War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937-1945 - Hardcover

Hung, Chang-tai

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520082362 ISBN 13: 9780520082366

Publisher: University of California Press, 1994

Synopsis

This is the first comprehensive study of popular culture in twentieth-century China, and of its political impact during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 (known in China as "The War of Resistance against Japan"). Chang-tai Hung shows in compelling detail how Chinese resisters used a variety of popular cultural forms―especially dramas, cartoons, and newspapers―to reach out to the rural audience and galvanize support for the war cause. While the Nationalists used popular culture as a patriotic tool, the Communists refashioned it into a socialist propaganda instrument, creating lively symbols of peasant heroes and joyful images of village life under their rule. In the end, Hung argues, the Communists' use of popular culture contributed to their victory in revolution.

About this title

About the Author:

Chang-tai Hung is Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor of Asian Studies at Carleton College, and the author of Going to the People: Chinese Intellectuals and Folk Literature, 1918-1937 (1985).

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0520082362
• ISBN 13: 9780520082366
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 450