The Cultural Imaginary of “Middle Society” in Early Republican Shanghai

The Notion of Middle Society and Its Crisis

The notion of “middle society” 中等社会 or 中等阶级 originated from the discussion of the changing roles of scholars during the late Qing reform and referred specifically to a group of intellectuals who attempted to negotiate between the dynasty “above” and the common people “below” (Judge, 1996). With the growth of an industrial economy and foreign trade in the early twentieth century, the traditional division between scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants 士农工商, with merchants occupying the lowest rung on the ladder of social status, became blurred and faced challenges from emerging social groups. The composition of middle society expanded to include the emerging bourgeoisie and middle-income professionals. Chinese scholars have pointed out that the term “middle society” appeared in print media as early as 1902 in Liang Qichao’s 梁启超 (1873–1929) New Citizens 新民说, and was used by reformers to promote the Anti-Russian movement. ³ In his writing on the history of Athens, Liang Qichao defines middle society as “officials who are not distinguished, scholars who do not take official positions, and merchants who live a well-off life,” and points out that middle society in the West took the lead in promoting reforms because neither the upper class nor the lower class could play this leadership role (Liang, 1999 [1902]: 878). Early references to middle society were mostly associated with Western society. However, some Chinese writers began using this concept to discuss domestic issues. An article appearing in 1903 indicates that the majority of middle society in Hunan province were scholar-officials 士, but it also consisted of those who ranked between scholar-officials and merchants, and between scholar-officials and professionals (Chen, 1992: 258). Echoing Liang’s view on the political role of middle society, Yuan Yun 愿云 (Jiang Zhiyou 蒋智由, 1865–1929), Liang’s fellow reformer, observed that “nowadays in China, those who talk about reform are all educated people from middle society” (Yuan, 1903). ⁴ Late-Qing reformists viewed middle society as a sociopolitical power that had the potential to bring about social change.

The concept of the “middle class” in 1920s print media, however, followed two distinct trends—the socialist analysis of the bourgeoisie by New Culture writers and the realistic portrayal of Shanghai’s middle society in popular narratives. Using socialist ideas about class division and struggle, New Culture writers preferred to use the terms “middle-property class” 中产阶级 and “capitalist class” 资产阶级. Their use of chan 产 (property) and jieji 阶级 (class) was crucial since it was consistent with a Marxist emphasis on ownership of the means of production. New Culturalists and Chinese revolutionary socialists in the early 1920s, including Li Dazhao (1888–1927), Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), and Cai Hesen (1895–1931), made substantial use of print media (such as New Youth 新青年, Guide 向导, and Reform 改造) to introduce and publicize the Marxist theory of class conflict, define the bourgeoisie in relation to other social classes, and call for revolutionary action. Mao Zedong’s (1893–1976) 1926 article “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” 中国社会各阶级的分析, in which he defined and differentiated between “big capitalists” 大资产阶级, the bourgeoisie 中产阶级, and the petty bourgeoisie 小资产阶级, and analyzed each group’s weaknesses and attitudes toward revolution in China (Mao, 1926), ⁵ established a fundamental framework for both class struggle theory and socialist revolution for the following decades.

In contrast to politically laden terms like zhongchan jieji 中产阶级 and zichan jieji 资产阶级, popular media used the more neutral term zhongdeng shehui 中等社会 or zhongdeng jieji 中等阶级, which often referred to urban economically intermediate social groups as opposed to a dominating upper class 上等社会 and a dominated lower class 下等社会. This preference for expository and matter-of-fact language deemphasized any political connotations. It was within this context that Li Guicheng 李贵诚 (Li Rumian 李儒勉, 1900–1956), a member of the Young China Association 少年中国学会, a group of young activists and college students, published “The Question of a Middle Society Union” 中等社会的联合问题. In this article, Li defines middle society as a social group occupying a stratum between capitalists 资本家 and manual laborers 劳动家, and as “people who have moderate earnings, including those who rely on rental income and small capital, and who receive a monthly or yearly income.” Unlike the laboring class, with its strong unions and benefits and wages that kept up with rising prices, middle society lived on a fixed income, and therefore suffered the most from inflation after World War I. Li then introduces the Middle Class Union founded in Britain in 1919, aiming to encourage readers to discover the power of middle society, “to raise awareness of China’s middle society, and to recognize our responsibility and potential to grow.” Li also calls for a comparable union in China to protect middle society’s rights, counter pernicious politicians, militarists and local gentry, guide the laboring class, and combat government corruption (Li, 1920: 53–54). Li’s article is a modern attempt to employ Western theories of social stratification in analyzing the identity and social status of China’s middle class. It expressed Li’s hope that the middle class would unite to protect its interests and foster social change.

There was vigorous media attention to the economic situation of Shanghai’s middle society in the 1920s, which shaped a vocabulary to make this emergent group comprehensible. By the early twentieth century Shanghai had become the largest metropolis in China and the national center of industry, finance, trade, and culture. With the growth of capitalism and the national economy in conjunction with an economic boom during World War I and its immediate aftermath came the emergence of the bourgeoisie (Bergère, 1989: 63–65). These years also saw the rise of new types of educated literati and modern intellectuals in Shanghai, many of whom were involved in the rapidly expanding publishing industry and the newly established modern education system. Replacing the role of the gentry and scholar-officials as leaders in traditional society, these new social groups rapidly gained economic power and cultural privilege. Alongside them emerged a large number of urbanites, often referred to as “petty urbanites” 小市民, who occupied the middle of the socioeconomic spectrum and who constituted the majority of so-called middle society in Shanghai. In other words, this middle society as defined by Li Guicheng occupied the socioeconomic space between capitalists and manual laborers. They were members of what we would today call the middle and lower-middle classes: small merchants, clerks, government workers, salespeople, school teachers, students, shopkeepers, and so on, all modestly educated and more or less financially comfortable (Link, 1981: 5). It has been estimated that in the mid-1930s about 40% (1.5 million) of Shanghai’s population were white-collar employees and their family members (Lu, 1999: 63–66). In contrast to the socialists’ definition of the “middle class” based on social stratification, the term “middle society” highlighted not only economic status, but also a sense of community in that the word “society” suggested the formation of a social group that shared a similar cultural background, living experiences, and social practices. Neither upper nor lower class, the majority of urban middle society came to be identified as occupying a middling economic and social position, and as people who pursued a middle-class way of living and shared common cultural values, subjects we will return to below.

Nevertheless, “middle society” was still a vague concept in popular media, referring more to a broad stratum of intermediate urban social groups with a relatively stable and modest income than to any particular group or its characteristics. A 1922 article entitled “The Life of Shanghai’s Middle Society” 上海中等社会的生计 by a writer who styled himself ZW Sheng (ZW生) compares the life of middle society with that of both the upper and lower classes in Shanghai. The author estimates a middle-society family’s monthly expenses, and maintains that many middle-society people, including those who “worked in offices and shops” and “as secretaries and salesclerks,” had difficulty making ends meet. Manual laborers could join a labor union or go on strike for higher wages, but middle-society people, lacking this kind of recourse and mettle, were obedient to their employers. The author also points out that these middle-society families were typically from declining large families or descendants of scholars’ families. As a result, they had to maintain what they considered a respectable life by spending enough on social networking, reading, and hiring maids; otherwise, they would lose their status (ZW, 1922).

