This dissertation investigates the development of the soft drink market in China from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, with particular attention to the rise of Coca-Cola. It examines how soft drinks competed with traditional Chinese summer food and beverage such as watermelons, herbal tea, plum juice, and nutriments which were believed to have medical properties for people’s summer health, and eventually became one of the most popular types of beverages in the country. Over one hundred years in the Chinese minds, soft drinks changed from an exotic but unsavory beverage to a popular drink and a symbol of modernity. This dissertation argues that western science competing with traditional Chinese medicine has been a driving force in shaping beverage consumption in modern China. There were constant politics played by the state, businesses, and consumers on production, marketing, and consumption of soft drinks, making a bottle of drink not merely a commodity but one that embodied science, modernity, and identity in Chinese society. Following the introduction chapter, chapter 2 of the dissertation delineates the clash between Chinese and western food culture in the late nineteenth century. It shows how traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) including the yin-yang theory and the concept of medicine-food homology played a role in shaping Chinese food culture for centuries. By analyzing advertisement, chapter 3 examines how soft drinks, which were considered by Chinese people as an unpleasant and unhealthy drink according to TCM, were marketed and gradually accepted as a hygienic and healthy drink under the rhetoric of modernization. Since foreign-brands such as Coca-Cola were luxuries, cheap imitations provided ordinary Chinese people, especially urbanites, opportunities to experience “modernity.” Chapter 4 discusses the culture of imitation in modern China in regard of soft drinks. In the first half of the twentieth century, consumption were politicized in National Products Movements, in which soft drink brands were categorized into either Chinese or foreign and people’s loyalty to the nation was, to some extent, judged by their brand choice. However, there was something far more than nationalism that played a role in the picture. Taking the Shanghai Coca-Cola protest of 1947 as a case study, chapter 5 reveals that Chinese nationalism in National Products Movements in the late forties was used by Chinese businessmen to advance themselves in business competition. When political conflicts became a major theme in Maoist China, Coca-Cola was criticized as a symbol of imperialism and driven out of China. Nevertheless, science-driven consumption did not fade away. Chapter 6 shows that instead of promoting Coca-Cola, the People’s Republic of China “invented” salty soda as a prevention and treatment of heat stroke and widely distributed it among workers as a socialist welfare in summer. The final chapter discusses the return of Coca-Cola in the post-Mao era. It shows that science and modernity was a consistent subject in production and consumption in China, where the state promoted it cautiously due to political sensibility while ordinary Chinese people embraced it enthusiastically with little resistance.

published_or_final_version / Fine Arts / Master / Master of Philosophy

This study examines how the concept of tragedy has been introduced and has negotiated itself into modern Chinese literary discourse during a time period of thirty-two years from 1917 to 1949. Taking into consideration the simultaneous development of a modern Chinese literary tradition, this study concentrates on the relationship between the discourse on one particular genre and the discourse on literature as a whole during the process of reception of an alien literary concept and its influence on indigenous literature. Modern Chinese intellectuals interpret the concept of tragedy from two main aspects: one is in the theatrical domain where tragedy functions as a dramatic form closely related to the emergence of a new genre in Chinese literature, namely, the spoken drama (huaju); the other is in the aesthetic domain where tragedy (or more specifically, the tragic) operates as a literary or philosophical idea and offers possibilities for the development of this notion in non-dramatic literature. This dual-focus approach is fundamental in the formation of a modern Chinese discourse on tragedy, as a paralleled line of arguments concerning these two aspects remains visible in the modern period. The major influence from foreign intellectual tradition on modern Chinese perception of tragedy takes the shape of two pairs of different perspectives, namely, literary utilitarianism and literary aestheticism in theoretical discussions, corresponding to realism and romanticism in literary creativity. These two pairs of perspectives set the tone for modern Chinese understanding of the concept of tragedy: literary utilitarianism and literary aestheticism focus respectively on the foremost importance of tragedy’s practical utility in social progression, or of tragedy’s aesthetic function to offer emotional cleansing to the audience; realism and romanticism debate the intricate relation between tragedy and social reality that besieged several generations of writers throughout the Republican era. It is noticeable that these viewpoints have not developed in a balanced way, as a pragmatic realist perspective has prevailed in both theory and practice, while the aesthetic/romantic pursuit being either rejected or incorporated into the ultimate thematic concern with social reformation and national salvation. This study abstracts the idea of the tragic from its dramatic form in examining the cross-genre and multidisciplinary development of the concept of tragedy in modern Chinese literary tradition. The main body of the thesis contains four chapters. The first chapter sets the scope of this study by clarifying several terminologies that are key to approach the long-lasting debates on whether there is a Chinese tragedy in 20th-century Chinese literary discourse. The second chapter focuses on the period of the New Culture Movement from 1917 to 1927, when the counter-traditional and iconoclastic agenda dominates the overall literary field and associates tragedy largely with literature’s functional role in social criticism. The third chapter examines theories and writings produced from 1928 to 1937, when the perspective of pragmatic realism prevails the reading of the tragic due to the strengthened connection between literature and politics. The fourth chapter centres on the wartime literary expression of the tragic from 1937 to 1949, when the Anti-Japanese War homogenises the literary subjects with an overt and unified political theme to inspire the people with optimism and fighting spirit. By exploring the possible factors that differentiate modern Chinese tragic perception from its foreign counterparts, this study investigates and demonstrates the constant interplay among several cultural, social, and political factors in affecting the formation of a modern critical discourse on tragedy.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Architecture / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis aims to explore translation theory in modern China to shed light on the thought of inter-culturality through translation in the age of globalization, focussing on the works of Lu Xun and Qian Zhongshu. This paper attempts to unveil the constitution of modernization, the cultural way of crossing boundary, and the construction of imaginary otherness. The first chapter examines the methodological problems of translation in Lu Xun and Qian Zhongshu, separately, to demonstrate their contributions to Chinese modern translation theory from aesthetic viewpoints. The second chapter discusses the purpose of translation, investigating the cultural meaning of boundary crossing in translation. The third chapter examines the problems of the translatability and untranslatability from Lu Xun’s and Qian Zhongshu’s aspects, by contrasting with the concept of differences and translatability in post-structuralism theory, discussing the possibilities of mutual understanding between two cultures and languages through the imagined other in translation.

