Thoroughly researched and elegantly crafted, Eugenia Lean's Vernacular Industrialism in China: Local Innovation and Translated Technologies in the Making of a Cosmetics Empire, 1900–1940 centers on the career of Chen Diexian (1879–1940), “a cosmopolitan man of letters, industrialist, and practitioner of science” and sheds fresh light on early twentieth-century China at a time when the nation was just entering global capitalism. Chen, a classically educated Hangzhou man, nevertheless developed an interest in science—chemistry especially—leading him to found one of the largest cosmetics companies in China and, consequently, to establish himself as a leading industrialist in Shanghai and the country on a whole. Lean's study challenges both the conventional view that men such as Chen were unable to find meaningful roles for themselves in the drastically changing society of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China, and, more broadly, the overly generalized view that there is a fundamental discrepancy between traditional Chinese culture and the modern world, an idea that was presented by both Chinese intellectuals and the Western academic world during the twentieth century. Chen serves as an effective counterexample of how a man of classical education utilized elements from his traditional background to embrace new knowledge and innovate different roles for himself in the globally integrated industrial and commercial world of Shanghai.
A central concept the book develops is “vernacular industrialism,” which Lean uses to refer to industrial practices that were “local,” “homegrown (as opposed to imperialist or foreign),” and “informal and part of China's consumer culture (rather than state sponsored or located in academia), as well as artisanal in spirit and family run even if eventually situated in factories” (3). In Lean's analysis, this “vernacular industrialism” was embedded in both material and knowledge work, and “even though promoted as local and native, vernacular industrialism also often depended on access to global circuits of law, science, and commerce” (3). This “vernacular industrialism” was primarily expressed through the practice of tinkering. Chen started his career in science and industry by “playfully dabbling” with things like the fire extinguisher in his scholar's studio, and his efforts to manufacture cosmetics involved resourcing and testing local raw materials, as well as experimenting with DIY methods. He accomplished his goals by improving existing technologies instead of inventing new ones. Such improvising in material practices was mirrored by the production of knowledge in which he engaged throughout his life. His compilation of cosmetic recipes, for instance, was mostly based on those that had already been published in Western and Japanese journals; Chen would usually synthesize the information and then add local elements to the lists of ingredients.
This is not to say that Chen cannot be qualified as a modern industrialist; rather, Lean asks us to reflect on how scholars have categorized the practices and knowledge that characterized the turn of the twentieth century. This was a time of material and informational scarcity; China had yet to see the institutionalization and formalization of knowledge in academia or of industrial production in fully mechanized factories. There was much fluidity in what defined industry, and people like Chen participated in the very development of that definition. Chen's engagement in science and industry through tinkering might not fit how we conventionally understand invention, but he was an innovative leading industrialist in his time. If we insist on using formal industrial practices as the standard retrospectively, activities like Chen's will be excluded from “industry” as well as from “modernity.” By questioning some of the conventional definitions and categories adopted in thinking about modern Chinese history, Lean presents a new understanding of industrialization in China, and in turn challenges the view of Chinese modernity as simply derivative—a mere follower in the steps of the West.
Lean does an extraordinary job of demonstrating how cultural practices and knowledge production played central roles in Chen's industrial success. Chen was a commercial writer who wrote popular poetry and published serialized novels, and he cultivated for himself the image of a sentimental man. He wrote for popular magazines to provide what Lean refers to as “common knowledge” of science and industry for his curious readers, usually fellow dabblers and tinkerers. He also worked as a professional editor, categorizing “common knowledge for the household” in order to distinguish “authentic national products” and educate the general population on how to be proper consumers. Lean eloquently argues that these textual practices were not separate from Chen's industrial ambition; rather, his activities in writing and compilation formed a crucial part of his “vernacular industrialism.” Not only did Chen mobilize his classical education for his industrial ambition, he also closely followed novel international practices, such as using movie stars to endorse his products and exercising copyright law to prosecute infringers. In other words, Chen—who started out as a member of the literati—immersed himself in the international circuit not only of material production and scientific knowledge, but also of social and cultural institutions, concepts, and practices. By examining Chen's literary and industrial activities as a whole, Lean presents Chen, far from the effete Confucian scholar unable to engage the changing world, as a savvy industrialist who was rooted both in the past and the present, in China and in the world. His textual practices as a member of the literati did not hinder his venture into industry but were, in fact, an integral step in the direction of modernity.
Much of the pleasure of reading this book comes from watching how Lean—by studying the sources deeply and sensitively, expanding into the larger historical context, and engaging earlier scholarship—skillfully teases out the subtle or hidden meanings of lives in early twentieth-century Chinese society. Her discussion of bamboo-branch poetry, which begins with late nineteenth-century media forms of producing and legitimating new knowledge and imported technology and moves onto the viewing practices of new genres such as the Dianshizhai pictorial, serves as a good example. By locating Chen's early dabbling with science in the literati culture of “play,” Lean recognizes his “playful entrepreneurism.” The nuanced reading of the guixiu culture in Chapter Two, titled “Recipes for the Inner Chambers,” is among the most precise and insightful on this topic; such precision and insight is impossible to achieve without a broad and deep knowledge of history and interdisciplinary skill of analysis. Such perceptive discussions can be observed throughout the book, and they set a good example for students who are learning the craft of establishing an argument in historical context and integrating information with analysis.
As tinkering was central to Chen's industrial work, it is understandable that the author, at the end of the book, should direct the discussion towards the Great Leap Forward, which claimed to focus on self-reliance and autarky, as well as the practice of shanzhai (knockoff) in today's China, for which imitation is its foundation. One wants to keep in mind, however, that the early PRC and post-socialist China that was deeply entangled in global capitalism are fundamentally different from the country at the turn of the twentieth century, both in its domestic conditions and its relations with the rest of the world. Nevertheless, it is still useful as a gesture to point to potential topics for further exploration.