As mentioned, by the early 1920s popular media paid considerable attention to these middle-society people. In 1911, Shenbao 申报 launched a supplement 副刊, “Free Talk” 自由谈, edited by prestigious popular writers such as Wang Dungen 王钝根 (1888–1950), Chen Diexian 陈蝶仙 (1879–1940), and Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鹃 (1884–1968). ⁶ “Free Talk” solicited contributions from both professional writers and the general public to provide light reading and discussion forums. The life of the emerging middle class in Shanghai was one of the discussion topics in “Free Talk.” Leo Ou-fan Lee’s and Jianhua Chen’s studies of “Free Talk” have demonstrated how popular media had an impact on the formation of public opinion and the “bourgeois public sphere” in early Republican Shanghai (Lee, 1993; Chen, 2009: 135–38). In 1921, a year after he had become the editor of “Free Talk,” Zhou Shoujuan launched a weekly special column entitled “Family Weekly” 家庭周刊, a public forum where popular writers discussed the middle-class “model family,” family ethics, marriage reform, women’s issues, and a variety of cultural and social topics in daily life. According to Jianhua Chen, these articles reflected “popular writers’ social consciousness and their collective imagination of the new nation-state” (Chen, 2009: 156–64). ⁷ An article entitled “The Family Livelihood of Middle Society” 中等社会之家计, which appeared in the ninth issue of “Family Weekly,” aimed to raise awareness of the problems facing middle society. Unlike ZW Sheng, who criticized Shanghai’s middle society for “not serving society,” the author Yu Xiang 俞湘 acknowledged the power of middle society in any human society irrespective of whether the country is rich or poor, and viewed middle society as the foundation of social stability. Because the majority of people belong to this middle society, Yu asserted, “the livelihood of middle society is the basis of the livelihood of a nation.” As he observed, the introduction of Western ideas and recent economic development in China, as well as the rising standard of living, had encouraged middle-society people to pursue luxuries and comfort, and changed the consumption habits and lives of moderately wealthy families: “Middle-society families are not rich, but they like to show off their wealth to look good; they are unable to endure hardships, and they pursue material and mental comfort. . . . They like to emulate the extravagant lifestyles [of the rich].” Yu warned that because of the pressure brought about by the fluctuation of prices of consumer goods and devaluation of the currency, middle-society families may be unable to maintain their standard of living and could lose their power as a social force, which would endanger the nation’s livelihood. In his opinion, the solution was to return to a simple and frugal life by cutting unnecessary expenses and saving money (Yu, 1921).

Both “The Life of Shanghai’s Middle Society” and “The Family Livelihood of Middle Society” seemed to be pessimistic about the future of China’s middle class, partially because of its shortcomings and partially because of the increasingly high cost of living in China’s cities. This representation of middle-society crisis revealed a growing sense of social and financial uncertainty shared by all of urban society. Describing people of middling rank as powerful yet vulnerable was part of a narrative on the middle class as well as a social critique. An illustration in Shenbao showed the hardships experienced by upper-, middle-, and lower-class families in Shanghai, each bearing substantial burdens of “rent,” “food,” and “clothing.” Yet the illustration also portrayed vividly the additional burdens borne by middle- and upper-class families: “socializing” by the former, and both “socializing” and “children’s tuition” by the latter. The higher one’s class, the more the baggage one carried (Figure 1). According to popular writers, middle-society families in particular suffered from a high level of social instability because of China’s volatile economy and lack of support from social institutions. The social and economic circumstances of the early 1920s forced some middle-society people into bankruptcy and relegated them to the lower classes.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

“The Livelihood of Shanghai’s Residents.” Shenbao, December 13, 1921.

Stories about struggling middle-society families in the journal Sunday echoed this fear and feeling of insecurity that gripped Shanghai’s middle society. Edited by Bao Tianxiao 包天笑 (1876–1973), Sunday was a weekly fiction magazine published in Shanghai between 1922 and 1923. A prolific mandarin ducks and butterflies school writer and translator, Bao was also a well-known journalist and editor of several popular literary journals in Shanghai, including Fiction Times 小说时报, Women’s Times 妇女时报, Fiction Pictorial 小说画报, and Sunday. ⁸ To attract urban readers, Sunday gathered a group of famous popular writers in Shanghai and published a number of stories centered on the difficulties of contemporary urban life. In a series of short stories dealing with the life of Shanghai’s middle society, middle-class people with modest resources were portrayed as victims of social disorder and economic instability, constantly facing the risk of losing their status. In “A Middle-Class Family” 一个中等阶级的人家, the author Buren 不忍 points out how the middle and lower classes respond to economic distress in different ways: “Because the poor own nothing, they can go anywhere, and they will move to other places if it is hard to make a living in Shanghai. However, middle-class families are different—they cannot afford an expensive way of life like rich families have . . . but unconsciously they are deeply influenced by extravagant lifestyles. Some might be able to put up with the dull life beyond the city; but those who cannot stand it are forced into heavy debt, which eventually will ruin their lives” (Buren, 1922).

To illustrate how people of the middling rank were forced into bankruptcy, the author provides a sketch of a typical middle-class family in Shanghai in an earthy, realistic style. The hero is 34-year-old Huang Yansheng, an office worker who has to put in long hours to support his family, which consists of Huang and his wife, their four children, and his aged mother. To find a good school for his children, he chooses to live far away from the company and commutes to work by bus. The family lives in a rented two-story alleyway house. An itemized list of expenses reveals the family’s struggle to survive:

Mr. Huang’s monthly salary is 60 kuai, which is barely sufficient to make ends meet: 10 kuai for transportation expenses, 10 kuai for rice, 15 kuai for other food, 6 kuai for the children’s tuition and education, 3 kuai to pay the servant, and 10 kuai for miscellaneous items; with occasional expenses for clothing, entertainment, socializing, and medicine, his life is even tougher.

To make matters worse, Mrs. Huang is shrewish, lazy, and greedy and does not manage the family’s budget well. After using up Mr. Huang’s mother’s savings, the whole family faces a crisis as the prices of rice, rent, and tuition in Shanghai all increase.

“A Middle-Class Family” presents Huang’s trouble not as a personal problem, but rather as a social problem. Huang is obliged to pay his rent every 29 days by the lunar calendar, yet his salary is paid monthly according to the Western calendar, which means he has to pay an extra month’s rent every three years. The author comments: “Capitalists’ calculations are more and more stringent and the life of common people is becoming worse and worse.” The story ends with a gloomy view of Huang’s circumstances: “The more his expenses increase, the deeper in debt he gets and the more miserable his situation becomes. There is no way he can get out of this!” (Buren, 1922). Struggling with a limited income and economic insecurity, Huang’s tribulations are a vivid example of the uncertain future facing urban middle society.

