In this book, Sherman Cochran reconsiders the nature and role of consumer culture in the spread of cultural globalization. He moves beyond traditional debates over Western influence on non-Western cultures to examine the points where Chinese entrepreneurs and Chinese-owned businesses interacted with consumers. Focusing on the marketing of medicine, he shows how Chinese constructed consumer culture in China and Southeast Asia and extended it to local, national, and transnational levels. Through the use of advertisements, photographs, and maps, he illustrates the visual forms that Chinese enterprises adopted and the far-flung markets they reached.
Cochran brings to light enduring features of the Chinese experience with consumer culture. Surveying the period between the 1880s and the 1950s, he observes that Chinese businesses surpassed their Western counterparts in capturing Chinese and Southeast Asian sales of medicine in both peacetime and wartime. He provides revealing examples of Chinese entrepreneurs' dealings with Chinese and Japanese political and military leaders, particularly during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. The history of Chinese medicine men in pre-socialist China, he suggests, has relevance for the twenty-first century because they achieved goals--constructing a consumer culture, competing with Western-based corporations, forming business-government alliances, capturing national and transnational markets--that their successors in contemporary China are currently seeking to attain.
Author(s): Sherman Cochran
Edition: First
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Year: 2006
Language: English
Commentary: Bookmarked, OCR (Cleartype)
Pages: 295
City: Cambridge
Tags: Business & Economics, International, General, History, Asia, China, Consumer behavior -- China -- History, Consumer behavior -- Southeast Asia -- History., Popular culture -- China -- History, Popular culture -- Southeast Asia -- History., Drugs -- Marketing.
FRONT COVER
FRONT FLAP
FULL TITLE PAGE
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
1 Consumer Culture in Chinese History
The Frontiers of Long- Distance Trade
Map 1.1. China's macroregions and central metropolises. Map by Thomas Lyons, based on macroregions from Skinner, "Regional Urbanization," 214, map 1.
The Evasion of Political Barriers
The Process of Localization
The Extent of Homogenization
2 Inventing Imperial Traditions and Building Olde Shoppes
Yue Pingquan and Tongren Tang
ACQUIRING OFFICIAL STATUS
USING OFFICIAL CONNECTIONS FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES
PRESERVING TONGREN TANG IN A POST-IMPERIAL AGE
Yue Daren and Olde Yue Family Shoppes
BUILDING OSTENTATIOUSLY TRADITIONAL NEW STORES
Map 2.1. Daren Tang's drugstores, 1930s. Map by Thomas Lyons, based on macroregions from Skinner, "Regional Urbanization," 214, map 1.
GIVING CONSUMERS TRADITIONAL TREATMENT
PROMOTING THE TRADITIONAL
Table 2.1. Tongren Tang's and Daren Tang's Principal Products
Giving New Meanings to Tradition
3 Advertising Dreams
The Dream of Western Solutions to Chinese Problems
CHINESE ORIGINS OF A "WESTERN" ALTERNATIVE
OVERCOMING OBJECTIONS TO CLAIMS OF WESTERNNESS
POPULARIZING WESTERN SOLUTIONS TO CHINESE MEDICAL PROBLEMS
The Dream of the Triumph of Economic Nationalism
HUANG'S JAPANESE MODEL: HUMANE ELIXIR
IMITATING THE JAPANESE MODEL
SELLING "NATIONAL GOODS"
POPULARIZING ECONOMIC NATIONALISM
The Dream of Women's Bodies
UNVEILING NUDES
KEEPING UP WITH FASHIONS
POPULARIZING WOMEN'S BODIES
Mass Advertising in Shanghai
HUANG'S MASS ADVERTISING
PHOTOS
2.1 Tongren Tang's store (circled) in eighteenth-century Beijing
2.2 A catalogue of Tongren Tang's medicines
2.3 The Yue family in the 1890s
2.4 Yue Daren and his family in the 1930s
2.5 Tongren Tang's store in the 1920s
2.6 Daren Tang's main store in Tianjin
3.1 Huang Chujiu
3.2 Ailuo Brain Tonic
3.3 Letterhead of the Great China-France Drugstores
3.4 A billboard for Humane Elixir in North China, 1910s
3.5 Sandwich board carriers promoting Humane Elixir in the Middle Yangzi Region, 1914
3.6 Human Elixir's trademark with "Chinese National Goods" in the circles and the pairing of the dragon and the tiger
3.7 A calendar poster by Hang Zhiying advertising Huang Chujiu's medicines
3.8 The Great World amusement hall
Table 3.1. A Comparison of Chinese-Owned New-Style and Old-Style Drugstores in Shanghai, 1936
HUANG'S MASS CONSUMERS
Poaching and Popularizing
4 Capturing a National Market
Establishing National Headquarters
Table 4.1. Five Continents' Branch Stores in China
Table 4.2. Five Continents' Regional Branches and Local Affiliates, 1936
Table 4.3. Five Continents' Sales in and outside Shanghai
Map 4.1. Five Continents' drugstores, 1930s Map by Thomas Lyons based on macroregions from Skinner, "Regional Urbanization," 214, map 1.
