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Food, hygiene, and modernity of Hangzhou (1927-1937)

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Food, hygiene, and modernity of Hangzhou (1927-1937)

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FOOD, HYGIENE, AND MODERNITY IN HANGZHOU(1927-1937)

By

Xizhu Liu

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC DORNSIFE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirement of the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN AREA STUDIES)

December 2020

Copyright: 2020 Xizhu Liu
ii

Table of Contents
List of Tables ......................................................................................................................................... iii
Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. iv
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 1
Chapter 1: Ideological background .......................................................................................................... 5
Chapter 2: Physical situation.................................................................................................................. 19
Chapter 3: Progress and Outcomes......................................................................................................... 34
Chapter 4: Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 55
Works Cited .......................................................................................................................................... 58
Primary sources ................................................................................................................................. 58
Secondary sources ............................................................................................................................. 63

iii

List of Tables
Table 1: Hangzhou mayors from 1921 to 1937 .......................................................... 14
Table 2: Restaurants in ROC Hangzhou (part) ........................................................... 22
Table 3: Information about epidemics (part) 32.......................................................... 30
Table 4: Division of labor within the Hangzhou Bureau of Health ............................. 36
Table 5: Results of chemical testing of water from different parts of Hangzhou (part) 45
Table 6: Results of the “self-examination” ................................................................. 47
Table 7: Distribution of selling places in the Longxiangqiao Farmers’ Market ........... 52

iv

Food, Hygiene and Modernity of Hangzhou (1927-1937)
Abstract
The ROC was known as a critical period of Hangzhou’s early modernization, when the city
first made itself into a “tourist destination” in the modern sense. The so-called “Hangzhou-
style” cuisine also came into being then. But a series of governmental documents of ROC
Hangzhou seems to present a different picture, where the city’s food hygiene had never been
so good. This thesis focuses on the decade from 1927, when the city established its first state-
owned hygienic institution; to 1937, when it fell under the Japanese invasion. Based on ROC
official magazines and journals, it will trace the ideas behind the founders of the city’s
National Government and its hygienic organizations, as well as analyze the difference between
their plans and the actual results of their practices. On one hand, many leaders of these
institutions had westernized educational backgrounds, which gave them scientific knowledge
of and international perspective of bringing hygienic modernity to Hangzhou. But on the other
hand, public hygienic projects like collective butchery, tap water, and farmers’ markets
required funding and cooperation of ordinary citizens, which were the shortcomings of the
nascent government and its health organizations.
Key words: Food hygiene, hygienic modernity, Hangzhou, ROC
1

Introduction
This thesis is about food hygiene in ROC Hangzhou, which had been an inseparable part
of the city’s modernizing progress as a whole. By referring to ROC newspapers,
magazines, and other official publications, it will investigate a series of measures the
Hangzhou city government took to regulate the food and restaurant industry, and protect
its citizens’ health from pollution and plagues. Further it will explore the motivation of
the ROC Hangzhou government to improve the city’s public hygiene, as well as the
underlying logic and theories of them. Meanwhile, it will also look at the difference
between the expectations of the reformers and the real effect of the measures they took.
So why were food and hygiene important to the ROC Hangzhou administrators? What
distinguished their ideas from their predecessors during the late Qing and earlier
periods? What real-life change did they bring to the Hangzhou restaurant industry and
its customers? Did the regulations and other governmental movements make the city
more hygienic, in terms of the current Western scientific definition then? Base on
governmental documents and statistics, newspaper and journal articles, and local
gazetteers centering on the rule of the Hangzhou City Government from 1927 to 1937
1
,
this thesis posits that the improvement of public hygiene, including food hygiene, had
been part of what I will call “integrated modernity” in the eyes of the local

1
Most of the primary sources used for this article come from the USC Library’s “Late Qing/Republican Periodical
Database” (https://www-cnbksy-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/)
2

administrators then. But on the other hand, due to many conditions like financial
constraints and customary resistance, such theoretically promising plans were never put
forward smoothly as expected. Either was the project incomplete by itself, or did the
governmental health organization neglect or violated the demands of most ordinary
citizens in practice.
The first chapter of the essay talks about the ideas behind Hangzhou’s hygienic
policies from 1927 to 1937. It will illustrate how the modern, Western idea of “hygiene”
was transported to China during the late Qing and got accepted by the new generation of
intellectuals form Hangzhou who will become the city’s administrators. Here stress is
given to the relationship between the governmental policies and the politicians behind
them, who represented the progressive intellectuals promoting integral modernity then.
Improvement of public hygiene or civil health conditions were an important aspect of
the so-called “integrated modernity” assumed by the administrators. This term refers to
the expectation, process, and motivation of absorbing Western, scientific, and
democratic knowledge to modernize of a colonized nation/region (here namely
China/Hangzhou) in all aspects, such as politics, free market, human rights,
technologies, and of course public health. It also followed the mainstream May Fourth
discourse of “science and democracy.”
The second chapter looks at the real-life health conditions of Hangzhou before the
3

city government came into being, which might date to as early as Qing, but mainly
focuses on the first decade of the ROC (1912-1927), when significant physical changes
happened to the city’s basic structure. Here I will emphasize different kinds of
acquisition and consumptions of foodstuff by different groups of people; and in turn, I
will discuss the relationship between hygiene, social status and local consciousness.
Before the late Qing, governmental regulation on and intervention into public health was
scantly seen in Chinese history. Rather, maintenance of public health then depended on
moral restrictions of individuals and charity by specific influential figures.
The third chapter of the thesis is the most essential one. It talks about the practical
goals of the Hangzhou city government and the actual measures they took to achieve
them, as well as the eventual effects of such deeds. Here stress will be given to the
relationship between the governmental policies, financial supports they got, and their
actual outcomes, which will illustrate more vividly the difference between ideal and
reality, as well as economy and politics. Reactions by different groups of citizens
towards the same doctrines will also be highlighted. Most importantly, despite the
relative lack of some data, the “success” of such efforts will be evaluated based on both
phenomena and statistics.
Besides summarizing the key points of the previous three parts, the conclusion of
the article will also briefly talk about what we can learn now from the experience of
4

ROC Hangzhou’s food hygiene policies, in both positive and negative senses.
In the past decade, Chinese-language academia has seen a lot of books, essays and
journals investigating the history of public hygiene in China during the 20
th
and early
19
th
centuries. Similarly, the research focus of those studying the so-called “colonial
medicine” in the West has also turned from the unilateral “assault” of Western medical
science or ideology into the colonized nation to cases where indigenous people adopted
and localized Western ideas and practices. However, whether in Chinese or English, a
large percent of these works, such as Ruth Rogaski’s Hygienic Modernity: Meaning of
Health and Diseases in Treaty Port China, focused on the national capitals and major
treaty port cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Tianjin. The reason why I choose Hangzhou
for my subject is that on one hand, it has been well-known as a tourist destination since
the ROC and a center of culinary culture dating back to Southern Song(1127 －1279).
Consequently, the so-called “Hangzhou-style cuisine” ( 杭帮菜 hangbang cai) has been
popular even among the academia, which has been investigated thoroughly by works
like Lin Zhengqiu’s Foods in Republican Hangzhou ( 民国杭州饮食 Minguo Hangzhou
yinshi). On the other hand, to be a relatively small and reclusive treaty port, the city
seems to me a more exemplar case to show the contest between revolution and
convention. Moreover, there has been scant scholarship on the relationship between
food, hygiene and modernity centering on the city, especially compared to the over-
studied Shanghai.
5

