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Measuring Up: Better baby contests in China, 1917–45
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2020
Abstract
This article charts the Chinese indigenization of better baby contests, from Christian health services offered by the YWCA to positive models of nourishment organized by Chinese philanthropic organizations and local and central governments. American missionaries and milk-powder companies played a large role in sponsoring the contests in China. Influenced by the rise of scientific measurement and ‘national rejuvenation’ as promoted by the New Culture Movement in 1915, Chinese organizers tended to focus on liveliness, gender equality, and statistics that pointed to the need for public reform. As in the United States of America, scientific criteria sometimes also challenged conventional notions of plump cuteness. These goals sometimes conflicted with the implicit aims of corporate sponsors. Contests thus celebrated new material conditions and public hygiene facilitated by modern industry, but was at the same time circumscribed by commercial advertisers, reticent evangelists, or other sponsors.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
The author would like to thank Stefan Huebner, Yurou Zhong, Norbert Peabody, Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this article. The article benefitted from research undertaken while at the 2017 Hoover Institution Summer Workshop, hosted by Hsiao-ting Lin, as well as on a Taiwan Fulbright grant and a postdoctoral grant from the American Council of Learned Societies. Margaret Mih Tillman is assistant professor at Purdue University and an affiliated researcher at the Yuelu Academy, Changsha.
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135 For example, ‘From day to day’, The North-China Daily News, 1 October 1941, p. 9.
136 ‘Hankou ertong jiankang bisaihui choubeihui’ 漢口兒童健康比賽會籌備會 (Hankou Child Health Contest Preparatory Committee) to the Wuhan desk of the Ministry of Education, Second Historical Archives 5-15055, p. 16.
137 Zhou Shang 周尚 to Chen Lifu 陳立夫, Second Historical Archives 5-15055, February 1938, p. 12.
138 ‘Ningxia sheng sanshiniandu juxing ertong jiankang bisai juesai luqu ertong xingmingbiao’ 寧夏省三十年度舉行兒童健康比賽決賽錄取兒童姓名表 (Name chart of child-health contest examiners for the 1941 Ningxia provincial child-health contest), Second Historical Archives 5-15055, pp. 68–70.
139 ‘Nantong nianling tigao tizhong duizhao biao’ 男童年齡提高體重對照表 (Boys’ height and weight by age) and ‘Nütong nianling tigao tizhong duizhao biao’ 女童年齡提高體重對照表 (Girls’ height and weight by age); both appear as appendices in the report by Huang Xuchu (黃旭初) to the Guangxi Provincial Government, in Second Historical Archives 5-15055, p. 109.
140 Ertong jiankang bisai tekan 兒童健康比賽特刊 (Special issue on child-health contests) (Tengheng: Tengheng xian dang bu 騰衡縣黨部, 1939), p. 3.
141 Ibid.
142 Ibid., p. 9.
143 ‘Ertong jiankang bisai teji: peiyang guojia de genji’ 兒童健康比賽特輯：培養國家的根基 (Special Issue on Better Baby Contests: Fostering the Root of the Nation), Xin Shenghuo Yundong wuzhounian jinian tekan 新生活運動勞五週年紀念特刊 (Circular commemorating the fifth anniversary of the New Life Movement), no. 10, 18 February 1939, p. 3Google Scholar; ‘Guomindang Collection, New Life Series’, Hoover Institution Archives, reel 2, Folder 21.
144 M. Cheng (程美玉), ‘Ertong yingshi’ 兒童營食 (Children's Nutrition), in ibid.
145 For example, ‘Xia yidai yingyang buliang shayan teduo’ 下一代營養不良傻眼特多 (Malnourishment and trachoma especially prevalent in the next generation), Dagong wanbao, 7 April 1945, p. 1.
146 ‘Guofang zuigao weiyuanhui mishuting han guomin zhengfu wenguanchu youguan zhen ji weiyuanhui chengqing zhan huan juban natong jiankang bisai shengchan jiaoyu chengji zhanlanhui yi an feng pizhun yubei an qing zhuan chi zhi’ 國防最高委員會秘書廳函國民政府文官處有關振濟委員會呈請展緩舉辦難童健康比賽及生產教育成績展覽會一案奉批准予備案請轉飭知 (The Secretariat of the Supreme National Defence Council, letter to the Department of Civil Affairs of the Republican Government regarding the Development and Relief Commission's hosting of a child-health contest and a production education exhibit), October 1939, in Academia Historica 〈第二期戰時行政計劃案〉，《國民政府》，國史館藏，數位典藏號：001-040003-00001-048.
147 F. Michael, ‘A university on the march’, reproduced in F. Hubert, Chinese education in the war, Council of International Affairs, Political and Economic Studies, no. 9, Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, Ltd, 1940. For information on Michael, see Näth, Marie-Luise, ‘Obituary’, The China Quarterly, no. 138, 1 June 1994, pp. 513–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
148 ‘Ying'er jiankang’ 嬰兒健康 (infant health), Datong bao (Guilin), 2 April 1941, p. 3.
149 Klaus, Every child a lion, p. 149.
150 Jones, Developmental fairy tales, pp. 22–5.
151 Dorey, Better baby contests, pp. 50–3.
152 Smith, H. N., Virgin land: The American West as symbol and myth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 250–60Google Scholar.
153 Cronon, W., ‘Revisiting the vanishing frontier: The legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner’, The Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 2, 1987, p. 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
154 Worster, D., Under Western skies: Nature and history in the American West (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 6–8Google Scholar.
155 Ibid., p. 14.
156 The Second Historical Archives of China 11-7880, ‘Shehuibu Peidu ertong ertongjie deng choubei weiyuanhui huiyi jilu jiangpin dengji bu ertong jiankang bisai canjia zheng deng youguan wenshu’ 社會部陪都兒童兒童節等籌備委員會會議記錄獎品登記簿兒童健康比賽參加證等有關文書 (Bureau of Social Affairs and the Chongqing Children's Day Preparatory Committee and other accompanying committees records of prizes, children's health contest participation records and other materials).
157 Tianyi Weijingchang (天廚味精廠) to the Child Welfare Preparatory Committee, March 1945, in the Second Historical Archives of China 11-7880, p. 101.