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

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This book looks at the earliest history of exhibiting firms in China at the turn of the century. The spread of cinema in China as a continuation of the lantern tradition is contextualized and conventionalized in the late Qing sociopolitical milieu, featuring a strong foreign monopoly and regional imbalance. However, the key element for cinema’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. Though the film business was brought from abroad to the mainland, the candidate was never nationalistic 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, and pieced together a convincing picture of the earliest history of Chinese cinema.

-Xuelei Huang