Chapter 1: Ideological background
To understand what ideas stimulated the ROC Hangzhou city government to crack down
on the issue of food hygiene, and whether the actions it took had reached its own
expectations; we should first look at the general ideological context of modern China, in
terms of the relationship between the concepts of “hygiene” and “modernity”. One key
to this question is the Chinese phrase “weisheng”. According to Ruth Rogaski, the
phrase itself could date back to an ancient Taoist classic; where it originally meant “to
protect life force” or “to enhance longevity”. But in modern China, the meaning of
“weisheng” changed drastically, influenced by inputs of modern medical science from
the West and Japan in particular, where the characters were first applied to translate the
English word “hygiene” by Japanese physicians with westernized educational
backgrounds. Up to now (since the PRC), it has become an indicator of everything
related to cleanliness, hygiene, health or medical science
2
. In her book, Rogaski rejected
mechanically translating “weisheng” into “hygiene” all times, because in her mind, both
“weisheng” in Chinese and “hygiene” in English were quite fluid and inclusive terms,
considering their diverse usage under different circumstances. Here I don’t want to pay
much attention to analyzing the terms themselves; because only food hygiene is
emphasized. But her study on Tianjin still sheds light on mine on Hangzhou in many

2
Rogaski, Ruth. 2004. “Introduction.” Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Diseases in Treaty-port China.
University of California Press.
6

ways.
First, since its beginning as a religious/philosophical term, “weisheng” included
proper ways of eating, drinking, sleeping and exercising according to seasonal changes
and body conditions. Similar ideas had been shared by ancient Greek and Roman
treatises
3
. The emphasis on eating and food hygiene as a fundamental element of
“weisheng”, which had been ingrained in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for
thousands of years, was important to understand the eating habits of modern Hangzhou
citizens. The Qing dynasty had seen a boom of books and articles on culinary, table
manners and other food-related topics by literati. Hangzhou, then the heart of the
Jiangnan region where a high percentage of the nation’s taxes came from, was not only
home to many renowned authors of such literature, but also an irreplaceable subject of
depiction by them. Although most of them focused more on how to select foodstuffs and
cook delicious dishes, some of the texts covered what Rogaski might believe to be
principles of “weisheng” or “hygiene” in the pre-modern sense. However, due to their
general lack of scientific understanding of mechanisms of epidemics and other diseases,
most Qing literati only cared for the most seeable phenomena and most widely-believed
experience related to cleanliness, food and health. Even though some late Qing writers
did accept a limited numbers of Western ideas of nutrition, they still based part of their

3
Ibid. 6.
7

conclusions on traditional beliefs. For instance, the Hangzhou writer Xu Ke (1869-1929)
wrote in his encyclopedia Wild Grasses of Qing ( 清稗类钞 Qing bailei chao) that:
“Taboos of Eating: …….old chicken that ate centipedes, meats where water from
the roof dropped……they’re all incurable…….crabs and persimmons……Wild fungi in
the ninth lunar month (they kill people by making them laugh endlessly); Carps in the
spring (there were parasites in their heads); water held overnight in bronze wares; cattle,
horses and donkeys who died in the wild; puffers (their poison could be cured by olive
juice); eels (potentially causing cholera); river crabs that with star-shaped pattern on
their backs, or which lost some feet or one eye, or with hair on their bellies (they could
be deadly)”
4

Apparently, most of such taboos focused on possible situations where one might
intake plenty of germs or parasites. In other parts of the same book, Xu also mentioned
that men could get tuberculosis from cows by drinking untreated milk. But some of
them, like the “crab and persimmon” or “chicken that ate centipedes,” are now proved to
be superstitious. Besides, another significant distinction between Xu and his fellows and
the more westernized, revolutionary intellectuals that took part in institutional reforms
after the ROC was that the former still regarded “weisheng” or “hygiene” a private
issue, one of personal morality and self-discipline, rather than a public one to be cared
for by governmental institutions and laws. Although for many times Xu compared the
eating habits between China and the West, as well as between different regions within
China, he never mentioned the role played by political systems in producing such
differences, only attributing them to climate and other natural elements. Meanwhile,

4
Xu Ke. (1986) 2011. “Yinshi lei.” Qing bailei Chao 13. Zhonghua Shuju. Reprint, Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan.
8

despite that not only Xu, but also his early Qing predecessors sometimes depicted the
eating habits of ordinary people vividly, they did this only to show their understandings
of different kinds of eating habits. They never thought of improving public hygienic
conditions by institutional and legal ways like modern intellectuals did, even though
they might set up private hospitals and charitable organizations during natural hazards.
This will be discussed in the next part.
Second, Rogaski discussed with much detail how “weisheng” or “Eisei” in
Japanese was applied to translate “hygiene” or what she calls “hygienic modernity” by
intellectuals in both China and Japan during the 19
th
century, and how such translations
altered people’s understanding of what such words meant to them. In the fourth and fifth
chapters of her book, Rogaski stressed on two specific translators (or more accurately,
groups of translators): the Shanghai-based Englishman John Fryer
5
(and his Chinese
supporters) and the Japanese scientific ambassador Nagayo Sensai
6
. She argued that the
two brought two major changes to the idea of “weisheng” in China and Japan: Fryer
emphasized the potency and authority of modern science (mainly chemistry, but also
architecture, which could provide healthy living environments) and its power to
illustrate the human body and eliminate diseases, thus demystified many long-held

5
Rogaski, Ruth. 2004. “Translating ‘Weisheng’ in treaty port China.” Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and
Diseases in Treaty-port China. University of California Press.
6
Rogaski. 2004. “Translating ‘Eisei’ in Meiji Japan”.
9

superstitions like yin and yang to a large degree. Nagayo, influenced by Bismarck’s
German institutions, called for a more centralized government to inspect and care for
health of its people. To Rogaski, the two translators’ focus on scientific methodology
and politicized management were the most essential factors of Western hygienic
modernity, which even to some degree “anticipated” Foucault’s identification of “bio-
power”, which marked the difference between pre-modern and modern politics
7
.
Besides, the contribution of Fryer and Nagayo also lay in their influence over more
influential non-scientific revolutionists. For instance, although Fryer hardly translated
books about “totalizing programs” by governments, Liang Qichao absorbed his
“scientific approach to nurturing life” and combined it with his own thoughts about
“responsibility the citizen”
8
for national survival. Sun Yat-Sen and Lu Xun also had
experiences of studying medical science in the US and Japan. The former, influenced by
Zheng Guanying during his early ages, decided to “heal the nation” in a political way
9
;
while the latter, depressed by the Russian-Japanese war as an amateur physician, turned
to literature to enlighten his people
10
. However, people’s attitudes towards such new
ideas were not uniformly positive, but quite mixed and varied. Some intellectuals like
Xu Ke admired the protein-based diet of Europeans, saying that “grain-eaters” were

7
Rogaski. 2004. “Translating ‘weisheng’ in treaty port China”.
8
Ibid.
9
Ma Kanwen. 1997. “Cong yiren dao yiguo: Sun Zhongshan de yixue shengya.” Zhonghua yixueshi zazhi 27 (4):235-
240.
10
Lu Xun. (1926) 2016. “Tengye xiansheng.” Zhaohua xishi. Beijing: Zhongguo yanshi chubanshe.
10

generally not as strong as “meat-eaters”
11
; so the former had been historically less
civilized than the latter. Interestingly, this was just the opposite of the early Qing writer
Li Yu’s opinion that animal fat made people narrow-minded; while a vegetarian diet was
close to the Confucian ideal of prehistoric purity
12
. But some others still refuted
scientific theories of hygiene at all, like the 1895 report of Zhibao that explained cholera
with the traditional idea of “Qi”. Others tried to conciliate the two contradictory sets of
theories, such as Zheng Guanying, who insisted that Taoist philosophy still worked
where science could not explain
13
.
Similar phenomena have been recorded by Gale Hershatter’s research on the
relationship between prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases in ROC Shanghai. In
her book, Hershatter argues that while western pilgrim doctors blamed China, as well as
other colonized nations for “staining” their peoples with venereal diseases, their Chinese
counterparts turned to native medical history and attributed the origin of such illnesses
to westerners in China during Ming and Qing. Moreover, she also mentioned that like
diet, prostitution had been spoken of with the languages of “war”, “nation” and “race”.
The hygiene and security of prostitutes and courtesans, like that of foodstuff, was
regarded as key to national survival
14
. However, there was one significant difference

