Skip to main content

The Pei-Yang Pictorial News and a Look Into a Flourishing New Urban Culture in
Tianjin, 1926-1937

Current Research Project by Dr. Hong Zhang
Associate Professor of History

Dr. Zhang’s research initiative explores the urban culture in Tianjin (the largest industrial and commercial city in north China during the Republican period) in the 1920s and 1930s as presented and represented mainly through The Pei-Yang Pictorial News, the longest-running and most popular pictorial in north China. Special focus is given to the pictorial’s coverage of young women and commodity advertisements which in a way illuminates the actual and imagined modernity (transliterated as modeng in Chinese) in Tianjin at the time.