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China's Modern Sketch I
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Tao Mouji
Untitled

August 1934 [ms08_041_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Tao Mouji
“Famished”
Female Storeclerk: So sorry! We’re fresh
out of big buttered buns!

September 1934 [ms09_025_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Zhang Yingchao
“Red Lips of August among the Gay Crowd”

August 1934 [ms08_022_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Zhang Yingchao
“City of Anemia and Heartburn”

April 1935 [ms16_021_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Ye Qianyu
“Skirt-chasers”

May 1934 [ms05_019_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Zhang Yingchao
“Preferred Partner”

December 1934 [ms12_042_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Tao Mouji
“Watermelon Seeds and Romance”

November 1934 [ms11_022_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Zhang Yingchao
“The Ginza in June”
The chikatetsu has opened, and it’s waribiki;
looking sharp in a western-style outfit!

Notes: 1) Ginza is the name of a street in Tokyo, Japan
that is lined with coffee shops ... 2) Chikatetsu refers
to a subterranean electric railway: the “under-ground.”
3) waribiki means “discount.”

July 1934 [ms07_015_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Ye Qianyu
“Dance Hall Close-ups” (clockwise from top left)
Live advertising à la 1934
A modern-day Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu
If you want to feel the meat, you can’t wear a
scholar’s gown
A match made in Heaven; moving in perfect step

February 1934 [ms02_020_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Hu Kao
“The Perfect Life of Leisure!” (clockwise from top left)
— Ain’t no time for learning in the gusty old fall,
Woo woo...chee chee...a shoo shoo shoo...
— Ain’t no time for books in the warm and breezy spring,
Pa pa...doo doo...a go go go
— Ain’t no time for homework in the scorching summer,
Wah wah...lah lah...a yeah yeah yeah
— Ain’t no time to study on those chilly winter nights,
Dah dah...bom bom...a lah lah lah...

April 1934 [ms04_020_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Tao Mouji
“October Gold!”

October 1934 [ms10_042_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures 		Guo Jianying
“The Lure of the Water”

July 1934 [ms07_021_ModernSketch]
MIT Visualizing Cultures
Nine Thematic Visual Narratives

2. “Modern Girl Modern Boy”

The phenomena of the “modern girl” and “modern boy” swept the world’s urban centers during the interwar years. Shanghai-based Modern Sketch contributors like Zhang Yingchao, Guo Jianying, Hu Kao, Tao Mouji, and Ye Qianyu played a key role in propagating these jazz-age images. The Chinese artists emulated and extended a global style, just as their counterparts in cities like Berlin, Bombay, and Tokyo were doing, creating pictures of play and seduction for a pair of types sometimes worshipped, sometimes reviled, but always in tune with the allure of the modern.
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