This book presents the first collection of studies of the senses and sensory experiences in China, filling a gap in sensory research while offering new approaches to Chinese Studies.
Bringing together 12 chapters by literary scholars and historians, this book critically interrogates the deeply rooted meanings that the senses have coded in Chinese culture and society. Built on an exploration of the sensorium in early Chinese thought and late imperial literature, this book reveals the sensory manifestations of societal change and cultural transformation in China from the nineteenth century to the present day. It features in-depth examinations of a variety of concepts, representations, and practices, including aural and visual paradigms in ancient Chinese texts; odours in Ming-Qing literature and Republican Shanghai; the tactility of kissing and the sonic culture of community singing in the Republican era; the socialist sensorium in art, propaganda, memory, and embodied experiences; and contemporary-era multisensory cultural practices.
Engaging with the exciting "sensory turn," this original work makes a unique contribution to the world history of the senses, and will be a valuable resource to scholars and students of Chinese Literature, History, Cultural Studies, and Media.
Author(s): Shengqing Wu, Xuelei Huang
Series: Routledge Contemporary China Series
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 312
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of contributors
List of figures
Chapter 1 Introduction
Part I Understanding the Senses in Traditional Culture
Chapter 2 Aural and Visual Hierarchies in Texts from Early China: Beyond Epistemology of the Senses
Chapter 3 The Culture of Smells: Taboo and Sublimation from Huchou to Tianxiang
Part II Reconfiguring the Senses and Modern Sensibility
Chapter 4 Smellscapes of Nanjing Road: Cognitive and Affective Mapping
Chapter 5 The Kiss as an Art of Love: Touch, Sensuality, and Embodied Experience in Modern Chinese Culture
Chapter 6 Radio, Sound Cinema, and Community Singing: The Making of a New Sonic Culture in Modern China
Part III Socialist Corporeality, Sensorium, and Memory
Chapter 7 Making Sense of Labor: Works of Art and Arts of Work in China’s Great Leap Forward
Chapter 8 Narrating Sweet Bitterness: Tasting and Sensing the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Chapter 9 The Hot Noise of Open-Air Cinema
Part IV Senses, Media, and Postmodernity
Chapter 10 Touching Father: Sight, Sound, Touch, and Intermedial Intimacies
Chapter 11 The Senses in Recent Exhibitionary Practice in Chinese History Museums
Chapter 12 Epilogue: “And suddenly the memory revealed itself …”—Making Sense of the Senses in History
Index