11
Xu. 1986 (2011). “Qing bailei chao”.
12
Li Yu. (1671) 2007. Xianqing ouji. Zhongguo fangzhi chubanshe.
13
Rogaski. 2004. “Translating ‘weisheng’ in treaty port China”.
14
Gale, Hershatter. 1997. “Disease.” Dangerous Pleasure: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentiesth Century China.
Berkley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
11

between these two issues: the latter was never as morally controversial as the former, but
was more of an economic problem. This will be talked about in the following parts.
So what’s Hangzhou’s uniqueness comparing to other regions within the same
time-space matrix? According to Rogaski, she chose Tianjin as her subject of studying
for two main reason: first, there were concessions of many colonizers at once within the
city, close to each other but coexisting for a long time; second, the city was close to the
national capital, making it an important working place for high officials of the Qing
central government, including Li Hongzhang
15
. In comparison, Hangzhou might never
be called a “hyper-colonial” place by Rogaski, because there was no multinational
concession in the city, except for a Japanese one at Gongchenqiao, opened in 1895 after
the first Sino-Japanese War. This means that unlike in Tianjin, colonizers in Hangzhou
will not have the ability to exert intense physical regulation on its subjects on a scale as
large
16
. So the so-called “touch the body” situation happened more often on a purely
civil level, such as between local citizens and foreign doctors. Hangzhou’s first western
hospital, the Guangji, was found in 1869 by the Anglican Church missionary Dr. Galt,
and was run by Dr. Duncan Main (known for his Chinese moniker Mei Tenggeng) since
1881. Not only was Guangji not one of the first pilgrim-owned medical institutions in

15
Rogaski. 2004. “Introduction”.
16
Wang Dawei. 2008. “Shilun Qingmo Hangzhou Ri zujie de kaipi he Riben zai Hang shili de kuozhan (1896-1911).”
Hangzhou Yanjiu 1: 75-82
12

China, but I was also doubted and resisted by many ordinary citizens. Part of this was
purely xenophobia, but another thing was the conflict between Western and Chinese
understandings about hygiene itself. For instance, Guangji offered equal chances of
diagnosis to both genders, but traditionally, Chinese women were bound to domestic
issues and could not go out as freely as men did; nor could they communicate with men
intimately. So while some Chinese women, due to reasons like saving their children’s
life or belief in Christianity, might come willingly to Dr. Main and his wife. Others
might totally reject the chance or be reluctant to go
17
. Meanwhile, as suggested by Wang
Liping, Hangzhou had been the heart of the Jiangnan region, a major source of national
taxes during most of the Qing. But since late Qing, the city gradually lost its previous
economic dominance and became subsidiary to Shanghai
18
. On one hand, the abundance
of wealth of Hangzhou had nurtured a large, ingrained group of literate gentry who,
while immersed in traditional Confucian education, had been an undeniably positive
force promoting the region’s modernization in many ways. For instance, the renowned
patriotic poet Gong Zizhen, born in Hangzhou, was also a master of TCM, one of the
first to warn the nation about the damage of opium. In a letter to a Minister named Lin,
Gong called opium “demon of foods” ( 食妖 shi yao), which could make people”lose

17
Zhou Donghua. 2014. “Qu yiyuan jiu yangyi: Qingmo Hangzhou Guangji yiyuan de nvhuanzhe jiqi yiliao
changing.” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 4: 129-139.
18
Wang liping. 1997. Paradise for Sale: Urban Space and Tourism in the Social Transformation of Hangzhou, 1598-
1937. Dissertation. University of California, San Diego.
13

heart and soul, unable to tell light from darkness” ( 魂魄颠倒，昼夜不分 hunpo
diandao, zhouye nanfen)
19
. Gong never systematically studied western medical science.
His considering the nation’s biological health and institutional efficacy as metaphoric to
each other might rather have come from the traditional Chinese idea of “the best doctor
heals the nation’s wounds” ( 上医医国 Shangyi yi guo). But this should not be confused
with the modern idea of top-down hygienic modernity. Rather, it was more of a bottom-
up, individual morale, a kind of pre-modern humanism. Therefore, the efficiency of
these practices in controlling the damage of plagues and enhancing the whole
population’s general health condition never matched that of the modern West.
On the other hand, however, open-minded literati like Gong or Xu Ke were just
individual cases. In general, the majority of the traditional gentry in Hangzhou were not
as interested in knowledge brought by the West in general. It was both cause and result
of the city’s gradually lowering status during the last years of the Qing. The same
process also had irreplaceable impact on the ROC Hangzhou’s hygiene policies, which
would be the emphasis of the third chapter. So the mission of carrying on the city’s
modernizing process further fell upon the shoulders of new-style intellectuals who
received westernized education and were more sensitive towards the changing outside
world. This kind of intellectuals made up the majority of the nascent ROC Hangzhou

19
Zhu Deming. 2007. “Jindai yiyaoxue jia jiqi zhuanzhu”. Hangzhou yiyao shi. Zhongyi guji chubanshe.
14

government, as well as other important professionals for its public hygiene projects.
Here’s a list of ROC Hangzhou mayors’ backgrounds from 1921 to 1937:
20

Table 1: Hangzhou mayors from 1921 to 1937
Name Tenure Previous Positions Educational background
Shao
Yuanchong
1927.5-1927.10 Alternate member of the Central
Committee;
Member of the Standing Committee and
political commissar of the Kuomintang;
Member of the committee;
Political instructor of Huangpu Military
Academy;
Acting head of Political Department
University of Wisconsin;
Columbia University
Chen Qihuai 1927.10-1928.11;
1930.12-1931.7
Zhejiang consultative Bureau;
Counselor of Ningbo military and
government branch;
Member of Zhejiang provincial
government
Keju (traditional Chinese
civil service and academic
examination)
Zhou
Xiangxian
1928.11-1930.7;
1934.9-1937.12
Technical Official of the Ministry of
domestic affairs of Beijing government;
National Government Director of
Water Conservancy Department of
Construction Committee
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Cai Zengji 1930.7-1930.12 Members of the Guangdong provincial
assembly;
Foreign Affairs Commissioner of the
headquarters of Guangdong and
Guangxi; Secretary of the Ministry of
agriculture and Commerce of the
Beijing government; Director of finance
of Guangzhou municipal hall Director
of railway;
Ministry of communications,
Guangzhou national government;
Columbia University

20
Zhu Deming. 2007. “Minguo shiqi Hangzhou liren shixian zhang yilan.” Hangzhou yiyao shi. Zhongyi guji
chubanshe.
15

Director of the Financial Supervision
Bureau of the Ministry of finance of the
national government;
Director General of the management
department of the Ministry of Railways;
Director of Huning and Shanghai
Hangzhou Ningbo railway
administration bureau; Special member
of Construction Committee
Zhao Zhiyou 1932.1-1934.9 Director of Public Works Bureau of
Nanjing Municipal Government
Studied Engineering in
France
Obviously, four of the five officials had experiences of studying in first-class
colleges in the West; except for Chen Qihuai, who came from a more conventional
Confucian background. Besides, most of them had been in key positions in Beijing,
Nanjing or Guangzhou, which had been significant centers of the Nationalistic
Revolution then. Shao was known for following Sun Yat-Sen since his early days; and
Chen was a cousin of Chiang Kai-Sheik’s secretary Chen Bulei. Jin Baoshan, the first
minister of Shao’s Bureau of Health, studied in Chiba University and Tokyo Imperial
University in Japan, as well as Hopkins in the US. He made efforts to control a pasties
outburst in the Northeast before coming to Hangzhou, and left for the central
government in Nanjing after this tenure
21
. Moreover, this new generation of intellectuals
was also the main actor of the May Fourth Movement, which spread to schools in
Hangzhou first on May 6
th
1919, just two days after its original outburst in Beijing. Then

21
Wang Tao. 2013. “1927-1937 nian Hangzhou weisheng xingzheng yanjiu.” Dissertation. Hangzhou Normal
University.
16

it reached its climax on May 12
th22
. In their minds, public hygiene was an inseparable
part of the city’s modernizing project, which covered all sorts of infrastructures
necessary for a westernized metropolis, both tangible and intangible. In one of Jin’s own
essays published in 1944, he said:
“The goal of hygienic policies is to improve people’s health, and in turn the
nation’s quality and wellbeing. It is no doubt that it will become a major part of postwar
reconstruction. Actually, the US, the UK, Canada and even India have all taken for
granted the significance of hygiene in their own postwar projects…….”
……It is a pity that the ancient Chinese ‘medical counselor’ system had never
developed into an integrated institution. So we should acknowledge that the really
‘modern’ hygienic administration, in terms of organization and reliance on scientific
technology, began in treaty ports in the late Qing.”
23

