Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022. vii, 306 pp. (Tables, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 9780824888824.
Living and Working in Wartime China, edited by Brett Sheehan and Wen-Hsin Yeh, is a collection of ten essays by different authors, all of which explore in some fashion “the variety and detail of Chinese experiences under conditions of war during the period of Japanese invasion from 1937 to 1945” (1).
This volume stands apart from earlier scholarship on the same period in its focus on the lived experiences of ordinary Chinese people. Much prior literature on wartime China in both English and Chinese has emphasized Chinese elites and their perceptions. It has treated the Chinese wartime experience in more totalizing terms, often highlighting a Chinese nation and people united against Japanese aggression, which the editors label a post-hoc portrayal. Total war harnesses a nation’s entire resources, both economic and material, in service to the war effort. While total war mobilization was certainly an urgent matter for Chinese elites, these ten essays demonstrate the difficulty of achieving state goals no matter the regime (Guomindang, Communist, Japanese puppet, or foreign concession) in power.
The authors shed important new light on a Chinese wartime experience wherein ordinary people understandably prioritized practical matters of personal interest or survival ahead of idealistic spiritual exhortations. For the Chinese, the editors write, total war “was a time when people suffered, survived, resisted, and collaborated within the endurance of the everyday” (2). How the Chinese endured under wartime conditions in various localities and under various regimes is explained in these essays.
Part I includes essays on urban daily life in wartime China. Susan Glosser uses Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC)-commissioned studies of Chinese white-collar employees’ living conditions and letters to the popular journal Shanghai Life to convincingly demonstrate that onerous burdens such as overcrowded housing and sky-high rents meant even this wealthier and better-protected segment of China’s population was often too distracted by matters of daily survival to concern themselves sufficiently with the larger war effort. Sophia Lee, in turn, shows how women in Beijing met the challenge of surviving in difficult wartime conditions “with ingenuity and grit” (62) by subverting traditional gender and social norms; women entered the workforce in increasing numbers as typists, office workers, switchboard operators, and even policewomen. Such jobs helped supplement family incomes, but exposed women to new challenges such as gender discrimination and sexual harassment. For Beijing women, too, the war was something to be endured.
Part 2 contains essays on wartime culture. Di Wang discusses political culture in teahouses in Chengdu, convincingly detailing the many ways in which Chengdu teahouses served as highly contested platforms between patrons and the government over discussions of the war, despite the authorities’ efforts to use teahouses to promote a standardized patriotic message. Wang Chaoguang’s essay on film censorship explains how authorities in both Guomindang-controlled and Japanese-controlled areas, recognizing the special “spiritual power” (111) of movies, instituted censorship policies to better ensure films mobilized people in support of wartime goals. Maruta Takashi, finally, looks at the ways in which the diverse regimes in China purposefully manipulated the calendar and holidays for political ends. No matter the regime, holidays became “ceremonies to support state legitimacy” (136).
Part 3 offers three essays on the difficulties state bureaucrats faced in trying to provision their regimes. Parks Coble traces the competition between three wartime regimes—the Guomindang in Chongqing and the two collaborationist regimes in North China and Central China—to promote their currency as a common currency for China. All three failed in the end. Poor economic decision making, moreover, ensured that “[n]one of them had sufficient revenues to cover expenses, and [so] printed money” (164) that rapidly deteriorated in value and cost them essential popular support. Brett Sheehan presents the story of Chinese technocrat Shi Shaodong whose employer, the Dongya Corporation in Tianjin, sought to avoid confiscation by the Japanese military through establishing an experimental farm producing domestic jute for military purposes. The Japanese were indifferent if not hostile allies in the project, however, while Chinese peasants found myriad ways to highjack the experimental farm for their own purposes. Shi’s story shows that even with the help of a dedicated Chinese technocrat, the goal of linking rural development and urban production was doomed to failure. Man Bun Kwan highlights the state building efforts of the Guomindang, the Communists, and the Japanese puppet regime to control the salt trade within their jurisdictions. Kwan writes, “As total war engulfed the country, a war of salt was waged through government planning, rationing, embargoes, blockades, and smuggling, transforming the basic and common commodity into a strategic material” (213). As with currency and jute, official efforts to control salt produced very mixed results beyond generating sizable revenues for all three regimes.
Part 4 takes the reader into China’s borderlands. Matthew D. Johnson tells of Chinese educational cinematographer Sun Mingjing, whose films, photos, and writings all contributed to the state’s mass mobilization efforts. Johnson’s essay, like Wang Chaoguang’s essay earlier in the volume, confirms the Guomindang’s recognition of the power of film to influence public opinion in wartime. What is new is Johnson’s focus on China’s frontier, as well as his contention that these military mobilization efforts well predated July 7, 1937. Micah Muscolino’s contribution on “Water and Soil Conservation in Gansu” provides appropriate closure to this volume. Wartime China witnessed the first official efforts to institute a comprehensive water and soil conservation program in the Loess Plateau of remote Gansu Province. Influential local landlords, however, repeatedly stymied the planning of the mid-level bureaucrats placed in charge of the project. Locals balked at selling their land to the state, citing Guomindang legal statutes as well as worries about fengshui, local graves, and the government’s increasingly worthless currency. Few local landlords proved willing to voluntarily sacrifice for the good of the nation.
Living and Working in Wartime China is an important contribution to the literature on wartime China, primarily for opening new windows into the lived experiences of ordinary Chinese and the dynamics of local society under the stresses of wartime.
Greg P. Guelcher
Morningside University, Sioux City