A similar story, “A Middle-Society Family” 一个中等社会的家庭 by Hu Huisheng 胡惠生 published by the Shanghai Thrift and Savings Society上海俭德储蓄会, employs the same realistic technique in portraying a lower-middle-class family in Shanghai. After the death of his parents, middle-aged Huang Renjie moves from the country to Shanghai with his family and finds a low-paying job in a trade company. The family struggles to pay for housing, food, clothing, their son’s education, and other basic needs. Fortunately, Huang has a loving and virtuous wife who is devoted to the small family and is willing to pawn her jewelry to help with household expenses (Hu, 1923). The focus of the narrative is primarily on the couple’s discussions about the family’s expenses, and as the story unfolds through conversations, readers gain insight into the characters’ thoughts and views. Unlike the objective description of Huang Yansheng’s deteriorating family situation in the previous story, in this story the narrator shows more sympathy for the family “oppressed by money,” and implies that love, family happiness, and a good education can give middle-society families some solace.

The family plays a central role in the fictional representation of Shanghai’s middle society. In these stories, the middle-class family as both a social and an economic unit received more attention than the individual middle-class experience. The search for middle-class identity involved the quest for companionate marriage, a small family, a new family order, and financial independence. Focusing on the quotidian experience of middle society and financial insecurity, both of the stories discussed above generalized the plight of ordinary middle-class families in Shanghai, made worse by rural-urban migration, rising inflation and the cost of living, and the cultural changes these entailed.

Bao Tianxiao, the editor of Sunday, published a series of short stories portraying an array of middle-society characters in Shanghai. His “Mourning in Bansong Garden” 淞园弔影, for example, portrays the tragedy that befalls a migrant middle-class family. According to Bao, the story was meant to expose “the tragedy of the middle class trapped in economic despair” and to express sympathy for Shanghai’s struggling middle-class families. Based on a true story, “Mourning in Bansong Garden” begins with a pessimistic view of middle society: “People living inland all want to have a career in Shanghai, and middle-class people in particular dream of living in Shanghai. But many young people become disillusioned.” The hero, Yu Lianhang, is one of them. A native of Zhejiang, he moves to Shanghai after he gets a job with the Shanghai Railroad Bureau. Although his salary doubles, he finds it difficult to make ends meet since the cost of living in the city is much higher. Yu seeks help from a rich relative, who takes on Mrs. Yu as a companion for his wife and a babysitter, but never really helps Yu find a better job. Soon Yu’s family falls into debt. Seeing no way out, the debt-ridden Yu commits suicide. In a suicide note, he writes: “I cannot support my family, and I cannot handle worldly affairs in these troubled times. I am a man, and I would rather die now and give up everything than live without dignity” (Bao, 1922f).

Bao noted that the fictional Yu Lianhang was modeled after Xu Jizhou, a middle-class man who drowned himself in the pond of Shanghai’s Bansong Garden. Xu’s death was briefly reported in the “Local News” section of Shenbao. According to the report, Xu, a 35-year-old employee of the Bureau of the Shanghai-Ningbo Railroad, had left a death note stating that he was committing suicide because he was depressed over his low pay and heavy debt (Shenbao, August 10, 1922). Over a month later, Bao incorporated the news into his story, in which he expresses great sympathy for the protagonist. In reconstructing Yu’s tragedy, Bao emphasizes the protagonist’s financial predicament and the degradation and humiliation that he suffered. Bao also points out that Xu Jizhou, the model for Yu, was not only a man driven to suicide by his circumstances but also a talented writer. In order to mourn the loss of a fellow writer, Sunday reprinted a story by Xu about an artisan taking revenge on his rich and ill-tempered employer. In a preface to Xu’s story, Bao Tianxiao identifies with Xu as a member of middle society and calls attention to the crisis of the middle class: “The God of Death is after us, and we middle-class people have to find a solution” (Xu, 1922). In another story by Bao, entitled “Scarlet” 猩红 (1922b), a middle-class family of three is literally caught by the “God of Death,” as they all die of infectious diseases after moving to Shanghai. In these stories, Bao presents himself as a spokesman of middle society, believing that society at large should be held responsible for the downfall of middle-class people with very limited social resources, like Yu Lianhang, because it fails to provide the prospect of financial stability and social equilibrium.

In these stories about middle-society life in Shanghai, middle-class people were portrayed as powerless and unable to defend themselves from exploitation by the rich and powerful. Educated, having some marketable skills and a modest social network, they sought white-collar careers in order to live a respectable life in the city. Despite these assets, they were often on the edge of bankruptcy. These stories shared the same setting, Shanghai, a city that attracted middle-class families by offering new opportunities and an urban lifestyle. The rising cost of living and stiff competition for jobs, however, brought enervating challenges, financial pressure, and anxiety. The downfall of middle-class people in these stories was often accompanied by their disillusionment with the “Shanghai dream,” a literary theme that can be traced back to late nineteenth-century “courtesan novels” such as Sun Yusheng’s serialized novel Dreams of Glory in Shanghai 海上繁华梦. In this novel, set in late Qing Shanghai, the main character, a well-to-do Suzhou scholar named Du Shaomu, is drawn to the city by its pleasures and promise of wealth, but still keeps a home in his hometown, to which he returns after his dream of romance and money is dashed (Sun, 1991 [1898–1906]). However, in stories of the middle-class crisis in the 1920s, one’s native place did not offer complete security nor comfort for people who moved to the city and lived on a meager income. Yu Lianhang in “Mourning in Bansong Garden,” for instance, tries to exploit his native-place ties and builds his hope on assistance from his rich relative, who, in the end, takes advantage of Yu’s situation and denies his pleas for help. Losing both the shelter and identity provided by one’s native place, migrants pursuing a middle-class life in Shanghai experienced an additional dimension of vulnerability and devastation, one where personal and financial displacement reinforced each another.

Bao Tianxiao’s “Utopian Stories”: Advertising the Virtues of Middle Society

The tragedy of Yu Lianhang in Bao Tianxiao’s story was emblematic of the ambivalence and insecurity felt by middle-class Chinese. The middle-society crisis led to a search for a sense of identity and cohesion among urban people of middling ranks. The representation of middle society was sometimes pessimistic, as discussed earlier, and other times more sanguine. A vision of the future of middle-class society appeared in a series of utopian stories published in Sunday in 1922. In these stories, Bao Tianxiao describes an ideal urban society built on the values and virtues of middle society. Set in China thirty years in the future, these stories center on the travels of a perfect middle-class couple from Kunshan, in Jiangsu, an engineer and inventor named Sun Huayang and his wife. In “A Mobile Home” 活动的家, “West Lake in Thirty Years” 三十年后之西湖, “A New Way of Dining” 适馆授餐的新方式, “A Vegetarian Dinner Party” 素餐会, and “The Cooperative Store” 合作大商店 (Bao, 1922a, 1922c, 1922d, 1922e, 1922g), the couple travels to Hangzhou in their “mobile home,” a travel trailer designed and built by Sun himself for his honeymoon. It contains a small kitchen and a well-furnished bedroom that can be converted into a study, with electricity, heat, and a wireless phone. The couple is delighted with China’s convenient transportation network, as “good roads and clean streets are essential parts of a nation’s culture.” On their trip to Hangzhou, they note the great changes and improvement in the country: parks, sport fields, restaurants, and theaters flank the highways; wasteland has been transformed into fertile fields; environmental degradation has been stopped; and social inequality has been reduced. In Hangzhou, they are impressed by the great social and environmental changes brought about by urbanization and industrialization: the natural scenery and historical sites are well preserved, private parks around West Lake have been opened to the public, rickshaws and sedan-chairs have been replaced by automobiles, educational opportunities are available to everyone regardless of gender and age, and local self-government has been implemented. West Lake Hotel and everything associated with it—modern libraries and post offices; buffet-style eateries; advanced transportation, banking, and communication systems—signify the essence of modern urban life: convenience, comfort, and affordability (Bao, 1922a, 1922c).

