From teahouse to classroom: Educational screen practice in Republican Shanghai

Abstract Using the concept of ‘educational screen practice,’ this article aims to integrate the history of modern Chinese media—which has been dichotomised into pre-cinema and après-cinema—the history of lantern slides screenings and film screenings, and the history of educational and entertainment films. Lantern slides were brought to China at the end of the nineteenth century, and soon afterward they were used in Western-style schools and other educational institutions as a teaching tool to impart modern knowledge. At the beginning of the twentieth century, showing lantern slides and films became a popular leisure activity for students in new-style schools. At the same time, students studied in Japan began to use lantern slides and films for popular education. By the 1910s, the Jiangsu Educational Association and the Shanghai YMCA made active use of lantern slides and films to popularise the practice of visual screenings. The widespread use of visual media for popular education in the 1910s involved personnel that would emerge a decade later as leaders of the Chinese film industry and created a potential audience for cinema. To oversee educational screen practices more effectively, the Commercial Press and the Star Motion Picture Company operated as media conglomerates that encompassed film and print media and contributed to an ‘industry of enlightenment’ (Leo Ou-fan Lee). Thus, revising Chinese film history in terms of educational screen practices opens up a new horizon in the history of visual culture, connecting the divided histories of cinema and pre-cinema.