Documents 

Most studies on ‘modern magic’ examine the evolution and politics of this performance genre in various Euro-American cultural spaces. This article explores how Chinese people perceived and re-invented modern magic in their encounters with modernity and in the context of China’s nationalist and anti-imperialist struggles. More specifically, this study uses the lens of gender to sketch out the emergence of a cultural economy of modern magic, under the influence of colonial capitalism, urbanization, the development of public education and the rise of Chinese nationalism. My research reveals that for Chinese practitioners, embracing modern magic signaled their acceptance of a liberal and evolutionary view of the social world and was also a way of engaging with progressive forces to challenge western and Japanese imperialisms. Drawing on local entrepreneurialism and artisanship, a generation of Chinese magicians innovated upon established repertoires and competed with non-Chinese practitioners for male privilege and power. During the Second Sino-Japanese war, modern magic was especially politicized and transformed into expressions of protest promoting a united Chinese nation.

This paper examines how acrobatics was imbued with multiple meanings through the practices of nation-state building and international diplomacy. More specifically, the author discusses why the Chinese government chose acrobatics to facilitate the Sino-US rapprochement and the implications of this cultural diplomacy for the governments as well as the acrobats. Drawing on oral history interviews and archival data, this study demonstrates how the relationship between acrobatics and the ideas of ‘Chinese revolution’ was established, strengthened, disrupted, and finally re-modified to facilitate China’s relations with the West. This historical investigation advances the literature on performing arts and politics by exposing the political logics in the North-South exchange. As important, the analysis of acrobats’ engagement with Cold War politics evades state-centric narratives and contributes to an understanding of international diplomacy from a bottom-up perspective.