Scents of China
Douban
A Modern History of Smell
Xuelei Huang
overview
In this vivid and highly original reading of recent Chinese history, Xuelei Huang documents the eclectic array of smells that permeated Chinese life from the High Qing through to the Mao period. Utilising interdisciplinary methodology and critically engaging with scholarship in the expanding fields of sensory and smell studies, she shows how this period of tumultuous change in China was experienced through the body and the senses. Drawing on unexplored archival materials, readers are introduced to the 'smellscapes' of China from the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century via perfumes, food, body odours, public health projects, consumerism and cosmetics, travel literature, fiction and political language. This pioneering and evocative study takes the reader on a sensory journey through modern Chinese history, examining the ways in which the experience of scent and modernity have intertwined.
contents
A note on the text;
Introduction.
The cesspool and the rose garden;
Part I. A Sniff of China:
1. Aromas and the red chamber;
2. China stinks;
Part II. Smellscapes in Flux:
3. Deodorizing China;
4. Re-perfuming China;
Part III. A Whiff of Alterity:
5. The bouquet or Eros;
6. The politics of smell;
Epilogue.
The smell of winter white cabbage.