militarise the nation. The people, he said, must develop a ‘habit and instinct for unified behaviour’. He encouraged women to cultivate the four virtues of ‘chastity, appearance, speech and work’ and recognise their role as confined to the household. Even the length of hemlines was prescribed.
The Guomindang’s social base was in urban areas. Industrial growth was slow and limited. In cities such as Shanghai, which became the centres of modern growth, by an industrial working class had appeared numbering , . Of these, however, only a small percentage were employed in modern industries such as shipbuilding.
Most were ‘petty urbanites’ ( xiao shimin ), traders and shopkeepers. Urban workers, particularly women, earned very low wages. Working hours were long and conditions of work bad. As individualism increased, there was a growing concern with women’s rights, ways to build the family and discussions about love and romance.
Social and cultural change was helped along by the spread of schools and universities (Peking University was established in ). Journalism flourished reflecting the growing attraction of this new thinking. The popular Life Weekly , edited by Zao Taofen ( - ), is representative of this new trend. It introduced readers to new ideas, as well as to leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Kemal Ataturk, the modernist leader of Turkey.
Its circulation increased rapidly from just , in to a massive , copies in . ‘Rickshaw Puller’, woodcut by Lan Jia. The novel Rickshaw by Lao She ( ) became a classic. The story of rising prices.
Shanghai in : Buck Clayton, a black American trumpet player, in Shanghai with his jazz orchestra lived the life of the privileged expatriates. But he was black and once some white Americans assaulted him and his orchestra members and threw them out from the hotel they played in. Thus, though American, he had greater sympathy for the plight of the Chinese being himself a victim of racial discrimination. Of their fight with white Americans where they emerged victorious he writes, ‘The Chinese onlookers treated us like we had done something they always wanted to do and