Bao Tianxiao’s utopian stories struck a chord with Sunday’s readers. Judging by readers’ responses, “The Mobile Home” attracted the most public interest. Sunday soon published a short essay with a photo of “a real mobile home” sent in by a reader, who pointed out that a vehicle exactly like the one Bao described in the story had been designed by an American farmer, and a photo of such a mobile home had been published a year earlier in American Road magazine (Figure 2). “If the price of housing continues to rise in Shanghai,” the reader concludes, “people may follow the example of the American farmer and build more mobile homes” (Gu, 1922). In Sunday’s discussion forum “Random Talks on Fiction” 小说杂谈, one of the discussants, Dai Meng’ou 戴梦鸥 (Dai Wangshu 戴望舒, 1905–1950), comments that stories about an ideal future can get at the root of social problems because they “herald a new society and culture, and provide guidance for social change.” Dai pinpoints the value of Bao Tianxiao’s “A Mobile Home” and “West Lake in Thirty Years”: these stories convey a message of social reform (Xingqi no. 16, 1922).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

“A Real Mobile Home!” Sunday, no. 7, 1922.

So-called utopian stories (or “stories of ideals,” 理想小说) were a popular fiction genre that emerged in the late Qing dynasty and fantasized about China’s future. Unlike late Qing political utopian novels, ⁹ Bao Tianxiao’s utopian stories in Sunday lacked both a political agenda and the element of fantasy. Instead, they focused on immanent changes in everyday life in urban society and provided a middle-class-centered vision of Chinese society of the future—a civilized society of abundance made possible by economic modernization and capitalistic development, supporting a new set of social ethics such as cooperation and social equality. In the series of stories following Sun Huayang’s travels in future China, Bao imagines China as a society free of social inequality and polarization. It is a society that ensures material progress, technological advancements, and moral, intellectual, and artistic growth. Public virtues and civic awareness were central to Bao’s urban utopian stories. In Bao’s utopia there is an abundance of public services and facilities, including parks, schools, community dining halls, and factories, which he describes in detail. All this reflected Bao’s hope that middle-society people, once aware of the problems of unplanned urban growth, would play a leading role in action to bring about social, economic, and environmental change.

In his “Cooperative Store” and “Cotton Cloth Society” 布衣会, Bao urged readers to tackle the crisis facing middle society. These two stories provide a picture how that might be done. The notion of “consumer cooperatives” 消费合作 was introduced to China early in the twentieth century, and advocated by Xue Xianzhou (1878–1927) and other intellectuals in the 1920s. In an introductory essay on consumer co-ops published in Shenbao, the author Fan Zhongyun 樊仲云 (1899–?) defines cooperative societies 合作社 as “organizations that unite economically disadvantaged people to resist powerful owners of capital,” and believes that middle society and the working class can solve their economic problems by organizing and participating in co-ops (Fan, 1922). Bao Tianxiao obviously agreed. In his “Editor’s Note” that accompanied “The Cooperative Store,” he explained that his story was intended to promote “common sense,” and he noted that “consumer co-ops have been spreading quickly in foreign countries.” In “The Cooperative Store,” Mr. and Mrs. Sun are given a tour of the Middle Class Cooperative Store 中等阶级合作商店 in Hangzhou, an organization founded, jointly owned, and managed by middle-class people, and based on the principles of economic egalitarianism and profit-sharing. With over a million members, all of whom are also shareholders, the co-op has more than ten million yuan in assets: housing; shops; banks; insurance companies; rice and flour mills; clothing factories; power stations; schools; and newspapers. The Cooperative Store not only fulfills the members’ need for food and clothing but also provides a “collective insurance system,” which guarantees the financial security of middle-class families (Bao, 1922g). Contemporary readers could easily make the connection between the tragic story of Yu Lianhang in “Mourning in Bansong Garden” and the imagined community in “The Cooperative Store.” Had Yu joined an organization like the fictional Cooperative Store, he would have avoided the bankruptcy that led to his suicide.

The story “The Cotton Cloth Society” depicts another utopian community founded by middle society, in this case one dedicated to fighting “the evil of carnal desires” and upholding the virtues of the middle class. Bao expresses his hope that readers “may consider it a way to rescue the middle class.” The Cotton Cloth Society requires its members to follow a simple and communal lifestyle by wearing plain clothing made only from cotton cloth (luxury fabrics such as silk and wool are to be avoided), sharing simple meals, eschewing luxury goods, and supporting oneself by work. The society forbids hiring house servants, drinking, and smoking, while promoting freedom of love and gender equality in the workplace and the family. Members invest in their children’s education and have established affordable schools because “higher education and college fees in China are too expensive for middle-class families.” Housing, however, seems to be the most difficult issue facing the Cotton Cloth Society because its members have to work in the city where housing prices are climbing. In the future, they plan to build a Cotton Cloth Village in the suburbs with convenient access to public transportation, a community to achieve the wider social goals of “bringing equality and happiness to the members of the society” (Bao, 1922h).

In a reader’s letter to the editor of Sunday, Lü Baoru, an enthusiastic advocate of the cooperative movement, applauded Bao’s “Cooperative Store” and “Cotton Cloth Society,” and hoped Bao would write more stories to promote this new concept (“A letter from Lü Baoru,” 1922). What people like Lü found appealing in Bao’s stories was the notion that communities committed to improving the lives of the social middle could create a new social and economic order, one that protects middle society’s economic interests, maintains its social identity, and meets its cultural needs and values. In targeting the problems of China’s middle class, Bao Tianxiao’s utopian stories in Sunday articulated a dream of a middle-class society built upon the principles of mutuality and solidarity.

