A Created Modern Utopia-An Analysis Of American Image In Liangyou Huabao

As an encyclopedic pictorial,Liangyou Huabao is famous for framing Shanghai modernity in the first half of the twentieth century.It was also the most cosmopolitan with thousands of pictures and reports depicting foreign countries.The United States was the most heavily reported among all the foreign countries Liangyou editors paid attention to.The American image in Liangyou was representative of how it was constructed in the Chinese context during China's republican period.Although more than half a century has passed,this image is still meaningful to explore because once formed image is resist to change or vanish.Therefore,as a case,the American image in Liangyou is worth studying.Drawing on the theoretical framework of imagology and relying on qualitative methods including thematic analysis and historical analysis,this thesis studies what the American image was in Liangyou and how the image was formulated.The conclusion is that the United States was created as a technologically advanced,affluent,ebullient and modern Utopia.And this image was influenced by the previous description of the United States in Chinese writings and editors' pursuit of strengthening China.The United States was a mirror for editors to introspect Self.China' underdevelopment,as well as editors' pursuit of China's modernization and anxiety over being squeezed by American material civilization Chinese identity were highlighted.The contributions of the thesis are two-fold.First,the study of American image in Liangyou is conducted from a relatively public perspective.As one of the most widely read pictorial in the Republican China,Liangyou was representative of how common Chinese perceived the United States.The thesis found that from this perspective American material civilization was highlighted.Second,this thesis applies imagology to study the image of the United States,which was constructed as a modern Utopia.This thesis tries to connect the American image in Chinese context with China's pursuit of modernization.Editors turned to the United States and glorified it as the model of modern civilization.This image functioned to subvert China's own ignorance and backwardness.Then editors tended to amplify the United States about its ideal and difference and glorified it as a Utopian fallacy.