The Research Of Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial

Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial is the first current news and custom pictorial in China. After the Opium War, some foreign businessmen and companies began to establish newspapers in Shanghai. Shenjiang Daily had the longest history and the biggest influence among them. Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial was a sideline of Shenjiang Daily which was found by Ernest Major, a British businessman. As a subsidiary publication of Shenjiang Daily, Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial painted a lot kinds of phenomena in late Qing with a single line technique of painting, and extend the image function of Shenjiang Daily for padding the ocular vacancy of people. More than hundred years past, Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial had completed its historical role when modern media are able to be content of people for visual requirement by advanced technology, but as one of the most important factor in history, nowadays , Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial still attract scholars attention because of it's great value in history and culture.Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial is just a thin pictorial which used lithography and contains only 8 leaves. Although there are huge changes in late Qing society, Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial still exist more than ten years. This is not a normal phenomenon in near modern history of China, and there must be a lot experience that we should study and research. So in this article, I attempt to parse Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial's each aspect from the direction of medium that systematized the style and the specialties of the pictorial, at the same time, explored the exterior conditions, which influenced it. In this way, we perhaps to find out the reason that it can persist its influence for more than 15 years. I hope these efforts will provide the modern newpapers with some thought and reference. The article is divided into five parts:The first part elaborates a simple history of Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial, it include the background, the founding process and the ending. It's a complicated phenomenon that the public medium form its own style and speciality, therefore, we should collect enough background datas if we want to analyse them. In late Qing, Shanghai became a centre of cultural conflict. This city had a favourable environment for transmit and a huge creator colony, furthermore, most of the citizen were thirst for"the current news"and"the new-style knowledge".Under this background, Major began to exploit the pictorial market in China. After summing up all of the experience and a sufficient preparation, Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial was born successful by taking the strong concern of"the current news"as an opportunity.The second part explores into the position of Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial. The pictorial belonged to Shenjiang Daily, it is a current news and custom pictorial that takes along with a quality of supplement and always holds a similar attitude with the daily. Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial faced to the community which had a lower cultural degree, its content was made up of four parts that named"the fancy affair","the result of battle","the new-style knowledge", and"the current news". In addition,this pictorial was still a spokesperson of citizenry's culture and also played a role of enlightener: we can find out many new ethical tendencies what existed in late Qing; on the other hand, the pictorial affected and enlightened the community of lower cultural degree because of its special modality, which combine image with text.The third part inquires into the special modality of Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial. This modality extends the range of accepter for its image and text. People can acquire a lot information from its image, furthermore, the image is different from the traditional Chinese paintings but endued with new meanings by consulting the Western paintings.Those pictures of Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial put up a psychosis of Shanghai citizen in late Qing and contained both news quality and artistic quality; the characters was wrote charily as well as used; moreover, this form was the primogenitor of report news by image. The fourth part elaborates the principle of compile and interpret the content of Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial. Some new consciousness and new stuff were incarnated. For the sake of amusing, broadening views and advising and punishing, the pictorial collected matters of novelty by giving priority to image other than text; withal, it's valuable studying material on people's lives in Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial which had recorded abundant current news ,science and technology inventions, social lives, etc, and was popular for more than 15 years in late Qing. We can find out the social and cultural changes in late Qing from Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial.The fifth part analyzes the management of the pictorial. Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial was seized of a huge audience colony for depending on advanced technologies and management, not only by its special modality and content. Major framed a series of mature management for it what based on the specific notion and the exact position of the pictorial: firstly, the use of the lithography gave it a lower price but a nice quality; secondly, by publishing advertisement on Shenjiang Daily, Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial built up its posture and developed a source of stuff; thirdly, it realized that the measures of sales promotion was necessary, so the pictorial prepared some largess for reader; additional, when confronted with the competition, the responses of Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial were also excellent.Finally, by making a summary to the full article, and contacting the pictorial's specialties with modern media, we can acquire two points that we should reflect: for one thing, the journalistic property was emphasized in Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial. The journalistic property was always ignored in definition of traditional supplement, but the affiliated relationship between Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial and Shenjiang Daily reflect that the supplement still requires journalistic property. Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial's success is an example; for another thing, the problem of"kitsch"should be discussed. Although the pictorial had advanced consciousness, but the problem of"kitsch"was existed too, sometimes Dian-shi-zhai Pictorial thought too much of accepters that it induced the news dummy and abnormal. Nowadays, the problem of"kitsch"has become a serious problem for most modern media, so how to find a proper degree between"earthliness"and"kitsch"should be thought carefully.