Cooperation and frugality not only established an ethical basis for a new social order but also became a moral code imbedded in the self-definition of people of middling status. When Bao wrote “The Cotton Cloth Society,” he may have had in mind the Society of the Virtue of Frugality 俭德会—a virtual community among readers of Shenbao—advocated by Wang Dungen and other popular writers in Shenbao’s “Free Talk” in 1914 and 1915. In January 1914, Wang published short announcements in Shenbao’s “Free Talk Forum” column 自由谈话会 to promote the virtue of frugality and invited readers to join the Society of the Virtue of Frugality in the hope of “reversing the trend of extravagance and easing the tension in the national economy” (Shenbao, January 13, 1914). Members of the society were exhorted to obey five rules: “No visiting brothels; no gambling; no need to have liquor and meat when entertaining guests; no need to wear luxurious clothing; and no contempt for poor people” (Shenbao, January 16, 1914). Hundreds of readers wrote to Shenbao in response to this proposal and joined the Society of the Virtue of Frugality. Forming virtual communities like the Society of the Virtue of Frugality in the pages of newspapers encouraged public discussion of middle-class virtues in popular media. Frugality was also considered virtuous in traditional China, but the virtue of frugality 俭德 took on an enhanced meaning in popular media in the Republican China, one that was highly valued and emphasized as a virtue of middle society. The virtue of frugality involved more than being parsimonious; it also referred to a set of middle-class attitudes and values and a way of life. A 1921 Shenbao article entitled “Raising the Standard of Living and the Virtue of Frugality” 增高生活程度与俭德 redefines the meanings of “frugality” and “luxury” in accordance with the demands of modern society. The author, Yang Qingkang 杨晴康, differentiates “beneficial frugality” from “worthless frugality” and supports cutting expenditures on unnecessary goods in order to “aid people in need of necessaries,” to “prepare for retirement,” and to “invest in business and education for the sake of the public welfare.” In addition, the author contrasts “worthless luxuries” (such as tobacco and liquor) with “beneficial luxuries” (such as music, art, and science), suggesting that wealthy Chinese should follow the example of American plutocrats who live a simple life but generously fund cultural and social welfare institutions (Yang, 1921). Frugality was not only a personal lifestyle choice, but also a way of connecting the individual and society. In discussing and calling for “a fashion of frugality,” both the fictional Cotton Cloth Society and the real Society of the Virtue of Frugality helped to instill a sense of community among the social middle.

“Industrial Fiction”: Promoting Role Models for Middle Society

Sun Huayang, the protagonist in the series of utopian stories by Bao Tianxiao, represented a new type of middle-class hero: an educated, intelligent, open-minded engineer, a moral and civic-minded man who has a strong social conscience, and a loving and caring husband. In many ways, Bao presented Sun as a role model for ordinary people: a middle-class “ordinary hero” who both achieves personal success and makes an important contribution to society. Bao constructed the cultural imaginary of middle society through the tensions between the two different representations of Chinese middling society: a realistic portrayal of the middle-class crisis, and a countervailing creation of middle-class “ordinary heroes” in urban utopian stories and industrial fiction. The term “industrial fiction” 实业小说 was first used to describe translated stories expressing late Qing intellectuals’ hope of “saving the nation through industry” 实业救国. Beginning with the Self-Strengthening movement in the late nineteenth century, both intellectuals and officials felt it was urgent to develop China’s industry and commerce in order to compete with foreign companies. In 1904, when the Shanghai Commercial Press 商务印书馆 solicited novels for publication, it specifically called for “industrial fiction,” which “describes the current situation of industry and business in China, explains the reasons why we cannot win, and looks for methods of reform” (Shenbao, October 30, 1904). In the preface of the translated industrial novel The Story of Two Patriotic Children (Le Tour de la France par deux enfants, by G. Bruno), ¹⁰ Lin Shu 林纾 (1852–1924) deplored the underdevelopment of industry and commerce in China: “Commerce in the West is the outgrowth of learning, while in China it is done by the uneducated and regarded as a humble occupation” (Lin, 1907: 2–3). Viewing commerce as the foundation of a strong nation, he hoped his translation would encourage more educated young people to engage in industry and commerce to ultimately strengthen the nation.

Most early industrial fiction pieces were translated from Western stories. “Anecdotes of the Greatest Businessman Cobden” 商界第一伟人戈布登轶事 appeared in Illustrated Fiction 绣像小说, a leading late Qing literary journal, in five separate installments in 1903. ¹¹ The novel concerns both the personal adventures and business success of Richard Cobden (1804–1865), the British manufacturer and politician. The author, Youhuan Yusheng 忧患余生 (Lian Mengqing 连梦青), claims that he refined a work translated previously by a Chinese student studying in America, which was quite different from historical narratives. Like many late Qing translated novels that underwent the process of assimilation—“the translator’s modification of the original into a form with which the general reader is familiar” (Hanan, 2004: 90) ¹² —this novel is replete with the translator’s explanations and commentary. In the preface, the author proclaims Britain to be “the world’s wealthiest and strongest nation,” and notes that commerce and trade in particular contributed to elevating it to this lofty position. He then reminds the reader that the person who inaugurated a new era of free trade in Britain came from neither a rich nor noble family, but rather was a homeless young man who regularly experienced penury and want while growing up. Cobden is portrayed as a filial son who, as a child, sold handmade crafts to support his family. After his whole family died of the plague, he was captured by pirates and forced to work as a manual laborer and servant. After a tumultuous journey, he arrives at an island in the north of Europe, where he assumes a role of leadership and launches the island’s agriculture industry. In his later years, he sparks a trade war to weaken the French economy, leading to the final defeat of Napoleon (a fictional outcome not historically possible). The final part of the novel turns into a lengthy commentary on the world situation and discussion of Cobden’s achievements, in particular his entrepreneurship and foresight in developing successful agriculture and business models, and his leadership in the fight against the conservative aristocratic classes during the British Anti-Corn Law movement. The author compares the “despotic” and “inhuman” British government of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the situation in China, and draws a connection between the expansion of liberal capitalism and the strengthening of the national economy: “Once agriculture and industry develop, merchant capital will increase, civil rights will expand, and eventually the nation will become invincible.” Cobden is portrayed as a national hero, an outstanding merchant and statesman. In the author’s opinion, only low-born capitalist heroes like Cobden can play the crucial role of assisting the government to “negotiate between the above and the below” (Youhuan, 1903).

