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Available From UC Press
Public Passions
The Trial of Shi Jianqiao and the Rise of Popular Sympathy in Republican China
In 1935, a Chinese woman by the name of Shi Jianqiao murdered the notorious warlord Sun Chuanfang as he prayed in a Buddhist temple. This riveting work of history examines this well-publicized crime and the highly sensationalized trial of the killer. In a fascinating investigation of the media, political, and judicial records surrounding this cause célèbre, Eugenia Lean shows how Shi Jianqiao planned not only to avenge the death of her father, but also to attract media attention and galvanize public support. Lean traces the rise of a new sentiment—""public sympathy""—in early twentieth-century China, a sentiment that ultimately served to exonerate the assassin. The book sheds new light on the political significance of emotions, the powerful influence of sensational media, modern law in China, and the gendered nature of modernity.
Eugenia Lean is Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University.
"This book is at the forefront of the next generation of scholarship on early 20th century China. Lean makes a number of important claims about sentiment and modernity, puts forward broader claims that go beyond China Studies, and poses stark questions about the place of 'rationality' in modernity that will compel others to defer to her study for many years to come."—John Fitzgerald, author of Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution
"This ingeniously crafted book provides intriguing ways of linking the past to the present, weaving debates that stretch as far back as the Qin with questions of contemporary Chinese culture and politics. Through exhaustive examinations of media, political, and judicial records, the author vividly shows how the debate on emotions that Shi's case engendered was a manifestation of a 'modern public' in China."—Ruth Rogaski, author of Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China
"This ingeniously crafted book provides intriguing ways of linking the past to the present, weaving debates that stretch as far back as the Qin with questions of contemporary Chinese culture and politics. Through exhaustive examinations of media, political, and judicial records, the author vividly shows how the debate on emotions that Shi's case engendered was a manifestation of a 'modern public' in China."—Ruth Rogaski, author of Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China