The Editor: Peter Zarrow is Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. He received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and is the author of numerous works on modern Chinese intellectual history. His current interests include late Qing textbooks and the cultural significance of the collapse of the monarchy in 1911.

Over the first half of the twentieth century, the lives of millions of urban Chinese were transformed by new ideas, new objects, new jobs, new leisure pursuits, new forms of transportation, new architecture: in a word, new «life-styles» and habits of mind. What did these changes mean to ordinary people? The essays in this book examine how prevailing discourses – on nationalism, feminism, democracy, individualism, socialism, and the like – emerged and were absorbed into the lived experiences and material culture of ordinary Chinese. Only from intimate personal experiences with forces ranging from war, revolution, and state-building to advertising blitzes and boycotts was Chinese modernity forged, forged out of «forces» larger than individuals but simultaneously observed, interpreted, adapted, and absorbed by those individuals.