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Abstract
This paper examines and problematizes complex relationships among war, the construction of “children,” and pursuit of national salvation and modernity in wartime China through case studies of children's traveling troupes. Children have received less attention than women and the masses in relation to modern Chinese literature and culture: wartime conceptions of children can contribute to rethinking ideas about orphan and refugee children's role in the national rescue movement during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945). Influential reformer Tao Xingzhi's radical educational philosophy of “little teachers” liberated children's power and organized them for war propaganda. Shaped into a potent cultural symbol, self-administered children's troupes like the Xin'an Traveling Troupe and the Children's Drama Troupe demonstrated the politicization of Tao's slogan “Life is Education.” The children's “long march,” narratives of their travel experience, and amateur performances became a political means to educate themselves as responsible citizens and motivate the nation in wartime.
Acknowledgments
I thank Kristin Stapleton, editor of Twentieth-Century China, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.
Notes on Contributor
Xu Lanjun is an assistant professor in the Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include the cultural history of children in modern China, opera films in socialist China, and Chinese pop culture in Cold War Asia. She has just completed a book manuscript entitled “The Child and Chinese Modernity: Culture, Nation and Technologies of Childhood in Modern China.”
Notes
1 For example, Su Sun's novel Xiao Laili (Shangahi: Yibao tushubu, 1939) was based on the experiences of Xin'an Traveling Troupe members.
2 Chang-Tai Hung uses this concept to describe the emerging popular culture during the period of the War of Resistance in his War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
3 Hung, War and Popular Culture, 270–85.
4 Robert Culp. “Rethinking Governmentality: Training, Cultivation, and Cultural Citizenship in Nationalist China,” Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 3 (August 2006): 529–54.
5 M. Colette Plum, “Lost Childhoods in a New China: Child-Citizen-Workers at War, 1937–1945,” European Journal of East Asian Studies 11 (2012): 237–58.
6 For American scholarship on Tao Xingzhi, see Philip A. Kuhn, “T'ao Hsing-Chih, 1891–1946, An Educational Reformer,” Harvard Papers on China (East Asian Studies Program of Harvard University) 13 (1959): 163–95; Yusheng Yao, “Rediscovering Tao Xingzhi as an Educational and Social Revolutionary,” Twentieth-Century China 27, no. 2 (April 2002): 79–120; Yusheng Yao, “The Making of a National Hero: Tao Xingzhi's Legacies in the People's Republic of China,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 24, no. 2 (July–September 2002): 251–81.
7 Tao Xingzhi, “Jiaoyu de xinsheng” (Rebirth of education), Xinsheng (Rebirth) 1, no. 36 (1934).
8 Tao Xingzhi, “Shenghuo ji jiaoyu” (Life is education), in Tao Xingzhi quanji (Complete works of Tao Xingzhi) (Chengdu: Sichuan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1991), vol. 2, 7–8.
9 Tao Xingzhi, “Nanjing Anhui gongxue banxue zhiqu” (Guidelines on building Anhui public schools in Nanjing), in Tao Xingzhi quanji, vol. 1, 45.
10 Tao Xingzhi, “Xiju yu jiaoyu” (Drama and education), in Tao Xingzhi quanji, vol. 1, 282–3.
11 Yao Yusheng, “National Salvation through Education: Tao Xingzhi's Educational Radicalism” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1999), 137.
12 Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth-Century China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 93.
13 Tao Xingzhi, “Zenyang zuo xiaoxiansheng” (How to become little teachers), in Tao Xingzhi quanji, vol. 3, 223–42.
14 Barry Keenan, The Dewey Experiment in China: Education Reform and Political Power in the Early Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1977), 87.
15 Tao Xingzhi, “Xiao xiansheng yu minzhong jiaoyu” (Little teachers and the education of the masses), Shenghuo jiaoyu (Life education) 1, no. 20 (1934): 631.
16 Tao Xingzhi, “Minzu jiefang zhong xiaoxiansheng zhi shiming” (The mission of little teachers during the war of national liberation), in Tao Xingzhi quanji, vol. 3, 404.
17 In the essay “Zenyang zuo xiao xiansheng” (How to become little teachers), Tao Xingzhi clearly stated: “As for teaching characters to women, children are the most convenient [instructors] to do so.” Tao Xingzhi quanji, vol. 3, 666.
18 Xin'an Traveling Troupe, preface to Women lüxingji (Our travelogue) (Shanghai: Ertong shuju, 1935).
19 Xin'an Traveling Troupe, Women lüxingji, 22.
20 Xin'an Traveling Troupe, Women lüxingji, 23.
21 Xin'an Traveling Troupe, Women lüxingji, 23.
22 Tao Xingzhi to the Xin'an Traveling Troupe, July 1940, Xingzhi shuxinji (Collection of Xingzhi's letters) (Anhui: Anhui jiaoshu chubanshe, 1983), 253.
23 “Huai'an Xin'an xiaoxue wei shiyan jiben xuesheng changtu xiuxue lüxingtuan xuanyan” (Declaration of the conducting of an experiment to form a long-distance traveling and learning student group at Xin'an Elementary School in Huai'an), Shenghuo jiaoyu 2, no. 19 (1935): 30–2.
