Women as Pleasure Seekers: Courtesans, Actresses, and Female Visitors in the Amusement Halls of Early Republican Shanghai

Abstract

Shanghai of the early twentieth century represents the blossoming of urban culture in Modern China. With an extensive research on archival materials, this paper examines the amusement industry of the city by looking into the two major amusement halls, Great World (da shijie) and New World (xin shijie), and their associated tabloids, known as "amusement hall newspapers." Specifically, it asks, "How might have women experienced amusement differently?" With the term pleasure seeker, this study surveys female visitors who were seeking fun in these amusement halls, whose existence has yet to be acknowledged. Second, it questions the presumed relationship between women and pleasure, object and subject of the gaze. It discusses in particular the presence of courtesans, actresses and female audience in such pleasurable mechanism.