Jin’s words suggest his longing for the so-called “integrated modernity”, which
included the modernization of politics, economy, education, and of course social life and
welfare; where hygienic modernity was an irreplaceable element. In the same article, he
also mentions “legislation” and “technology”, as well as pity and negation for Confucian
traditions about medicine and regret that the nation was forced into the capitalist world
system as a semi-colony of the West. To some degree, it also shows that his ideas had
much in common with mainstream May Fourth revolutionaries. Besides, it might not be
a coincidence that the expectation for such an “integrated modernity” by Hangzhou’s
May Fourth generation resonated with Mori Ogai in Japan. Mori, both a poet and

22
Cheng Dexing, Shen Jianliang, and Cai Yidan. 2019. “Gonggong kongjian yu xuesheng yundong: kongjian shijiao
xia de wusi yundong: Yi Zhejiang shengli gonggong yundongchang wei kaozha zhongxin.” Qingshaonian yanjiu yu
shijian 2: 24-29.
23
Jin Baoshan. 1944. “Woguo weisheng shiye de huigu yu qianzhan.” Shehui weisheng 1(3): 1-7.
17

physician, based his idea on Nagayo’s, regarding “weisheng” (eisei) as something
covering every aspect of life, and key to a nation’s modernization
24
.
Moreover, in later propaganda by official health institutions under the City
Government, the relationship between hygiene, modernity and patriotism was reiterated
frequently. For instance, Li Suizhi, Head of the Hangzhou Department of Health, wrote
in a journal article in 1935 that:
“It is known that all the Western nations’ (lieqiang; “great powers”) political
strategies have taken hygiene for granted; and that all their medical industries have
taken scientific methodology (heli hua; “rationalization”) for granted. These have been
inevitable trends. Only we Chinese still hold bias towards the West when dealing with
such a fatal issue……
“Medicine nowadays should be based on natural science. It should be tested by
experiments rather than theories……Pre-modern China had no science, no division
among biology, physics and chemistry, no modern anatomy, no microbiology or
vaccination……Before it becomes what it is now, the Western medicine has also
undergone a ‘philosophical’ period, regarding diseases as imbalance of elements ( 四大
不调 sida butaio). But it is now a science like nothing before; while our [medicine]
remained conservative……
“Thanks to social developments ( 时运之推移 shiyun zhi tuiyi; “movement of
worldly trends”), the modern medical science is revolutionary in that it centers on the
society rather than the individual, to prevent rather than to cure. If the whole nation were
united under such ideas and endeavor as a unity, its welfare will be much better.”
25

Obviously, most of Jin’s ideas had been inherited by his successors like Li, who
tried to revolutionize Hangzhou’s public hygiene, including food hygiene, in a scientific
way and for the sake of national development and international competition.

24
Rogaski. 2004. “Translating ‘Eisei’ in Meiji Japan.”
25
Li suizhi. 1935. “Xueshu: dushi weisheng yu Hangzhou.” Yixue yu yaoxue: yishu 3: 151-162.
18

Interestingly, Li himself had been a schoolmate of Lu Xun when studying medical
science in Japan.
The so-called “integral modernity” discourse was most emphasized during the New
Life Movement since 1934. Ppropaganda during that timedirectly connected personal
hygiene of each individual citizen to the survival of the Chinese nation as well as its
struggle against imperialist invasion. One article directly mentioned the Japanese
occupation of the four provinces of the Northeast by Japan and Vietnam by France, as to
warn the readers to adapt his own “clothing, food, home and vehicles” ( 衣食住行 yi shi
zhu xing) to the will of Chiang Kai Sheik. Eradication of flies, mosquitoes and rats had
been one major activity of civil campaigns then, as well as “self-examination” ( 自查
zicha) of household hygiene; whose actual results will be discussed later
26
.

26
Mao yu. 1934. “Xin shenghuo yundong yu guomin jiankang.” Chenguang (Hangzhou) 3 (1/2): 29-32.
19

Chapter 2: Physical situation
Founders of the Hangzhou City Government dreamed of modernizing the city in an
integral, holistic way. But in reality, it was just the opposite: seen from the area of food
hygiene, life of the city’s residents had been backward in all manners, where the
influence of modern civilization was quite limited and partial. According to local
gazetteers, Hangzhou enjoyed a good environmental complex for agriculture, which
gave rise to an abundance of local produces. Meanwhile, since becoming the temporary
capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, the city had long been a commercial center of
southeastern China, largely owing to the Grand Canal transportation system. Therefore,
Hangzhou’s residents in the modern age enjoyed a wide range of options of tastes; made
up of foodstuff both domestically produced and transported by water. However, in the
early 20
th
century, the latter might had enjoyed general priority to the former. The most
important one among these were rice, the major staple food and bulk commodity of the
Jiangnan region. According to ROC statistics, up to 1932, Hangzhou had a 36,121 acre
total area of rice fileds, producing 144,494 dan of rice per year. But such numbers
seemed not so promising, compared to the estimated annual demand for rice of
1,875,963 dan by about 0.6 million citizens
27
. The former only covered about 6 percent
of the latter. In late Qing and early ROC, the majority of Hangzhou’s rice supply relied

27
Gan Renjun. (1948) 1987. “Minguo Hangzhoushi Xinzhi Gao.” Hangzhou difangzhi bianzuan Bangongshi.
Hangzhou difangzhi ziliao 1/2.
20

on Northern Zhejiang, Anhui and Jiangsu, from which wholesalers came down the
Grand Canal and assembled at the Hushu market zone outside the city’s northern border,
where their unloaded goods will be resold to ordinary citizens in individual rice marts
inside the walls. Supply of other non-staple grains also depended on cross-provincial
importation. For instance, though Hangzhou’s first flour company was opened as early
as in 1900 by Zhuang Songxian, producing 200 bags per day; it still imported machined
flour from Wuxi and other places to feed its residents need for noodles
28
. Similarly,
soybean from Northeastern China was often consumed by local bean curd industries.
The only kind of produce that the city could feed itself sufficiently with might be
vegetables, all varieties of which were grown by farmers around the city’s suburbs and
directly sold to citizens by farmers’ markets and street vendors. As early as the Southern
Song, Wu Zimu wrote about 40 kinds of greens Hangzhou people ate daily in Record of
a Dream ( 梦梁录 Mengliang Lu). Among them the most renowned was the bamboo
shot, which appeared frequently as fundamental materials in Qing literature about
cuisine; as well as aquatic products unique to southeastern China like water shield, water
chestnut and lotus root
29
. As for protein, there were two major sources: one was
livestock and poultry; another was freshwater fish and shellfish from rivers and lakes

28
He Hong. 2012. “Jiben shicai ji gongying.” Minguo Hangzhou Yinshi. Hangzhou chubanshe.
29
Wu Qingdi et al. 1922. Minguo Hangzhou fuzhi. Hangzhou shuwei fangzhi guan. AccessedDecember 20, 2019.
http://hzszfzg.wanfangdata.com.cn/#.
21

around the city, along with seafood transported from nearby port cities like Ningbo
30
.
One thing new was the consumption of milk: a trend that came from the West and
supposedly influenced by Shanghai. Interestingly, the first individual sellers of fresh
milk in Hangzhou could date back to 1897, but the first modernized dairy product
company was established in 1922. Li Suizhi, explained later in 1937 why it took so long
for his contemporaries to accept milk and dairy products: to them, they were considered
a “winter tonic” ( 冬令进补品 dongling jinbupin) rather than a daily necessity as
Westerners did
31
.
Things could be more complicated considering how all these foodstuffs mentioned
above were prepared and eaten. As early as in the Northern Song(960—1127), there had
already been records of official or civil jiuku (lit. “alcohol storage”) in every part of the
city, the most famous of which, according to ROC gazetteers, was Taipinglou (lit. peace
tower) opened by Lord Zhang Jun of Qinghe, where emperor Gaozong himself
frequented for long periods
32
. The late Qing and early ROC had been a particularly
critical period for Hangzhou’s restaurant industry to revive and thrive after the Taiping
rebellion. According to statistics in 1931, there had been a great boom of over 1,500
restaurants of different kinds within the city, including 80 jiuguan (banquet restaurants),