Western capitalist heroes soon found their counterparts in Chinese novels. In 1905 and 1906 The Voice of the Market 市声 by Ji Wen 姬文, labeled an “industrial novel,” was serialized in Illustrated Fiction (Ji, 1908 [1905-1906]). ¹³ Although vernacular fiction in the Ming dynasty reflected the emergence and influence of the merchant class, and merchants as literary figures were not unfamiliar to Chinese readers of popular fiction, ¹⁴ The Voice of the Market was the first modern work of fiction that centered on the economic activity and social life of merchants, traders, manufactures, entrepreneurs, engineers, and other economic elites. Scholars have pointed out that The Voice of the Market presents a new group of merchants and entrepreneurs as “spokesmen for Confucian values” with new knowledge and a new vision (Wang, 1997; Yeh, 2007). Apart from affluent, enlightened, and insightful capitalist heroes like Li Bozheng and Fan Muli, the novel depicts a group of “ordinary heroes” such as engineers, inventors, and enterprising young men. A former scholar 秀才, Liu Haosan studies Western languages and attends foreign schools. Later he returns to China, only to find that seeking a position in the corrupt government is worthless. Despite setbacks, poverty, and disappointments, he perseveres in his idea of strengthening the nation’s industries. Forced to sell his family estate, Liu goes to Shanghai in search of a better life, where he meets the rich entrepreneurs Fan Muli and Li Bozheng and persuades them to invest in various industries and found a vocational school to train workers in specialized modern knowledge. Yu Zhihua, a farmer and a self-taught engineer, invents a series of homemade agricultural machines and equipment, and uses his inventions to increase agricultural production. Yang Bida, a graduate from a Japanese engineering school, plans to open a factory school in Hangzhou to educate and train workers to make products that can compete with foreign goods. What is notable is the characterization of these motivated and aspiring “ordinary heroes” as the backbone of the nation. It is under their influence that the moneyed Fan Muli is transformed from an idler into a modern entrepreneur, turning his wealth into industrial capital. At the end of the story, the author applauds the efforts of “poor Liu Haosan” and “countryman Yu Zhihua” for bringing hope to Chinese industry and commerce.

“Industrial fiction” and “business stories” 商业小说 appeared in popular literary journals and commercial magazines in the 1910s, including Saturday, The Short Story Magazine 小说月报, The Grand Magazine 小说大观, and Ladies’ Journal 妇女杂志, providing readers with inspiring stories about the business successes of ordinary people. I will use the Saturday weekly to discuss how popular narratives played a role in shaping middle-society culture by expressing and promoting the social aspirations and cultural values of this growing urban group. Released every Saturday morning between 1914 and 1923, ¹⁵ Saturday was the first weekly fiction magazine in China, and it aimed at providing leisure-time print products for common city people. Launched and edited by Wang Dungen, it was one of the most successful and best-selling popular literary journals in early Republican Shanghai.

Saturday’s publisher and editors chose to publish this magazine on Saturday to provide entertainment and pleasure for urban people during their weekend leisure time. Wang Dungen’s “Preface to Saturday” 礼拜六出版赘言 in the inaugural issue explicitly expressed this intent. The reason for publishing on Saturday and naming the magazine Saturday, he explained, was that people were preoccupied with their work on weekdays, and only on Saturdays and Sundays did they have time to rest and read fiction. Written in easy classical Chinese and in a lively dialogic style between imagined readers and the editor, this preface made a persuasive argument for including reading magazines in one’s leisure-time activities:

For one silver dollar, you can buy dozens of new and fascinating stories to read. When you are tired of going out for fun and return home, you can turn on the light and open up the magazine. You may have a spirited discussion with your friends or read it with your beloved wife sitting by your side. (Wang, 1914) ¹⁶

From Wang’s “Preface to Saturday” we can piece together how the editors envisaged the magazine’s target audience. The reader is busy with work Monday through Friday and looks forward to relaxation and entertainment on the weekend. He lives in a city, which offers a variety of options for entertainment. He has at least a moderate income and can afford to “go to theaters to enjoy music and song, or to restaurants for alcohol, or to brothels for women” during his leisure time. He is educated and enjoys reading and may have an educated wife with whom he can share his reading experience. In short, the targeted audience of Saturday was educated urban young men of at least middling socioeconomic status.

To attract this group of urban middle-class readers, Saturday published a large number of short stories covering almost all fiction genres of its time. A dominant theme in Saturday’s social stories was strengthening the nation through the development of personal morality and a sense of social responsibility. A noteworthy example appeared in early 1922, when Saturday sponsored a story competition. The story that won first prize was a moral tale told by a young drugstore clerk who, once seduced by his corrupt colleagues and a prostitute, corrects his mistakes and finds happiness in both his career and marriage. In his commentary on this winning entry, Wang Dungen states, “If everyone is self-disciplined and not tempted by lust and profits, kind, loving, diligent, working hard, and fulfills one’s national duty, this alone will save our nation—there is no need to come into power to rule the country” (Shi, 1922). In Saturday’s “industrial stories” and “business stories,” such virtues were viewed as the basis of a new social ethic for the growing middling society to fight corrupt institutions and to exert its influence on the making of a new social order.

To celebrate these middle-class values—individual achievement, self-reliance, diligence, frugality, honesty, moral integrity, and social conscience —Saturday published similar “industrial stories” that promoted role models for middle society. “The ordinary heroes” that appeared in the pages of Saturday consisted of self-made businessmen, new-style entrepreneurs, and conscientious employees who displayed a synthesis of moral virtues, individual achievement, and a strong sense of social responsibility. These heroes were often of lower-middle-class origins, although some began life in destitution and even at the very bottom of society. Yet their hard work and perseverance led to success. Self-made businessmen were the favored and representative type of “ordinary heroes” in Saturday.

Liu Bannong 刘半农 (1891–1934), a regular contributor to Saturday and who later became associated with the May Fourth New Literature movement, translated “The Rubber Puppet” 橡皮傀儡, “A Dollar’s Payment” 奉赠一元, and “The Lucky Eccentric” 幸运之怪物, all works by American writers. ¹⁷ Saturday labeled these works “industrial stories”: fiction that described how ordinary people achieved success and wealth in the business world. “A Dollar’s Payment” describes two legal cases handled by the American statesman Daniel Webster. When he was an unknown young attorney and frustrated with his career, Webster once pleaded a difficult case for a blacksmith. He worked hard to find evidence and eventually prevailed in the case, even though he received only one dollar for his legal services. Many years later, the blacksmith’s case became a legal precedent for an important legal case he defended, which brought him an ample reward and reputation. “The Rubber Puppet” relates a story of how the American inventor and industrialist Charles Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber accidentally. Goodyear was nicknamed “the rubber man” because he was obsessive about conducting rubber experiments and frequently wore rubber products. Even though he went into bankruptcy and his whole family lived in poverty and were taunted by their neighbors, he persevered in his experiments and worked indefatigably. Finally, after years of bitter struggles and trials, Goodyear discovered the vulcanization process. “The Lucky Eccentric” is the life story of Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin, the legendary American businessman and investor whose business acumen boosted him from poverty to wealth. The biographic story details how Baldwin, a former mine worker, became a millionaire who made a fortune in the hotel and entertainment business, along with real estate, mining, banking, and stocks.

