A new exhibition, entitled China’s Modernization in Everyday Print, is up on the second floor of Bostock Library at IAS display window just outside the Global Studies Department. 
The first half of the twentieth centuries were a transformative era in Chinese history. As China encountered new global influences, the production, translation, circulation, and consumption of printed materials expanded in unprecedented ways. Advances in printing technology, growing literacy, and the emergence of a vibrant network of minjian (民間non-government) publishers fueled an extraordinary expansion of print culture, making books, newspapers, and periodicals more accessible to a wider readership than ever before. Through publications on daily-use encyclopedias, public health, women’s issues, and translated foreign works, this exhibition explores how print culture influenced both intellectual discourse and everyday life; and facilitated the exchange of knowledge and shaped public debates about social change and modernization. Drawing on unique and historical materials from the East Asian Collection, it offers a window into the intellectual and social transformations that defined modern China.
Practical knowledge for a common reader
Republican-era daily-use encyclopedias evolved from the tradition of the Chinese leishu (類書classified reference books), which compiled knowledge according to established categories. The examples displayed here belong to a genre of popular reference works intended for ordinary readers and households. Known collectively as Wanbao Quanshu (萬寶全書Complete Treasuries of Myriad Useful Things) during the Qing dynasty, these publications adopted the Western-inspired label of “encyclopedia” in the Republican period. Produced largely by minjian (民間non-government) publishers, they added new and modern categories. These inexpensive manuals and practical handbooks afforded readers guidance for navigating daily life amid institutional instability, foreign aggression, and rapid technological change. They formed an important part of the popular print market and illustrate how the expanding world of print culture made useful knowledge accessible to an increasingly broad readership in modern China.
Healthy nation
Public health became a central component of China’s modernization efforts in the twentieth century. Through handbooks, magazines and textbooks, new ideas about hygiene, disease prevention, nutrition, maternal care, and women’s health reached an expanding readership. Women’s bodies and family health were increasingly viewed as matters not only of personal well-being but also of national strength and social progress. This connection between public health and nation-building would later find powerful expression in the Patriotic Health Campaign (愛國衛生運動). Started in 1950s, the campaign mobilized citizens to improve sanitation, prevent disease, and embrace modern health practices on a mass scale. These publications introduced scientific approaches to childbirth, childrearing, and household sanitation, demonstrating how print culture transformed everyday health practices and made modern medical knowledge accessible to a growing public.
New Women for New Society
These publications document changing visions of women’s liberation across modern China. Early Republican-era works reflect the influence of Western ideas about education, science, and women’s rights, while many publications from the 1950s drew on Soviet models, often direct translations. Together, they reveal how gender equality became intertwined with broader projects of modernization, nation-building, public health, and economic development.
Marriage Reform
From the Republican era to the early People’s Republic, women’s liberation was closely linked to China’s pursuit of modernity. Republican reformers advocated education and greater social freedom for women, often inspired by Western ideas. After 1949, these goals were recast within a socialist framework, influenced by Soviet models. As the first law of the People’s Republic of China, the 1950 Marriage Law promoted women’s equality, freedom of marriage, and family reform. At a time when the state sought to mobilize women for education and productive labor, illustrated pamphlets and pictorial publications, became important tools for reaching both urban and low-literacy rural audiences.
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