30
He. 2012. “Jiben shicai de gongying.”
31
Li Suizhi. 1937. “Hangzhoushi shinian lai zhi weisheng.” Hangzhoushi zhengfu shizhounian jinian tekan. 1-85.
32
Zhong Y ulong. (1956) 2016.. “Shuo gongshangye.” Shuo Hangzhou. Reprint, Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe.
22

258 fandian (integrated restaurants), 283 mianguan (noodle shops), and 132 chaguan
(teahouses) and so on. There were several significant features that distinguished
restaurants in the late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries from their pre-modern counterparts
33
.
First, different styles of culinary from all over China and even the West could be found
here. Here’s a list of some of them:
34

Table 2: Restaurants in ROC Hangzhou (part)
Name Introduction Capital ( y u an)
Jufengyuan (Harvest-collecting
garden)
Beijing-style Chinese cuisine 50,000
Laolunsi (Lawrence’s) Western cuisine; ice cream and cold drinks
available in summer
2,000
Juxianguan (Hall of elite
gatherings)
Cantonese-style Chinese cuisine 8,000
Louwailou (tower after tower;
citation from a famous Song
poem)
Hangzhou-style Chinese cuisine 550
Suxinzhai (fragrant vegetarian
house)
Vegetarian restaurant with Buddhist background 2,600
Zhiweiguan ( temple of deli
experts)
Noodle shop; also famous for Hangzhou-style
Chinese cuisine
2,000
Daoxiangcun (rice-fragrance
village)
Confectionery store 8,000
Besides these major kinds, there were also less popular styles like Sichuan cuisine,
represented by the Daxing Sichuan Kitchen ( 大兴川菜社 daxing chuancai she), and
Muslim restaurants called “mutton soup diners” ( 羊汤饭店 yangtang fandian).
However, some evidence also shows that local residents were not always welcoming to

33
Gan. 1948. “Minguo Hangzhou xinzhi gao.”
34
Ibid.
23

every kind of non-indigenous food. A banquet menu of the Western restaurant in the
Xinxin Hotel showed no meat, but salads, soups, breads and potato
35
. Some scholars
supposed that it indicated that most Hangzhou citizens then were not accustomed to
having beef for major protein as Westerners were. Also, in an allegory-styled tourist
guidebook in 1929, the author expressed his feeling by a fictional farmer that “cattle
were the zuzong [lit.”ancestors”; blessed or respectable ones] of us, we can’t eat
them”
36
. But to me, price might be another significant reason. Though accurate data of
prices of a Westernized meal in Hangzhou then has been lost, it could be hypothesized
that it was possibly above the average affordability of Hangzhou citizens, as most
Western-style restaurants mentioned in gazetteers had capital as high as thousands of
yuan. Besides, contemporary records of Shanghai and Beijing also connected Western
cuisine to luxury or even corruption in most times
37
.
Second, the rise of the so-called “Hangzhou-style cuisine” had became part of the
city’s local self-identification construction as a historical site and tourist destination,
which was in turn a geographically specialized way of integral modernization. On one
hand, the first three decades of the 19
th
century saw a sudden outburst of restaurants and
dishes with names reminiscent of Hangzhou’s history. For instance, there was one

35
He Hong. 2013. “Minguo Hangzhou xican yanjiu.” Chuxiong Shifan xueyuan bao 7: 1-5.
36
Ibid.
37
Yin Siyang, and Tian tao. 2018. “Xishi canyin yu Minguo chunian de dushi shehui.” Journal of Tianjin Normal
University (Social science) 6: 22-27.
24

famous dish called “Aunt Song’s Fish” ( 宋嫂鱼 songsao yu), made by fried carp with
sweet-sour sauce. The entrée was known for its long history, where it was first created
by a peasant girl called Song Wusao to ease the emperor Huizong’s nostalgia when he
first came to Hangzhou from the north. This story was made famous by the late Qing
playwright Yu Yue, who was also one of the founders of the Louwailou restaurant. But
some other contemporary writers doubted its credibility, suggesting the original recipe
was called “pseudo crab” ( 赛蟹羹 saixie geng), not sweet-sour fried fish ( 醋溜鱼 culiu
yu)
38
. On the other hand, restaurants in this period seemed more specialized and
customer-oriented than pre-modern times, in terms of both their images and their spatial
dispersion. It was generally believed that there had been two major “groups” ( 帮 bang)
of hangbangcai restaurants in early ROC. One was called the “lakeside group” ( 湖上帮
hushang bang), to which Louwailou belonged, focusing on providing wealthy, renowned
or literate tourists with high-quality but expensive meals alongside good sights around
the West Lake. Another, “downtown group” ( 城里帮 chengli bang), was made up by
more economic restaurants like Zhiweiguan, welcoming ordinary middle class guests
39
.
Essentially, such changes suggested geopolitical position changing from an inland
navigation to a subsidiary of Shanghai. As Wang Liping’s studies illustrats, the Qing

38
Zhong. (1956) 2016. “Shuo Gongshangye.”
39
Zhou Feng. 1997. “Ji qianren dacheng, chuang Hangxi mingyao: Minguo shiqi Hangzhou yinshiye.” In Minguo
shiqi Hangzhou. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chuban she.
25

civic center of Hangzhou was Qinghefang under Wushan Hill, where the City God’s
Temple ( 城隍庙 chenghuangmiao) sat
40
. But in the ROC it became Qingtaimen, where
the Shanghai-Hangzhou railway passed by; and Hubin, where the old Manchu garrison
was turned into a lakeside business center
41
. Consequently, these two places were home
to many famous “downtown” restaurants.
Last but not least, all these mentioned above were never the whole picture. Rather,
the lower class still depended more on cheaper, more traditional means to eat. The most
representative kind of eating place for low-incomers in Hangzhou was the so-called
“shutter diners” ( 门板饭 menban fan)
42
, which were named after the wooden shutters
they used for tables. According to memoirs by some, these diners were around every
corner of the city before the second Sino-Japanese war, charging only about one or two
jiao for each meal; because they mainly served rickshaw pullers and coolies. Food was
cooked in huge boilers and served in large bowls, placed on large tables in open air. The
most famous shutter diner was Wang’s Diner ( 王饭儿 wang faner)
43
, which had long
been so famous that “eat at Wang’s diner” became a saying for “having leisure”.
Actually, similar practices of having all guests (usually poor, illiterate people) openly
eating instantly cooked meals around one large table had been adopted by individual

40
Wang Liping. 2005, “Hangzhou lvyouye he chengshi kongjian bianqian (1911-1927).” Shilin 5: 97-127.
41
Gan. (1948) 1987. “Minguo Hangzhou xinzhi gao.”
42
He Hong. 2012. “shimin yinshi shenghuo.” Minguo Hangzhou Yinshi. Hangzhou chubanshe.
43
Zhong. (1956) 2016. “Shuo gongshangye”.
26

street vendors long before the ROC. As early as in 1858, Shi Hongbao wrote in his
memoir that:
“Selling food without a house, but tables or bare floors around the market, this is
called tan [lit. sprawl; stationary vendors]…..tan of cooked foods is especially
common.”
44

