Objects, Spectacle, and a Nation on Display at the Nanyang Exposition of 1910
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUPOn the tenth day of the first month of the Xuantong emperor's second year, also seen as a cold February day of 1910, the organizers of China's first nation-wide exposition published a special advertisement in their preparatory tri-monthly. It was a call for individuals interested in a new kind of education and, indeed, a new calling—namely that of "personnel" (shiwu yuan). As the recruiting advertisement read, a special institute was to be established in order to train students in the arts of display and management so that they might serve the exposition when it opened in Nanjing during the upcoming summer. Prerequisite requirements were specific: an education equivalent to primary school of the senior grade,2 an age of nineteen years or older, an examination, and a pledge that once having been admitted the applicant would indeed join the school. The curriculum was to be devoted to six main topics, including the principles of science, display and decoration, accounting, mandarin Chinese (guoyu), introductory English, and the rules of the exposition itself. Benefits for the student were also carefully touted. Students would not only receive an education, but also a credential that, as the ad promised, would "introduce your good service to those looking to fill the staffs of product display halls [End Page 99] and business organizations of every locale." A salary, not enumerated, was also briefly mentioned.3
The authors of the advertisement were seeking personnel to serve an event imagined as both a classroom for national development and as a new kind of spectacle that could accomplish such a pedagogical aim. This event was the Nanyang "Encouraging Industry" Exposition (Nanyang quanye hui) that was held, to debated views of its success, during the summer of 1910.4 Sponsored by the Qing state as well as private investors, the Nanyang Exposition was the first Chinese exposition of a national (and ultimately international) scope. It was not, of course, the first effort towards displaying Chinese objects before viewers of expositions elsewhere. Both state organizers and private collectors had made displays of Chinese objects, artwork, and items of trade available to viewers at international expositions starting with presentations at London's Great Exhibition of 1851 and at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867. At least twenty-seven more events would follow in which China participated before the fall of the Qing dynasty, with China's participation in these events officially overseen by the Maritime Customs Service. Official presentations of Chinese objects would be offered in a world tour of expositions that included, among many others, Philadelphia in 1876, Melbourne in 1880, a visit to the New Orleans World Industrial and Cotton Expo in 1885, Nashville and Omaha in back-to-back years (1897 and 1898), as well as in French Indochina in 1902 and Osaka in 1903, as well as presentations at the prominent expositions of Paris and London.5
With the 1898 move towards reform and a Qing "New Policies" program at the turn of the twentieth century, exhibitions also began to be organized on the metropolitan and provincial scale within China itself. Sichuan held its first exhibition in 1905, while the cities of Tianjin and Wuhan both followed with major exhibitions in 1907 and 1909 respectively. The Qing state also reorganized and renewed its efforts towards exhibitionary projects in the [End Page 100] course of the creation of a Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry. The Ministry established its own permanent exhibition hall for commercial goods in Beijing in 1906, after announcing late the previous year that it would relieve the Maritime Customs Service of its management of China's presentations abroad. As the Ministry took over this latter duty, one that had been previously belonged to the European and American officials of the Customs Service, it promulgated new regulations designed to both guide and encourage provincial preparation...
