Abstract
Liangyou huabao (The Young Companion) was a prominent Chinese pictorial magazine, with 174 issues published monthly between 1926 and 1945. Liangyou entertained its Chinese audience with a variety of photographs documenting modern life. This thesis examines photographs of domestic travel photography in the magazine, arguing that editorial captions encouraged readers to associate images of China with allusions to traditional art and aesthetics. This occurred within a historical context where modernity was often associated with the pressures of Westernization, and where Chinese culture and civilization was sometimes characterized as outdated or irrelevant. By using travel photography to demonstrate how traditional culture could be integrated into modern life, Liangyou's editors offered an alternative vision to this perception, emphasizing the ways in which Chinese readers had a measure of control in how they viewed their place in the world.
Degree
MA
College and Department
Humanities; Comparative Arts and Letters
Rights
https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Watson, Anne Marie, "The Most Beautiful Under Heaven: Selecting Views of Modern China Through Travel Photography in Liangyou huabao (The Young Companion), 1926-1937" (2025). Theses and Dissertations. 10792.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/10792
Date Submitted
2025-04-24
Document Type
Thesis
Handle
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd13661
Keywords
Modern China, modernity, Chinese art, photography, travel, magazine, pictorial, imperialism, cosmopolitanism, nationalism, Liang Desuo, Wu Liande
Language
english