But it was generally believed that the price of such a meal had always been too low
to make ends meet. Even Wang’s Diner had to compensate for this loss by their gain
from higher-quality deli. For long, restaurants less wealthy than Wang’s sometimes
relied on expensive tips ( 小账 xiaozhang) to survive. When the ROC City Government
eventually tried to crackdown on such behaviors in 1931, the restaurant industry
protested collectively that it will “destroy their living” ( 生计灭绝 shengji miejue)
45
. The
contradiction between the government’s will of eliminating illegal food trades and its
actual difficulties to do so will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. Besides,
traditional street vendors never disappeared, but flourished in the modernizing city
throughout the ROC period. People could pick up all kinds of cooked food and disserts
from them. The jiantiao (lit. shoulder-hanger) vendor wonton was the most common and
representative. They were named after their shoulder poles with burning stove on one
side and a chest of foodstuff on the other, which appeared frequently in contemporary

44
Shi Hongbao. 1858. Xiangwei zayong. Lu Beirong, Pers. Comm, March 9, 2020.
45
Zhang Nanxian. 1931. “Pi: Zhejiang shengzhengfu pi mi zi di erliulingqi hao.” Zhejiang shengzhengfu gongbao
1121:17.
27

memoirs
46
.
Related to foodstuff was the issue of water, both potable and for other uses. The
written history of Hangzhou’s water usage was even longer than that of agriculture and
cooking. It has been generally believed that the first artificial water supply system in the
city was the “Six Wells” ( 六井 liujing) excavated by the formal prime minister and local
magistrate Li Bi, which were to store the fresh water from the West Lake to replace the
briny underground water left by the retreating Hangzhou Bay. Since then, underground
channels and wells became a major method for the city’s residents to acquire water. On
one hand, to excavate new wells and repair existing channels had been an unelectable
but profitable task for every magistrate and even their superiors, including the famous
poet Su Shi and the Wuyue king Qian Liu
47
. On the other, for many times in history,
wells and channels were not sufficient to supply enough water for everyone’s daily use.
The late Qing writer Ding Bing once recorded a folk story in his Streets and Blocks in
Wulin ( 武林坊巷志 Wulin fangxiang zhi):
“Among the Six Wells excavated by Lord Ye [Li Bi], the fifth was called White
Turtle Pond (baigui chi)……water in the pond has long been too dirty to drink; only
laundries need it. What [today’s] townsfolk never knew was that originally, there was
clear water from the [West] Lake in it, only after a long time of abandonment had it
become [so muddy]……During the Shunzhi period [of Qing], a priest in Longxiang
Gong [a Taoist shrine] pulled water from the well, only to find a white turtle as large as
a quadruped, dead for long. [The corpse] broke into pieces when touched by the priest’s

46
Zhong. (1956) 2016. “Shuo gongshangye”.
47
Gan. 1948 (1987). “Minguo Hangzhou fuzhi”.
28

hand…….old gazetteers always said the water was too stinky to drink, isn’t it [what
killed the turtle?]”
48

Though the giant turtle was obviously fictional, the story vividly illustrats the
writer’s disgust towards the filthy deserted tank and nostalgia for its heyday. But the
most important shortcoming of wells as a way to acquire potable water during the ROC
period was not abandonment of old wells, nor quality of water, but that the total number
of wells was never sufficient to feed the whole city. According to a survey in the 1930s,
there were 4,842 wells at total in Hangzhou, most of which were relics from earlier
dynasties. On one hand, each of these water tunnels had to feed 20 households or 104
people on average; on the other hand, over 90% of them were privately owned, which
indicated a lot of potential civil conflicts over their control. In 1934, there was a huge
drought that reached 104 ℉ in temperature in southern China (highest in the previous 63
years), which caused a fever of well-digging
49
. Rainwater, the West Lake and rivers
across and around the city were also fundamental sources of water, but none of them
was more reliable than wells. The West Lake, according to the Japanese writer
Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s memoir, was “more of a vast rice field than a
lake…….Murada’s [his companion’s] staff stuck into the mud underwater……little
shark-like fish fled through weeds” in early ROC
50
. Only after the City Government was

48
Ding Bing. (1897)2014. In Wulin fangxiang zhi 8, Edited by Wang Guoping. Reprint, Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin
chubanshe. Edited by Wang Guoping. Translation all by my own.
49
Li. 1937. “Shinian lai zhi weisheng”.
50
Ryunosuke, Akutagawa. (1925) 2000. “Jiangna youji”. In Yi Jiangnan: mingren bixia de lao Hangzhou, edited by
Wu Zhanlei. Beijing chubanshe.
29

established in 1927 did it get thorough reconstructions as a tourist destination. The city’s
rivers were also infamous for “much pollution, causing many diseases to many”
51
. To
solve all of these problems, ROC administrators came up with many solutions and
eventually decided on building a tap water company. Nevertheless, it ended up a failure.
The issue of tap water will be addressed in the next chapter.
Obviously, despite the fact that many high-tone restaurants like Louwailou and
Zhiweiguan were known for their freshness and cleanliness of foodstuff and efficiency
of customer service, the eating and drinking conditions of most Hangzhou citizens were
not as hygiene or “weisheng” as expected by contemporary revolutionaries like Liang or
Sun, in both individual and public senses. It was no surprise that such vulgar habits and
chaotic environments will give rise to one of the most serious social problems in early
ROC: food-borne and waterborne diseases. Besides all those mentioned above, there
were some other details revealing the potential risk of some ingrained pre-modern eating
habits more vividly. Shi Hongbao once mentioned in his memoir:
“….The frog was called ‘filed chikcen’ ( 田鸡 tianji) by commoners, for its taste
like chicken. When people caught frogs, they beheaded and flayed and smoked them for
sale.”
“Raw fish sliced…..sautéed in salt for a while, then dipped in sesame oil with green
onion and shredded Chinese pepper. This was called ‘yusheng’ [lit. raw fish].”
52

To eat freshly captured freshwater fishes and frogs was generally believed to be a

51
Li Ruyan. 1933. “Hangzhoushi zilaishui chang.” Shizheng jikan 1(1): 49-52.
52
Shi. 1858. Xiangwei Zayong.
30

long tradition that dated back to Song or earlier
53
. It was even a fashion for ROC tourists
to have yusheng in Hangzhou’s major restaurants. But at the same time, it was noticed
that freshwater meat and vegetables were more inclined to contain many parasites and
microbes than seafood. Here’s part of a table about epidemics from a 1934 magazine:
54

Table 3: Information about epidemics (part) 32
Name of disease Way of infection Type of pathogen Incubation period
Intestina distomiasis Raw water chestnuts parasite 31 days
taeniasis Uncooked beef, pork or
fish
parasite unknown
Gazetteers and other kinds of documents in each pre-modern dynasty mentioned
plagues, as well as local residents’ efforts to fight against them. Su Shi, who had been
magistrate of Hangzhou twice, witnessed widespread plagues that disturbed normal
commercial activities to such a large degree that “every family owed some money to the
market, everyone lacked money for salt and alcohol” ( 家家有食衣之钱，人人有烟酒
之债 jiajia you shiyi zhi qian, renren you yanjiu zhi zhai). To end the plague as well as
the depression, he ordered professional doctors to inspect every house, and built
voluntary storages to fill civilians’ demand for grains. He also set up “Anle Fang”
(house of security and wellbeing), the first crowd-funded hospital in pre-modern
Chinese history
55
. Su’s actions represented the most common ways for traditional
Confucian literati to do charity when facing natural hazards, which continued until the

53
Lin Zhengqiu. 2011. “Beisong yinshi wenhua.” In Hangzhou yinshi shi. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe.
54
___. 1934. “Chuanranbing zaoshi biao.” Hangzhoushi zhengfu jiaoyu zhoukan 159/160: 16-17.
55
Zhu Deming. 2007. “Jili de liuxing.” In Hangzhou Yiyao shi. Zhongyi guji chubanshe.
31

late Qing and early ROC periods.
Of course in late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries, there were also several serious cases
of epidemic outbursts. One most destructive disease then was cholera. The bacterium
was so ferocious that people called it “tiger plague” ( 虎疫 huyi). Two extreme
incidences of cholera were recorded in gazetteers, one in 1856, and another in 1926; the
latter was commonly believed to have originated in Shanghai
56
. Although no accurate
data of mortality have been preserved, it might not be coincidental that the germ spread
through animal wastes, water, food and flies. In later hygiene propaganda by the City
Government, such features of cholera were emphasized many times along with
dysentery, typhoid and malaria. Elites in Hangzhou then still used conventional
methods, namely establishing private hospitals and pharmacies to provide economic
healings to commoners, to fight against such crises. Hu Xueyan, the merchant counselor
of General Zuo Zongtang, for instance, invested in medicine and created during the
1870s the so-called “elixir to plague” ( 避瘟丹 biwen dan), supposedly a specific to
cholera
57
. But at this time, something was different from pre-modern times. On one
hand, people then had more scientific understanding about mechanisms of contagious
diseases. Meanwhile, western medicine was applied to treating patients of these
epidemics, as an alternative methodology to the TCM. The church-based hospital of

