New Youth, Chen Duxiu and Zhang Dongsun were regarded as the “new school,” whereas their opponents “the old new-intellectuals.” The difference between them lies in their attitudes towards traditions instead of their new or old knowledge. After three heated debates, New Youth won a total victory in big cities, because the so-called “urban youths” needed a radical cultural reform plan and a simple guide for action. On the contrary, “town youths” who lived in small cities and towns did not care about the attitudinal difference of two sides. They paid more attention to absorbing new knowledge from both sides and were more sympathetic to tradition.