Interestingly, “Rubber Puppet,” originally titled “The India-rubber Man,” was published in the Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans, a collection of short stories for children written by the American novelist Edward Eggleston in 1895. Liu Bannong’s translation transformed a children’s story into an “industrial story,” highlighting the personal qualities of the “rubber man,” such as his determination and creativity. The translator specifically praises Goodyear’s strength of will and persistence, for these factors contributed the most to his success: “Those who were disappointed [by rubber products] quit and switched to other businesses, but the Rubber Man was different. . . . He was upset, but his will was firmer” (Liu, 1914a). A similar comment appears in “A Dollar’s Payment.” Even after Webster realized it was difficult to find a legal precedent, he refused to give up:

Most people would be dejected and quit, but Webster was different. . . . Some cases were so difficult that nobody wanted to take them, but he made more effort to investigate them until he got results—that’s why he stood out and became a prominent figure in history. (Liu, 1914b)

While the success Webster and Goodyear enjoyed can be attributed to their hard work, persistence, and knowledge, the hero of “The Lucky Eccentric” was a figure more typical of American rags-to-riches stories. The story begins with the author expressing admiration for Baldwin’s “luck” and efforts:

He was born into a poor family, but when he died, his assets had reached 25 million dollars. . . . Ordinary people can hardly be as fortunate as he was; however, even though heaven dominates one’s fate, one’s accomplishments are decided by oneself. . . . What is luck? One needs to use one’s intelligence and strength to compete in the world, and one must go to great lengths to fight. How can I not praise and admire his “eccentricity!” (Liu, 1915)

The focus of the narrative of the story is on the energy and courage of a low-born man who made his own luck, and thereby rose from poverty to wealth despite untoward incidents in his life.

“Industrial fiction” was the most appropriate genre to articulate the economic aspirations of the rising middle class and their dream of wealth and modernization. Following translated industrial stories, stories in Saturday such as “Bitter Liu” 柳苦儿 and “Anecdotes of Mr. Zheng and Mr. Fang” 记华侨郑方二氏轶事 featured a similar rags-to-riches plotline, illustrating how young people can rise from poverty and obscurity and achieve success and prosperity through perseverance, determination, and very importantly, good morals. Bitter Liu is an orphan whose parents died during a plague outbreak. An old gentleman in Liu’s village, touched by the boy’s filial piety, helps him bury his parents, rears him, and educates him. After the death of the kind gentleman, Liu is alone, making a living by laboring in the field, chopping wood, and making farm tools. However, never resigning himself to his fate, he takes pride in his hard work and ability to support himself, and, as a way of returning the old gentleman’s generosity, aspires to help other people out of poverty. By investing money he saved from selling farming tools in a livestock business, his years of hard work, honesty, and confidence are finally rewarded. After achieving his dream of wealth and success, he dedicates himself to education and social welfare by running schools to promote his educational ideas and building factories, museums, and shelters to help the poor. The narrator claims that he happened to visit the town where the renowned rich philanthropist Mr. Liu lived, and since he admires Mr. Liu, he decides to write down this story to show how “a poor boy who struggled with poverty and hunger achieved success and became a paragon of our society after years of incredible endeavors and industry” (Xing, 1915).

In “Anecdotes of Mr. Zheng and Mr. Fang,” a down-and-out Fujian farmer named Mr. Zheng attempts to commit suicide, but in an ironic twist of fate he ends up being stranded at a small inn in Hong Kong, where he meets the bankrupt Guangdong businessman Mr. Fang. Fang persuades Zheng to put all his money in making children’s paper toys, and they make a modest profit by selling the toys during the Spring Festival. Inspired by their success, they continue their partnership, working hard together and accumulating capital gradually through various small business ventures, from selling food on the street to running a small restaurant, trading in lacquer ware, and even doing some international trade. Finally, they become wealthy and successful (Xun, 1922a).

In these stories of self-made businessmen, hard work is the key to success. By saving and carefully managing their earnings, they accumulate sufficient capital for further investment, and they have a good reputation because of their honesty and sincerity. This in turn helps them build a social network useful for their business. In addition, these stories ascribe success in business to good personal qualities such as self-reliance, perseverance, confidence, determination, as well the ability to endure hardship. Self-made businessmen are portrayed as skillful and well-informed but often not intellectual; however, they are smart enough to seize as well as create money-making opportunities. Finally, they are concerned about the welfare of others, and are often involved in social betterment activities and charities.

The Chinese version of rags-to-riches stories in Saturday thus provided a new role model for middle society. It is worth noting that self-made businessmen portrayed in Saturday are not only successful in the business world but are also the embodiment of traditional Chinese values, in particular, benevolence, honesty, filial piety, modesty, and fortitude. Moral integrity is essential to their achievement of material wealth. The author of “Anecdotes of Mr. Zheng and Mr. Fang” comments at the end of the story:

I’m writing down this story not because I’m surprised by their wealth, but because I admire their aspirations and composure in the face of hardship, their sincerity and loyalty to each other, and their foresight and keenness in business. If down-and-out young people follow the examples of Mr. Zheng and Mr. Fang, they will surely be successful! (Xun, 1922a)

The other rags-to-riches hero discussed above, Bitter Liu, was known for his filial piety when he was a child. During the opening ceremony of Liu’s Private School, he gives a speech to students and local people, stressing that “the most important principle of life is diligence and persevering in the face of hardship. [If one follows that principle] then one will achieve success in either scholarship or business” (Xing, 1915). Through stories of virtuous self-made businessmen who successfully combine profit-making and traditional ethics, Saturday’s industrial stories promoted a new business-related moral system and values for China’s modern commercialized society.

The self-made businessmen in these stories are presented as people who began their journey through life with few resources. But they escape poverty and end up wealthy, overcoming their class origins. Some, like Bitter Liu, become new-style entrepreneurs who not only achieve personal success but also use their wealth, knowledge, and power to help solve the problem of social inequality. Support of class cooperation rather than class struggle can be found in the Saturday story “Two Young Men” 二青年. The author, Qu Zulian 瞿祖濂, begins his story with a brief discussion of the problems of China’s economy:

One of the major reasons China can’t compete with Western countries is that we don’t have enough resources. Education and industry cannot develop because of the constraints of resources. The rich have resources, but their offspring do not have knowledge; the offspring of the poor have knowledge but lack resources. . . .What a pity!

In this story, Qu portrays a new-style entrepreneur named Li Guoying, who combines business acumen and moral virtues. Li Yanqing, Li Guoying’s father, is an accomplished entrepreneur and a respected and enlightened capitalist who enjoys social prestige because of his dedication to philanthropy and his concern for the welfare of his workers. Although born into a rich family, Li Guoying was taught the values of independence, industry, and self-improvement since childhood. Educated in England, Li Guoying starts his own business by founding a mining company and later a silk mill instead of running the family business. Following his father’s successful example, Li Guoying also creates a vast fortune by hard work and business sense, and most importantly, his new-style business management. Both Li Yanqing and Li Guoying epitomize the moral virtues of modern entrepreneurs and are presented as the “backbone of our society.” They are benevolent capitalists whose success is based on their personal virtues and a management style that emphasizes a balance between employee loyalty and high productivity. Li Yanqing treats workers as equals and genuinely cares about their well-being by improving their working conditions, raising their wages during times of economic crisis, launching schools to educate their children, and building a workers’ club and library. These practices not only increase employees’ loyalty and productivity, but also shield Li’s factories from potentially devastating strikes. “In this world, capitalists and workers are different in nature,” the author comments, “but Mr. Li breaks the segregation between capitalists and workers, and makes the two work together toward the same goal. No wonder his business is flourishing: whenever he goes to the factory, workers all smile at him, showing their affection and respect for him” (Qu, 1921).