56
Ibid.
57
Ibid.
32

Guangji also established its own medical school as early as in 1881. The first Chinese-
owned western-style hospital, Zhejiang Hospital, was also founded as early as in 1911
by Dr. Han Qingquan who studied medical science in Japan
58
. On the other hand,
however, the power of modern medical science was still quite faint. As mentioned
before, it took a long time for ordinary people in Hangzhou to accept the efficiacy of
Guangji hospital in dealing with women’s diseases. Similarly, scientific knowledge
about microbes and epidemics was far less understood or accepted by the illiterate lower
class than by intellectuals. Lu Xun once complained in an essay:
“There’ve been people who like to lie and hated science, because science makes
others rational, knowing that they were lying…….[those liars] added much nonsense to
scientific information, making it opaque, looking weird……the most horrible speech
was that: ‘Mind could affect blood. The German doctor Koch invented the cholera germ,
which another two doctors opposed. The two ate Koch’s germ but never got
infected.’……As far as I know, Koch identified rather than invented the germ. Besides,
it never proved ‘mind could affect blood’, but that the germ was just not real cholera.”
59

Such a slow pace of popularization of modern medical science might also be
attributed to Hangzhou’s relatively reclusive and passive geographic position among
treaty ports. Statistics show that between 1912 and 1927, there had been 33 medical
magazines and newspapers in Shanghai, but just 9 in Hangzhou
60
. Besides, another
important aspect of “weisheng”, governmental inspection and interference, was also

58
Zhu. 2007. “Jindai yiyaoxuejia jiqi yizhu.”
59
Lu Xun. (1918) 2011. “suiganlu sanshisan.” In Luxun wenxuan, edited by Wu Xiaoming and Wang defeng, 45-48.
Shanghai: Shanghai yuandong chubanshe.
60
Pan Ronghua, and Yang fang. 2011. “Minguo shiqi Shanghai chengwei xiyi chuanbo quanguo zhongxin de shehui
dongyin.” Journal of Anqing teachers college (social science edition) 30 (12): 81-84.
33

absent at many situations then. It should be noticed that Hangzhou had no officially
unified and managed famers’ market or butchery before 1927. So for most times,
common citizens had to rely on individual vendors around streets and natural bazaars
formed by suburban farmers to buy foodstuff for daily use. Livestock were also
arbitrarily retailed and butchered by individual sellers, lacking a universal standard of
quality. Things will be changed only after the Hangzhou City Government replaced the
one of Hang County in 1927, which ushered in a series of influential reforms. But till the
Japanese occupation in 1937 some major tasks still remained unfinished, such as the
officially owned collective butchery.

34

Chapter 3: Progress and Outcomes
Generally speaking, from 1927 to 1937, the Hangzhou city government did make some
substantial achievements in some areas of health administration; but there were still
many important projects remaining unfinished or incomplete when the city was
conquered by the Japanese, as well as many that failed to satisfy the need of most
citizens. In other worlds, while the official health organization tried to promote integral
modernity by improving public hygiene, they were actually impeded by the all-around
lack of modernity of the local society. To see this in details, we should first look at the
basic structure of the administration itself. According to gazetteers and other documents,
Hangzhou’s first city-level governmental branch responsible for public hygiene was the
Hangzhou Bureau of Health, found in July, 1927
61
. At the same time, the fifth section of
Civil Affairs Department of Zhejiang Provincial Government, the first province-level
health administration of Zhejiang, also came into being. Before the bureau, a limited
numbers of hygienic issues like health inspection of livestock and urban cleanout were
in charge of the public security bureau, which generally lacked the expertise and
efficiency of a real health institution
62
.
As mentioned before, the nascent organization was run by a bunch of open-minded

61
Li. 1937. “Shinian lai zhi weisheng”.
62
Wang. 2013. “Hangzhou weisheng xingzheng”.
35

new-style intellectuals who studied abroad. Not only did Jin Baoshan, the head of the
bureau, have degrees from both Japanese and American universities; Dr. Jiang and Gu,
leader of the second and third branch, also received a German one and one from Yale
63
.
Like Sun Yat Sen’s The International Development of China ( 中国实业计划 Zhongguo
Shiye Jihua), Jin and his colleagues had an elaborate plan for the future development of
the Bureau, which included not only food hygiene but all major issues related to public
health. This plan might somehow be “ahead of time”, in comparison to the real-life
situation of early ROC. Although detailed regulations for each specific area at that time
have not been preserved, there is one document showing the basic framework of the
plan. Here are some parts of it:
B. basic jobs:
5. Exterminate mosquitoes and flies
…….
7. Raise money and build butcheries
8. Eliminate [private/unqualified] farmer’s markets
9. Eliminate [unqualified/unclean] foods and beverages
10. Eliminate [unqualified/polluted] water resources
11. Eliminate all kinds of [unqualified] businesses related to public hygiene (such
as teahouses, restaurants, diners, hotels, barber shops, dairy stores etc.)
…….
E. About chemical tests:
1. Inspection of water, milk and other foodstuff
64

Obviously, these rules covered most necessary issues that a government should be
responsible for related to people’s eating and drinking; which somehow became a

63
Ibid.
64
Anon. 1928. “Ji Hangzhou ergeyue lai zhi weisheng gongzuo”. Weisheng yuekan 1 (3): 34-39.
36

guidance or standard for the succeeding organizations to follow or reach. Besides, the
same document also emphasized the significance of selecting “people with a certain
level of education” for use, sending officials abroad to study the “expertise of foreign
institutions”, as well as hiring people with “senior academic experience” as secretaries
to guide policies. All of these illustrated vividly the Jin administration’s high expectation
for the Bureau and the city and their sophisticated understanding of the conception of
“hygienic modernity” itself, especially its requirement for the government.
Unfortunately, due to grave financial constraints, the Hangzhou Bureau of Health
was shut down at the end of August, 1927. Jin himself also left the organization
simultaneously, feeling the city government untrustworthy
65
. Nevertheless, within the
transient two months, the bureau had become a good example for succeeding institutions
in many ways. First was the establishment of the framework of modern health
administration. Here’s a table of division of labor within the bureau, cited from the
summary:
66

Table 4: Division of labor within the Hangzhou Bureau of Health
First branch *accounting
*hygienic education:
publishing(magazine/brochure/ad/novel/drama)
propaganda(lecture/exhibition/parade/movie/drama)
Second branch *secretary
*public cleanings (streets/sewers/rivers/garbage)

65
Wang. 2013. “Hangzhou weisheng xingzheng”.
66
Ibid.
37

*public hygiene inspection (public spaces/food markets)
*Inspection of meat qualities
Third branch *medical issues (epidemics/hospitals/experiments/sanatorium/management of
doctors)
*Statistics (population/fertility/mortality/experimental/others)
According to the table, food hygiene was under the charge of the second branch
among all three, the one of public hygiene; while responsibility for food-borne and
waterborne diseases fell upon the third. Second was the efficiency of their actions, as
well as the wide range of projects they put into practice. Cholera had been a major target
of them. On one hand, during the two months, the Bureau of Health had opened eight
centers of cholera vaccine around Hangzhou, where 12,061 people got vaccine
injections. They also sent 14 teams of officials to the sludge areas without modern
hospitals or other medical facilities, giving around 4,000 people free injections
67
. On the
other, education and propaganda were also taken for granted. The institution published
10 different kinds of brochures about how to exterminate flies and avoid cholera
infection. They also ordered experts to go around schools, factories, teahouses and other
public spaces, to teach ordinary citizens basic knowledge about health and epidemics. It
was noticeable that these lectures always came with free injections
68
. Besides, they also
had regulations for food markets, which were said to “be carried out by force”. Though
other details were absent, one rule said that all beverages and frozen treaties were to