Table 4.4. Five Continents' Capital, Sales, and Profits (in yuan)
Table 4.5. Distribution of Five Continents' Sales of Man-Made Blood by Macroregion, 1931 - 1937 and 1938
Controlling Branch Stores and Appealing to Local Consumers
MANAGING BRANCHES THROUGH A CHINESE SOCIAL NETWORK
PROVIDING CONVENIENT ACCESS
Constructing and Localizing Western Architecture
Map 4.2. Five Continents' nine drugstores in Shanghai, 1936. Map by Eric Singer
ADOPTING THE TWO-PART VERTICAL FORM
ADAPTING TO LOCAL TASTES AND CONDITIONS
RELYING ON WESTERN ARCHITECTS
WHO DESIGNED BRANCH STORES?
Localizing the Localizer
PREVENTING LOCALIZATION OF BRANCH STORES
SUCCUMBING TO LOCALIZATIO N BY LOCAL AFFILIATES
Levels of Localization
PHOTOS
4.1 Xiang Songmao
4.2 Five Continents' headquarters, 1913
4.3 Man-Made Blood with its Western-style bottle and Chinese label
4.4 Shops in traditional Chinese architecture
4.5 Five Continents' Western-style branch stores in North China
4.6 Five Continents' branch stores in the Middle Yangzi region
4.7 Five Continents' branch store in Xiamen with its arcade, 1930s
4.8 A commercial district in Xiamen, 1920s
4.9 Five Continents' Shanghai headquarters, 1936
4.10 Five Continents' headquarters at night
4.11 Five Continents' salesroom
4.12 Xiang Songmao Memorial Hall
4.13 A poster advertising Man-Made Blood with a space where each branch could add the name of its locality
5 Crossing Enemy Lines
Table 5.1. New Asia Pharmaceutical Company's Capital and Sales Revenue, 1926-1945
Table 5.2. Wartime Expansion of New Asia Pharmaceutical Company
Prewar Origins and Reforms
Map 5.1. New Asia's headquarters, branch headquarters, and factories, 1938-1945. Map by Thomas Lyons
REFORMING A DISTRIBUTION NETWORK
CAPTURING AN AUDIENCE
A PREWAR FIXER
Wartime Alliances
FORMING POLITICAL ALLIANCES
BROKERING FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS
Popularizing Science
INSTITUTIONALIZING RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
TEACHING SCIENCE TO PROMOTE DISTRIBUTION
USING SCIENCE IN ADVERTISING
Fixers across Enemy Lines
6 Crossing National Borders
Riding the Tiger
RECRUITING ARTISTS
TRANSCULTURAL TIGERS IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETS
TIGER BALM'S MULTICULTURAL CONSUMERS
Rising Stars
POPULARITY AT THE EXPENSE OF PROFITS IN SINGAPORE
POPULARIZING NEWSPAPERS OUTSIDE SINGAPORE
TRANSNATIONAL NEWSPAPERS AND NETWORKS
Table 6.1. Aw Boon-haw's Business and Newspaper Offices in Southeast Asia through 1937
Table 6.2. Aw Boon-haw's Principal Business and Newspaper Offices in China through 1937
Making Politics Pay
Map 6.1. Aw Boon-haw's network for distributing Tiger Balm and newspapers, 1930s. Map by Thomas Lyons.
CELEBRATING GENERAL CAI TINGKAI
AIDING GENERALISSIMO CHIANG KAI-SHEK
DICKERING WITH PRIME MINISTER TOJO HIDEKI
APPEALING IN VAIN TO THE PEOPLE' S REPUBLIC
AW'S EFFECTIVENESS AGAINST STRONG GOVERNMENTS
Exploiting Asian Advantages
PHOTOS
5.1 Xu Guanqun
5.2 New Asia Pharmaceutical Company's trademark with a red cross at the center
5.3 A Child 's Growth to Manhood
5.4 The compatibility of the traditional and the modern in a Chinese family
5.5 Nonscientific Doctors of the Masses
6.1 Aw Boon-haw
6.2 The springing tiger on an early twentieth-century tin of Tiger Balm
6.3 Guan Huinong, a commercial artist
6.4 Roaring Tiger (1908), by Gao Qifeng, a political revolutionary
6.5 A tiger on a magazine founded by Guan and Gao
6.6 A poster for Tiger Balm, with print in Chinese, Thai, and English by Guan Huinong
6.7 Tiger Balm Garden in Hong Kong
6.8 Aw Boon-haw with Chiang Kai-shek
7 Agents of Consumer Culture
Institutions from the Top Down
Consumers from the Bottom Up
Brokers in Between
Agents of Consumer Revolution
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES
NOTES
1. CONSUMER CULTURE IN CHINESE HISTORY
2. INVENTING IMPERIAL TRADITIONS AND BUILDING OLDE SHOPPES
3. ADVERTISING DREAMS
4. CAPTURING A NATIONAL MARK ET
5. CROSSING ENEMY LINES
6 . CROSSING NATIONAL BORDERS
7. AGENTS OF CONSUMER CULTURE
ARCHIVES
WORKS CITED
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
INDEX
BACK COVER
