• Source: Emancipation Pictorial

The Emancipation Pictorial (simplified Chinese: 解放画报; traditional Chinese: 解放畫報; pinyin: Jiěfàng Huàbào), also known as the Liberation Pictorial, was a short-lived women's magazine published in the Republic of China. Established by the Xinmin Library, it was first published on 4 May 1920 and is known to have lasted for eighteen issues; the preface to the last edition indicated a plan to rejuvenate the magazine, which has not been identified.
Articles, mostly produced by men, dealt with topics of interest to contemporary women readers such as breast binding and marriage. The Emancipation Pictorial advocated for equal rights for men and women, though it did not embrace the contemporary women's rights movement and rejected women's participation in politics. Imagery ranged from the realistic to the surreal, and generally explored how women had suffered, emancipation could occur, and emancipation was realized in contemporary China.




Publication


The Emancipation Pictorial was one of several magazines established following the May Fourth Movement to deal primarily with women's issues; others included New Woman (新妇女) and Women's Review (妇女评论). It was published by the Xinmin Library, which had been cofounded by Zheng Zhegu, Zheng Zhengqiu, and Zhou Jianyun; also published by Xinmin was the magazine Yaofeng Monthly and the newspaper Spring Voice Daily.
The first issue of the Emancipation Pictorial was published on 4 May 1920, the first anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, which the magazine supported. Explaining the rationale behind the establishment of the Emancipation Pictorial, editor Zhou Jianyun wrote in the first issue:

Eight years since the founding of the Republic of China, though the name has changed, the content remains the same; though the emperor has been removed, the people are still slaves; though global trends are calling, the Chinese people's thinking has not changed. ... [Out of love for country, this magazine] seeks to tear off all constraints, promote liberation, and then bring about some transformation.
The majority of the magazine's contributors were men. These included Qian Xingcun, Pan Gongzhan, Ye Chucang, Gu Kenfu, Xu Banmei, and Guan Ji'an. Editorship of the magazine was handled by Zhou Jianyun. New issues were published every month. It is unknown when the Emancipation Pictorial was disestablished. Eighteen issues have been recorded, and an editorial in the last known issue indicated that publication would continue with reformed content and a new look. No such continuation has been identified.




Content






= Text

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In his introduction to the first issue, Zhou Jianyun wrote that the Emancipation Pictorial was intended to explore the topic of women's rights – not in an academic sense, but rather within the context of everyday issues affecting the populace. In its seventh issue, the magazine reaffirmed its commitment to equal rights for men and women, whom it characterized as equally responsible to the country. At the same time, it opposed the involvement of women in contemporary political processes. Holding that the contemporary women's rights movement prioritized the desires of upper-class women, it wrote:

Women should absolutely have the right to participate in politics, but in the current political situation, it is not appropriate for women to participate in the political movement. [...] Most women are ignorant; those women, how can they hope to participate in politics! Even if educated women, relying on the power of their fathers, brothers, and husbands, may be able to get an official position. This is individualism. They are simply aristocrats, not liberated women.

As with other contemporary women's magazines, the Emancipation Pictorial rejected the treatment of women in pre-republican China, deeming principles such as the Three Obediences and Four Virtues to condemn women to lives of bondage. Such publications emphasized the need for women to exist as their own beings, with their own independent personalities, rather than subordinating themselves to men. The Emancipation Pictorial rejected, for instance, the practice of arranged marriages in favour of love-based unions, holding that the earlier practice had reduced couples to machines manufacturing grandchildren for their parents.
Topics discussed in the Emancipation Pictorial included breast binding, women's education, and marital problems. One article by Zhen Xin opposed the use of the word 女士 (nǚshì; 'lady'), holding that it was rooted in a slave mentality and normally used by women seeking to distinguish themselves from their peers. Other coverage explored the women's rights movement in China and abroad. The magazine identified women's issues as paramount, a starting point for any discussion of emancipation.
Content was written in vernacular Chinese, as classical Chinese was deemed more difficult for the average reader. The Emancipation Pictorial was among the earliest Chinese periodicals to use gendered pronouns to distinguish between men and women. Early issues used the third-person pronoun 伊 (yī) to refer to women; in the July 1913 issue, Emancipation Pictorial used the word 她 (tā) in a cartoon by Lin Xin, which the linguist Huang Xingtao describes as likely the pronoun's first usage in an artistic work. Also included in the Emancipation Pictorial were works of literature, such as poems, short stories, and stage plays.




= Imagery

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The Emancipation Pictorial was illustrated with photographs and cartoons, which were deemed better for attracting readers and more readily able to reach the lower and middle classes. The first few pages of each issue generally reproduced artworks, generally focusing on women in modern styles enjoying leisurely lives. Both works of fiction and non-fiction were accompanied by illustrations. On average, each issue contained twenty-five illustrations – approximately one per article, though the illustration did not always focus on the same topic as the accompanying text. Cover illustrations showed women in the process of gaining liberation, with the third issue depicting a woman with unbound feet pushing through a fence-like design, while the fifth portrayed a woman breaking free of shackles.

Reviewing the contents of the Emancipation Pictorial, Liu Renfeng of the Hunan Women's University divides its imagery into three categories: depictions of women's suffering in earlier eras, the means of women's liberation, and the future of women's emancipation. As examples of the first, she notes illustrations of a woman smothered by a weight labelled "male supremacy", as well as depictions of fortune telling. Means of emancipation, meanwhile, included an illustration depicting a Statue of Liberty-like figure bearing a torch composed of the words "knowledge", "autonomy", and "personality". For the future of emancipation, illustrations depicted women as seamstresses, typists, and police officers, conveying the possibility of employment outside the home. At the same time, these illustrations urged restraint, cautioning against fornication, debauchery, opulence, and gambling.
In their style, the illustrations accompanying the Emancipation Pictorial varied from the realistic to the idealized. Realistic illustrations could be used to promote a sort of modern ideal for achievement, or to depict scenes from a literary text to create a picture narrative. Other examples drew from manhua (comics), blending a degree of surrealism to convey their point. Such surrealist tendencies were evident, for instance, in a drawing of a hand labelled "patriarchy" (父权) gripping five people tightly as well as another presenting a woman carrying a boulder labelled "the economy" walking the "road to liberation".




Legacy


Emancipation Pictorial has been described as the first illustrated periodical in China to deal with women's issues. At the time of its publication, several periodicals already focused on similar topics. These included The Ladies' Journal, established in 1915 and published by the Commercial Press, and The Women's Eastern Times. By the 1930s, more than 250 publications in the Republic of China dealt primarily with women's issues.




Explanatory notes






References






Works cited






External links


Partial archive at Heidelberg University

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