"business News" Advertising And The Construction Of The Modern Leisure (1927-1937)

Previous studies on the development and prosperity of Shanghai's leisure life in modern times especially in the 1930s have mainly focused on the cause of the Capitalism's proactive impetus and Shanghai's passive embracement. But we usually overlook that the advertisements which hold a leading position in 1930s' mass culture also have close relationship with and potential influence on Shanghai's leisure life.Sin Wan Pao is a dominant daily which has a long history, the largest circulation and the maximal publication of advertisements with high proportion in relation to leisure life in Shanghai in the 1930s. This dissertation takes advertisements in Sin Wan Pao as samples to explore how ads participated in constructing the fantasy of Shanghai's leisure life in the 1930s. Research shows that, through a multitude of discourse, composed of both images and languages, Sin Wan Pao's ads constructed the overall characteristic and idea about leisure life in three main fields: space, identity and gender.By giving information and knowledge about leisure, advertisements in Sin Wan Pao produced and constructed the "leisure space" of Shanghai in the 1930s which also indicated that leisure had changed into part of daily life instead of privileges of nobility in traditional Chinese society.At the same time, advertisements in Sin Wan Pao endued leisure life with codes such as fashion, taste, status, etc., which satisfied the pursuit of Shanghai citizen to be identified through emblematic and stylish leisure life owing to the urbanization of Shanghai."Gender (feminine)" is also one of the most important fields that advertisements in Sin Wan Pao constructed the fantasy of the leisure life in Shanghai. The ads gives women in Shanghai society a sense of extending personality and emancipation by comprehensively displaying particular being and modality of women leisure in the 1930s, although we cannot overestimate that too much in that period.Obviously, advertisements in Sin Wan Pao made a multi-dimensional construction of the fantasy of Shanghai's leisure life in the 1930s by using persuasive and guiding discourses. There is no doubt that such construction met the need for leisure which probably was also simulated by the construction of the ads. Advertisements in Sin Wan Pao opened a window for the Shanghai citizen to comprehend the significance of leisure and spontaneously pushed forward the development of the ideas and manners about leisure in the 1930s. Therefore, the advertisement is a combination of both historical and cultural text through which we can study the leisure life in Shanghai in the 1930s. In this sense, advertisements not only provide a new fantasy of the leisure life, but also provide a new angle of fantasy which has paradigmatic importance.