Tales of new-style entrepreneurs expressed a new business ethics that integrated the Confucian notions of benevolence, loyalty, trust, learning, and social responsibility with effective management techniques. New entrepreneurs like Li Guoying and his father rise to become members of an economically and socially powerful group whose eminence stems partially from a unique power to mediate between capitalists and the working classes. They are capable of mitigating, if not eliminating, the growing conflicts between social classes, and bringing harmony and wealth to the Chinese economy and society. Industrial stories coincided with the expansion of industry and capitalism in China, and the emergence of a bourgeois class as an influential group in urban society beginning in first decade of the twentieth century. Historians have shown the link between the rise of a mercantile economy and traditional ethics. Bergère’s study of the Chinese bourgeoisie, for example, suggests that the new bourgeoisie in Shanghai combined a contemporary business spirit and traditional virtues and contributed to China’s modernization: “Confucian-style modernization” (Bergère, 1989: 185–86). Yeh also points out that Shanghai’s new merchants embodied both business acumen and Confucian virtues (Yeh, 2007: 12). In industrial stories and business stories, Confucian-style entrepreneurs are essentially men who constituted the heart of the nation. In emphasizing cooperation and negotiation between social groups, mediated by persons enlightened through such new values, these stories confirmed the bourgeoisie’s belief in social solidarity as a way to solve China’s labor problem and to ensure a balance between industrial development and social harmony. In short, self-made businessmen and new-style entrepreneurs were viewed as a new class with the resources and power to realize the dream of national wealth and strength shared by millions of Chinese people.

Apart from businessmen and entrepreneurs, conscientious employees also offered good examples of “ordinary heroes.” Unlike the heroes of rags-to-riches stories, who achieve enormous economic success in a short time, conscientious and industrious employees do not typically become wealthy. Rather, they get good jobs, enjoy social stability, and live a comfortable middle-class life. They usually receive some modern education, and are characterized by common sense, good judgment, and civic virtues. In addition, they are responsible citizens and well-respected and productive members of society.

Chu Hongqiao in the story “An Invaluable Treasure” 无价之宝 is the very embodiment of this type of “ordinary hero.” The story begins with a 22-year-old young man having just graduated from school and obtaining a job in a bank. His corrupt colleagues attempt to entice him into immoral activities with women and money, but the hero sticks to his moral principles and successfully resists temptation. Drawing on his honesty, industriousness, and prudence, he admonishes his errant colleagues. Eventually, his moral virtues and sincerity influence his colleagues, and gradually they change their behavior. The author emphasizes that even though Chu’s accomplishments are modest, he is a moral individual and a superior man, and his virtues are “invaluable treasures” (Xun, 1922b). The story conveys the message that a virtuous person can influence the lives of people surrounding him as deeply as enlightened businessmen influence the lives of their employees.

Hardworking employees are lauded in business stories as ordinary heroes for their moral integrity and drive for self-improvement. They are not as ambitious and financially successful as the legendary heroes in industrial stories, but they attain middle-class security, personal stability, and good reputation through the same virtues of industry and integrity. They are characters that Saturday’s audience could emulate or could identify with. Even if some of the ordinary heroes make a fortune, they do so through hard work. In the story “Bitter Liu,” when Bitter Liu gives speeches at his school, he criticizes the old saying “a farmer’s son is always a farmer, and a businessman’s son always does business,” and emphasizes how personal qualities, particularly diligence, can change one’s fate (Xing, 1915). As Yeh’s study of Shanghai’s middle-class life shows, “the lure of modernity was the lure of a good life of moral as well as material respectability” (Yeh, 2007: 8). The image of ordinary heroes in Saturday stories signaled a new constellation of modern values and a belief in the middle-class ethic of individual achievement and success. At its center was a belief that individual merit would be rewarded by a good, comfortable, and satisfying life in both material and non-material ways.

“The affirmation of ordinary life” in the domains of work and family life, as Charles Taylor argues, is an essential source of modern identity (Taylor, 1989). In popular literature of early twentieth-century China, stories of diligent employees in particular articulated a culture of everyday life in modern society by affirming the values of common people and by stressing their virtues as applied to their everyday affairs. The “ordinary hero” as the central figure of industrial fiction and business stories exemplified the virtues of middle society and manifested the core values of middle-class individual achievement and moral integrity. Tales of ordinary heroes were thus fashioned into an invocation of a new social order based on egalitarianism and social mobility. Saturday’s writers believed that in this new society everyone would enjoy equal opportunities regardless of their inherited social status and family background. It would also provide sufficient mobility so that individuals could rise up the social ladder based on their education and individual merits. Industrial and business stories affirmed that average people without a favorable family background but with highly cultivated virtues could achieve success and financial stability, and in some cases, great wealth.

Conclusion: A Middle-Class Culture

The different representations of the middle society in Shanghai’s popular media—the realistic portrayal of the hardships of Shanghai middle-class families, the utopian narratives of a middle-class community, and the celebration of middle-class role models—all contribute to our understanding of the middle-class mentality and culture in early Republican Shanghai. Rather than being polarizing, the dialectic between gloomy prognostication and utopian aspirations toward a futuristic middle society reflected an internal contradiction that actually confronted the Chinese middle class: the middle class was both a new social and economic power and a social group facing a crisis. Nonetheless, the cultural imaginary of “middle society” was part of the new sense of individual autonomy and commercial wealth at the center of modernization in early twentieth-century China. In presenting the middle-class vision of Chinese society and modern life, popular fiction drew on both traditional and modern sources in affirming a new social ethics—moral integrity, social responsibility, cooperation, and solidarity—to balance middle-class virtues and traditional values, individual achievement and social advancement. It fantasized abstractions of middle-class life and utopian communities, while attempting to reveal the social character of the emerging social middle in relation to material wealth and everyday life in an urban setting. The popular narratives in Shanghai’s print media thus articulated the quest for modernization, one that emphasized the unique middle-class way of life, everyday experience, economic wealth, moral and social responsibilities, and reinvention of cultural tradition.

In his discussion of American popular magazines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Matthew Schneirov argues that popular magazines created and redefined a new culture through “a series of future projects or dreams” of an industrial society, that is, “dreams of abundance, social control, and social justice” (Schneirov, 1994: 258). Similarly, popular media in Republican Shanghai, such as Sunday, Saturday, and Shenbao’s “Free Talk” supplement, contributed to the construction of the cultural identity and “cultural dreams” of the social middle in modern China. The popular media not only offered their audiences new ways and sources of imagining the growing urban social groups, but they also shaped the culture of the emerging middle society that wavered and negotiated between traditional morality and the new values of individual merit, social mobility, and economic success. Targeting the general public in cities, popular print media channeled the cultural expression of social values and aspirations associated with the emerging middle class, and became a force in expressing middle-class sentiments, concerns, and dreams. The creation of middle-class culture in China cannot be properly understood without considering the new role of popular media during the early Republican era, a time when print media were the most important vehicle for the dissemination of mass culture, serving the sociopolitical and cultural needs of the ascendant urban middle class.