Cinema in China Prior to WWI A Case Study of West-Eastern Culture Transfer

This book looks at the earliest history of exhibiting firms in China at the turn of thecentury. The spread of cinema in China as a continuation of the lantern tradition iscontextualized and conventionalized in the late Qing sociopolitical milieu, featuringa strong foreign monopoly and regional imbalance. However, the key element forcinema's development in China is Chinese audience per se. "The book has produced something truly remarkable and tremendous." —Frank Bren "The work offers a lot of new insights into the history of the cinema in China. Thoughthe film business was brought from abroad to the mainland, the candidate was nevernationalistic in her approach to the phenomenon of foreign entertainment in China." —Wolfgang Kubin "The author painstakingly combed through a large number of historical newspapers,especially English-language newspapers published both in and outside China, andpieced together a convincing picture of the earliest history of Chinese cinema." —Xuelei Huang.