24 Xin'an Traveling Troupe, Women lüxingji, 9.
25 Zhang Jie, “Wo canjia Xin'an lüxingtuan de mudi he jingguo” (How and why I participated in the Xin'an Traveling Troupe), Xin shaonian (New youth) 1, no. 11 (1936): 79–80.
26 Bai Limin, Shaping the Ideal Child: Children and Their Primers in Late Imperial China (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2005), viii.
27 Editorial Board of Collections of Materials on the Children's Drama Troupe (hereafter abbreviated EBCM), ed., Zai Zhanhuo fenfei de niandai (In times of war) (Beijing: 1996), 60.
28 “Gaobie Shanghai” (Farewell to Shanghai), in EBCM, Zai Zhanhuo fenfei de niandai, 80.
29 “Haizi jutuan wunian dashiji” (A five-year chronicle of the Children's Drama Troupe), in EBCM, Zai Zhanhuo fenfei de niandai, 481.
30 Haizi jutuan: cong Shanghai dao Wuhan (The Children's Drama Troupe: from Shanghai to Wuhan) (Hankou: Dalu shudian, 1938).
31 Lin Mu, “Sannian lai de haizi jutuan: jinian haizi jutuan de san zhounian” (The past three years of the Children's Drama Troupe: in memory of three anniversaries of the Children's Drama Troupe), Kangzhan ertong (Children during the War of Resistance) 1, no. 6, repr. in EBCM, Zai Zhanhuo fenfei de niandai, 201.
32 “Diaries,” in EBCM, Zai Zhanhuo fenfei de niandai, 403–32.
33 Children's Art Theater of the China Welfare Institute, ed., Zhongguo ertong xiju shi (History of Chinese children's drama) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 2003), 46.
34 Zhang Zao, “Kangzhan zhong de ertong xiju” (Children's drama in the War of Resistance), Xiju chunqiu (Spring and autumn of drama) 1, no. 1 (1940).
35 Andrew Jones has explored the contribution of Li Jinhui as a pioneer in the development of children's drama in China: “His efforts to popularize Mandarin Chinese on a national level led to the promulgation and wide distribution of language textbooks throughout China. He was the editor of one of the first (and certainly the most successful) Chinese magazines published exclusively for children, Little Friend (Xiao pengyou). It was in the pages of Little Friend that he published the first of a series of 12 innovative children's operas designed to promote aesthetic education (meiyu), good citizenship, and the use of Mandarin as a national language.” Andrew F. Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2001), 75.
36 For more details, see Zhang Yu, "Visual and Theatrical Constructs of a Modern Life in the Countryside: James Yen, Xiong Foxi, and the Rural Reconstruction Movement in Ding County (1920s–1930s),” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 47–95.
37 Yang Cunbin, “Ertongjie Chengdu ertong kangdi huodong” (Children's War of Resistance activities in Chengdu on Children's Day), Zhanshi xiju (Drama in wartime) 1, no. 3 (1938): 3.
38 Xiong Foxi, “Ertong shijie xu” (Preface to Children's World), Wenyi yuekan (Literary monthly) 4–5 (1937): 80–1.
39 Yang, “Ertongjie Chengdu ertong kangdi huodong,” 4–10.
40 Yang, “Ertongjie Chengdu ertong kangdi huodong,” 5.
41 A few of the famous plays the Children's Drama Troupe performed on stage in this period can be found in Chen Mo and Cao Daqing, ed., Haizi jutuan kangzhan ertongju jiazuoxuan (Collection of the best plays performed by the Children's Drama Troupe during the war) (Shanghai: Shaonian ertong chubanshe, 1995).
42 Xi Lide, “Leyuan jinxing qu paiyan riji” (Diary of rehearsal of the play March of the Happy Garden), in EBCM, Zai Zhanhuo fenfei de niandai, 224.
43 Hong Shen, “Leyuan jingxing qu yanchu shuoming” (Guideline on the performance of March of the Happy Garden), Kangzhan yishu (Arts in wartime) 5 (1941). Cited in EBCM, Zai Zhanhuo fenfei de niandai, 220.
44 It was originally published in Xin Jiangsu bao (The new Jiangsu daily), October 15, 1935. I borrow this information from Lü Xingdou, ed., Minzu xiao haoshou: Xin'an lüxing tuan shiliao xuan (Little national trumpeter: collections of historical materials on Xin'an Traveling Troupe) (Beijing: Chunqiu chubanshe, 1989), 38.
45 “Kan women yiqun xiao guanggun, kan women yiqun xiao zhuren” (Look at us little bachelors, look at our group of little masters), Xinmin bao (The new citizen's daily), January 10, 1939.
46 The educator Dong Renjian published an essay, “Xiao xuesheng lüxing quanguo” (Little students travel all over the nation), in the journal Ertong jiaoyu (Children's education). I cite his arguments from Tao Xingzhi's essay “Erxi yu erjiao” (Children's games and children's education), Shenghuo jiaoyu 2, no. 7 (1935): 264–5.
47 Tao, “Erxi yu erjiao,” 265.
48 During this period, the National Association for Refugee Children, led by Madame Chiang, was the most important national institution created to protect refugee children, who were considered the seedlings of the nation. It played the role of both family and school. But many war orphans fell outside such protection and wandered the streets.
49 Tao Xingzhi, “Cong jinnian de ertongjie dao mingnian de ertongjie” (From this year's Children's Day to next year's), Shenghuo jiaoyu 15 (1934).