| Bathhouse is a public building where people can have a bath.The development of bathhouse in antiquity had a close association with religious ceremony and plebeian culture.In the early 20 th century,the public bathhouse of Beijing changed greatly.Compared with the past,the public bathhouse's social function,business model,industry groups,equipment selection,customer group have changed.The prosperity of bathhouse industry had benefit from the advancement of urban modernization,Development of commodity economy,progress of social hygiene consciousness and improvement of People's Lifestyle.For this reason,the bathhouses of Beijing in modern times can be regarded as a public space where involved many factors such as economic factors,political factors,social factors and cultural factor.In this space,the state,government,Social progressive,practitioner in bathhouse and consumer of bathhouse could base on their demand to restructure the cognition to bathhouse.The bathhouse's routine expenses,property structure,and its form of capital organization all demonstrated the social processes.Meanwhile,the management condition and management practices of bathhouses also embody the relation between state and bathhouse industry.Some products of the modern civilization such as running water,electrical equipment,daily chemical products grew in popularity at bathhouse of Beijing in the early 20 th century.An increasing number of bathhouses put lots of modern products in it,moreover,these modern products changed the production and management of bathhouses.If bathhouses widely used modern products,there would be pro rata increase in operating costs.Therefore,every bathhouse had to increase income and reduce expenditure that even some legal regulations were ignored.Bathhouse and government used to clash each other and coordinate with each other in tough economic times.From 1946 to 1948,prices in Peiping underwent the most swings.Soaring prices brought a huge cost pressure to bathhouses,while the national government tightened its control over bathing prices.Both conflicts and coordination between the government and the public bathing industry coexisted in this process.The national government should have regulated the prices,but because of the continual rise in prices,the government gradually loosed the control,and handed over the pricing power to the guild.The source of the relations between the public bathing industry and the government were sometimes in harmony,sometimes in tension was their different emphases on the functions of bathhouses.The government focused more on its role in public sanitation,but the bathhouse owners concerned more about the economic functions,that is,how to gain more profits.The social status,income level,working method and living condition of workers in bathhouse formed their logic of survival.Their social profile came from the cooperation between individual experience and social environment.Modern bathhouse was a modernization's catalytic product with an apparent characteristic of the era.In this time The adjustment of the social structure,changes in the employment system,transformation of Core consumer requirements,reform in social values and the shape of state power to people's labor concept,all above influenced the living practices of bathhouse's workers.The living practices of bathhouse's workers had a reaction on the operating mechanism of bathhouse industry.This mechanism of bathhouse in modern Beijing had a close relation with social structure and salary system.The adjustment of the social structure in modern times changed the customer groups and the consumer demand of bathhouse.It directly led to the change of the business model of bathhouse.The service quality became an important factor to determine the income of bathhouse.To assure quality of service,bathhouses have constructed a salary system that forces its workers to improve their quality of service on the condition of their quality of life.In order to survive,the bathhouse's workers had to improve quality of service to earn more tips.But at the same time they were heavily criticized by public opinions.The reason is that their survival practice had changed operating mechanism of bathhouse industry to some extent.Beijing Bathhouse Association and Beijing Bathhouse Trade Union came into being in the nature of profit-seeking of bathhouses,and the needs for survival of workers.Different from the traditional guild,the founding of Beijing Bathhouse Association was based on the mutual economic benefit in the trend of Capitalization of bathhouse industry.Because the Beijing Bathhouse Association represented the benefits of bathhouse management,the management used to reduce the number of workers as much as possible while extending the working hours.Arguably,Bathhouse Association aggravated the dispute between labor and management.To sustain their survival and fight against the oppression and exploitation of management,bathhouse's workers had to form Bathhouse Trade Union,which could enhance their strength in bathhouse industry,Improve their living conditions and alleviate the contradiction between commercial purposes of management and Survival demand of labor.It is remarkable that Chinese Communists played a key role in forming Beijing Bathhouse Trade Union.In the first half of the 20 th century,Successive governments of Beijing have paid attention to the public health cause.At the urging of governments and Social progressives,Beijing residents' Health awareness has significantly increased.In this situation,Bathhouse business prospered because of the change in people's bathing habits.Meanwhile,state tried to put its power infiltrated to every important area of Grass-root society by sanitary improvement.From this perspective,bathhouse was both the object of government administration and the place where the policy is implemented.But the intention of state power to intervene in urban grass-roots affairs by urban governance and health administration didn't work out as planned.Despite the government formulated a series of management regulations to bathhouse,set up civilian bathhouse and female bathhouse,the effect is not satisfactory.The operators,practitioners and customers of the bathhouse used to add or raise hurdles to the policies and regulations.Sanitary improvement in bathhouse is not simply a public health issue.Bathhouse didn't as government expect to be a public place where offered superior and inexpensive product and mass produced neat,tidy and law-abiding citizens.This is due to some variables such as Bathhouse management status,people's consumption concept and administrative funds of government.In the process of carrying out the modernization policy and improving the city images,the urban immigrant population of Beijing had a huge increase,the composition of urban residents tend to complication gradually.In this time,Beijing City was dirty,crowded,poor,infesting crime and bad behavior.These social problems also bred in the bathhouse,such as prostitution,theft,gambling,drugs and other problems.State power is not absent in the governance to these social problems.Although state and government imposed harsh measures to govern bathhouse,but the theft,prostitution and other problems were still a matter of frequent occurrence.The source of social problems resides in the social environment instead of the problem itself.The primary causes of these social problems were the contradictions between modern social consciousness,public morality,modern labor and salary system and the traditional habits.In addition,the colonists' cultural intervention also had an influence on these social problems.In the first half of the 20 th century,with the dramatic change of China's social system,people's everyday life served as the medium of the social system.It was gradually focused on by social progressives and became the organized object over the state power.Such a trend was embodied by the transformation of the bathing experience for people.The way to transform it was to connect bathing with modern social values,to internalize it in the awareness of people by routine everyday life;and the way to realize it is to create the concepts of leisure time and consumption.The former aimed to make bathing to be a routine,daily habit for people,and the purpose of the latter was to encourage people to take a bath so as to popularize the values of modern everyday life.While the state,government and the social progressives made meaning to bathing,constructed leisure time and consumption concept,a series of problems and divergences also arise.There was a clear class distinction in bathhouse rather than freedom and equality.Meanwhile,the bathhouse operators would also earn fat profit by social stratification.Leisure time could lead to leisure class and reaping without sowing suchlike social unhealthy practices.Consumption cultivated the vanity of advocating a luxury culture,it also result in the social climate of conspicuous consumption.In this sense,modernity was not the only interpretation to bathing.In the process of modernity affecting bathing and bathhouse,the experience and perception of taking a bath changed in different degrees,which not only manifested the characteristics and features of this era but was also shaped by the practice of individuals or the mass.There were many unexpected things in the modernization of china that government and social progressions didn't realize.These differences of modernization were bound to embody in bathhouses.Some disputes between government and bathhouse operators,management and labor,bathhouse workers and customers,state power and individual practice resided in bathhouses.However,these disputes was not always playing a negative role,it also changed the government's policy,adjusted the allocation of social resources and formed people's cognition to society.Every policy made by the government,every response to policies from bathhouses and its customers,every introspection and governance of government and social progressions to responses were the essential step in the process of modernization.In conclusion,modernization of china was not affected by Western experience unilaterally,its own practice was equally important. |
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