Fashioning Chinese History and Culture --A Comparison Analysis of Eileen Chang’s “Chinese Life and Fashions” and “Geng Yi Ji” 1943

Abstract

This paper focuses on two articles by the Shanghai-born writer Eileen Chang. Written in January and December 1943 respectively, “Chinese Life and Fashions” was created for the English language, Shanghai-based magazine The XXth Century, “Geng Yi Ji” was produced for the Chinese Magazine Gu Jin (Past and resent). Both the English and Chinese articles outlined the history of traditional Chinese fashion, and the English article “Chinese Life and Fashions” contained hand-drawn illustrations by Chang. Both articles were for some time thought by academics to contain largely the same content and were considered as a single unit. Further evaluation of the content has demonstrated that these articles are far more complex and nuanced and therefore are considerably different in character; rather than providing a straightforward historical narrative “Geng Yi Ji” aims to demonstrate the evolution of Chinese fashions and then uses this to argue for the abandonment of traditional fashions. It provides a comparison in order to demonstrate how Chang‟s writing on fashion for two popular magazines gave her an ideal opportunity to set out her argument for two entirely separate audiences in this paper. It also highlights how the two articles have continued to affect popular approaches (in China and in the West) to traditional Chinese fashion. The Introduction of “Chinese life and fashions” and “Geng Yi Ji” Eileen Chang published her article “Chinese Life and Fashions” in the English-language magazine The XXth Century in January 1943. [1] She published three articles on this magazine, all of them were published in 1943, and „Chinese Life and Fashions‟ was Chang‟s first article in this magazine. The XXth Century magazine was supported by the German Foreign Office, and ran from 1941 to 1945. It was born under the condition of war in summer 1941, as the spreading of the European war isolated East Asia from the west world. And also, it was ended with the end of the war. “Chinese Life and Fashions” talked about Chinese fashion and culture in different period, such as the Republic Period, Qing dynasty, Song dynasty, Tang dynasty, Han dynasty, even Qin dynasty. It should be clarified that Eileen Chang only mentioned hairstyles of Song dynasty, Tang dynasty, Han dynasty and Qin dynasty, no fashion. The main content of this article was Chinese women‟s fashion revolution from Qing dynasty to the Republic Period. For “Geng Yi Ji”, almost every reference indicated that “Chinese Life and Fashions” is the original copy of “Geng Yi Ji”, which was published on the magazine Gu Ji, December 1943. [2] In 1940s, Eileen Chang was very famous. Zhou Li‟an, the editor of Gu Jin, asked Eileen Chang to write an article for Gu Jin. Thus, Eileen Chang rewrote “Chinese Life and Fashions” to “Geng Yi Ji” and published it in Gu Jin. It didn‟t mean that Eileen Chang paid little attention to “Geng Yi Ji” than “Chinese Life and Fashions”. Through she described fashion more detailed in “Chinese Life and Fashions” than “Geng Yi Ji”. It was reasonable, firstly, Eileen Chang already described Chinese fashion in “Chinese Life and Fashions” very significant, when she descried the fashion again in “Geng Yi Ji”, she paid more attention on the fashion culture and explored Chinese personality through fashion. Secondly, Chinese people were more familiar with Chinese fashion than western people, so Eileen Chang needn‟t to describe it very detailed. 4th International Conference on Social Science and Contemporary Humanity Development (SSCHD 2018) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 281