Fashioning Femininity: Shao Xunmei, Zhang Guangyu and Transnational Print Culture in Republican-era Shanghai

The first half of the twentieth century saw a graphic turn, marked by the rapid development of printing and entertainment industries. Treaty-port cities like Shanghai provided an optimal platform for cross-cultural communication through printing media. This paper aims to examine the representations of females in interwar Shanghai by analyzing the collaboration between cosmopolitan intellectual Shao Xunmei and graphic artists Zhang Guangyu. Shao, a publisher and poet, became a cultural ambassador after his travels and studies in Europe, bringing European fin-de-sciele publishing culture to China. His relationship with the artist-editors’ circle bridged the gap between elites and masses, as well as fine art and commercial art. However, their contribution to modern visual culture in China has been significantly understudied. By analyzing their publication Xiaojie xuzhi (What the Ladies Need to Know), this paper seeks to interpret how the book attempted to cultivate a female readership and challenge the conventional role of women. The research situates their publication in a broader context of proliferating media culture, including women’s magazines, commercials, calendar posters, theater, and movies, under the influences of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Through analysis of the editorial practices of Shao Xunmei and Zhang Guangyu, this paper examines how they cultivate a female readership, establish a visual identity, and complicate the gender discourse in the Republican era.