This thesis aims to explore translation theory in modern China to shed light on the thought of inter-culturality through translation in the age of globalization, focussing on the works of Lu Xun and Qian Zhongshu. This paper attempts to unveil the constitution of modernization, the cultural way of crossing boundary, and the construction of imaginary otherness. The first chapter examines the methodological problems of translation in Lu Xun and Qian Zhongshu, separately, to demonstrate their contributions to Chinese modern translation theory from aesthetic viewpoints. The second chapter discusses the purpose of translation, investigating the cultural meaning of boundary crossing in translation. The third chapter examines the problems of the translatability and untranslatability from Lu Xun’s and Qian Zhongshu’s aspects, by contrasting with the concept of differences and translatability in post-structuralism theory, discussing the possibilities of mutual understanding between two cultures and languages through the imagined other in translation.

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Philosophy

abstract: This study takes biophysics--a relatively new field with complex origins and contested definitions--as the research focus and investigates the history of disciplinary formation in twentieth-century China. The story of building a scientific discipline in modern China illustrates how a science specialty evolved from an ambiguous and amorphous field into a full-fledged academic discipline in specific socio-institutional contexts. It focuses on archival sources and historical writings concerning the constitution and definition of biophysics in order to examine the relationship between particular scientific styles, national priorities, and institutional opportunities in the People's Republic of China. It argues that Chinese biophysicists exhibited a different style of conceiving and organizing their discipline by adapting to the institutional structure and political economy that had been created since 1949. The eight chapters demonstrate that biophysics as a scientific discipline flourished in China only where priorities of science were congruent with political and institutional imperatives. Initially consisting of cell biologists, the Chinese biophysics community redirected their disciplinary priorities toward rocket science in the late 1950s to accommodate the national need of the time. Biophysicists who had worked on biological sounding rockets were drawn to the military sector and continued to contribute to human spaceflight in post-Mao China. Besides the rocket-and-space missions which provided the material context for biophysics to expand in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chinese biophysicists also created research and educational programs surrounding biophysics by exploiting the institutional opportunities afforded by the policy emphasis on science's role to drive modernization. Biophysics' tie to nationalistic and utilitarian goals highlights the merits of approaching modern Chinese history from disciplinary, material, and institutional perspectives. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology 2014

published_or_final_version / Geography / Master / Master of Arts in China Development Studies

The 1924-1927 United Front period has long been understood within a civil war context. The major revolutionaries of ethnic Han origins and the myriad of Comintern advisors that played significant roles have subsequently all been evaluated in those terms. My work decenters the civil war narrative in order to dislodge the rigid labels that have historically accompanied the identities of the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party. When re-evaluating the activities of the First United Front as a loosely defined tactical alliance, the White Terror -perpetrated by the GMD onto Communists and their affiliated members – then becomes a moment of permanent dichotomization of Communist and Nationalists groups. Analyzing the activities of the First United Front without rigid Communist and Nationalists labels, aids in clarifying the organizations actions. Moreover, when viewing these activities within the broader context of a global anti-colonial movement, the shared goals of the tactical alliance become more comparable to many of the ideological tenets driving self-determination in the twentieth century.