67
Anon. 1928. “ergeyue zhi weisheng gongzuo.”
68
Anon. 1928. “ergeyue zhi weisheng gongzuo.”
38

have chemical tests
69
. But at the same time, it should be noticed that two months was far
from enough for the founders of Hangzhou’s public hygiene institutions to acquire
sufficient resource for future development. For instance, the cultivation of official
inspectors was not so easy. 115 college students participated in the bureau’s test, but
only 8 passed. And then they were supposed to train for another two months before
going on an inspection for the first time
70
. When the Bureau of Health stopped working,
another outburst of cholera just spread across the city. The writer of the summary “saw
the devastating germ killing people, but had no chance to help them”.
As the writer of the bureau’s two-month working summary wrote at the end, the Jin
administration had been an innovative but ephemeral “experiment” of governmental
involvement in public hygiene at the beginning of Hangzhou’s new era as a political
“city”. But the fate of succeeding governmental health institutions was never smoother
than the original one. After the closure of the Bureau of Health, the control over
Hangzhou’s hygienic policies shifted again to the police, namely the Fourth department
of Hangzhou Bureau of Public Security, when Chen Qihuai became the city’s mayor.
Then it became the Hangzhou Department of Health, an independent institution directly
responsible to the City Government in March 1929. Then it became the Second
Department of the City Government’s Secretariat from January to September 1931. In

69
Ibid.
70
Ibid.
39

the next few years before the Japanese occupation, the Department of Health had been a
relatively permanent and autonomous institution. Meanwhile, there had also been many
similarly short-lived governmental organizations in charge of different aspects of public
hygiene. One of them was the Committee of Public Hygiene under the Bureau of Public
Security, which only existed from 1928 to 1929
71
. It should never be ignored that
economic constraints had been one major cause of the instability of the health
institutions’ position. Statistics show that at most times from 1927 to 1937; none of
these organizations had sufficient funding to fuel itself as to work efficiently enough in a
long run. For instance, in 1929, the major sources of income of the Health Department
included health service fees (by selling hygiene certificates to enterprises), health
administration fees (by charging for rule violations) and “health donation” (a special
kind of tax collected from every household and business of the 1
st
and 2
nd
policing
district), which added up to 80,000 yuan in total. But in comparison, the total expense of
the same institution in the same year was 153,956 yuan, almost twice its own earning
72
.
On one hand, Li Suizhi, head of the Health Department, acknowledged the seemingly
unbridgeable gap of development between public hygiene of China and of the West, in
his 1933 work summary:
“Western proverb has that: ‘money can buy good health’. It proved that the most

71
Wang. 2013. “Hangzhou weisheng xingzheng.”
72
Anon. 1928. “Hangzhoushi shiqi niandu difang suiru yusuan shu”, and “Hangzhoushi shiqi niandu difang suichu
yusuan shu”. Zhejiang minzheng niankan II: 6-12.
40

developed countries from East to West all have such brilliant achievements of public
hygiene based on tremendous expenses…….someone said that it was already written
into the rules clearly that health funds should not be used for other purposes. But
nowadays, Hangzhou’s earning from public hygiene still hasn’t covered [its own
expenses], whose bulk should be covered by the city’s finances.”
73

On the other hand, another expert from Shanghai still claimed in the next year that
within a “hygienically underdeveloped nation like China”, Hangzhou’s achievements
from 1927 to 1933 “were just barely adequate” ( 差强人意 chaqiang renyi)
74
. Moreover,
it seemed that expense on food hygiene always covered a relatively small percentage
within the total amount. Data from the 1934 report had that among all areas of hygiene,
cleaning of city canals (64,623 yuan) and sustainment of hospitals and sanatoriums
(52,140 yuan) covered over three quarters of the total expenses, while health certificates
(for food sellers, restaurants or teahouses etc.) only took in 1,278 yuan at total
75
.
Considering these, it was no wonder that many a major task that was supposed to
benefit the city’s food hygiene in a long term had never been completed within the
expected time. One of these great projects to which the City Government devoted much
but from which it gained little was the official unification and management of butchery
and livestock trading. Actually, the idea of building a collective, state-run butchery
company dated back even before the City Government itself. As early as in 1924, a

73
Li Suizhi. 1933. “Hangzhou shi liunian lai zhi weisheng.” Shizheng jikan 1(2): 1-6.
74
Chu yingzhang. 1934. “Hangzhoushi weisheng diaocha baogao.” Zhonghua yixue zazhi 20(8): 1085-1093.
75
Ibid.
41

counselor named Wang Mao proposed to the provincial government that “Hangzhou
butchery” as a single group should be established. In his proposal, Wang said:
“Since the birth of microbiology, all nations have been shocked by the ferocity of
germs to people and animals; among which the most poisonous are animal
plagues……export from nations plagued by animal-borne epidemics are always resisted
by developed ones, which might lead to international commercial or diplomatic
problems (for instance, pork from Shanghai and Hong Kong is not allowed to enter the
UK, causing loss of thousands to Chinese merchants)……now Shanghai, Tianjin and
Qingdao all have their legal [state-run butchery companies], which have made great
effects [in controlling the spread of plagues]………due to lack of collective butcheries,
cattle, ship and pigs in Zhejiang were always butchered in crowded areas, for
convenience of trades, but not for public hygiene…..[I think] it’s one greatest
wrongdoing of our urban policies.”
76

Like his open-minded contemporaries, Wang linked the issue of preventing animal-
borne diseases to not only China’s own modernization but also its international position
and image. Meanwhile, he provided a vague but practical blueprint for the future
butchery, which generally had most necessary elements of succeeding plans in the next
decade. In Wang’s mind, the butchery company was directly inspected by the public
security bureau (since there was no Bureau of Health then), and was responsible for
“inspection, prevention, disinfection and cleanliness”. The company was supposed to
inspect all the livestock trades around the provincial capital (Hangzhou), as well as
control all possible outbreaks of animal-borne plagues
77
. However, as mentioned before,
although the intention of establishing such a butchery center never faded away, it was

76
Wang Mao. 1924. “Jihua: sheli Hangzhou xin tuzaichang zhi yijianshu.” Xin nongye jikan 2 ：107-109.
77
Ibid.
42

never as easily realized in practice. According to the chapter on health of the Hangzhou
City Government’s decennial working summary, up to 1937, there were 150 pork shops,
52 mutton shops
78
, 18 mutton vendors and several other private meat sellers. Due to
their random dispersal, the Health Department always had to send veterinarians to every
seller one at a time to inspect their hygiene. More importantly, the results of such
inspections were also not so satisfactory. As the summary said:
“…..All the dispersed meat markets have their own boilers, simply-set and tatty.
Dung and waste water accumulated in trenches in the shop, which stink a lot during the
summer, gathering flies and mosquitoes, impeding sanitization. But it is improper to
force these dispersed butcheries like one unified company. If they were to be eliminated,
there had to be solutions to the aftermath.”
“Workers in [private] butcheries hardly care for public hygiene. They always throw
wastes and sewage everywhere, creating risks for contagions. Meanwhile, since they
often work at midnight, it bothered others’ lives a lot……”
79

Meanwhile, although the government had strict rules over the meat industry, they
were never carried out so rigidly. For instance, it was reported that some opportunitists
tried to slay pregnant ewes for their unborn lambs’ skin, and threw the dead sheep into
nearby rivers. The fragmentary nature of private butcheries also made it difficult for the
Health Department to collect data about meat quality. Although the summary
acknowledged that statistics showed “much improvement” ( 改良多多 gailiang duoduo)
of meat quality in 1937 comparing to 1933; it also suggested that there were still cases
where uninspected animals like “horses, mules, ill pigs or pregnant ewes” got secretly

78
Li. 1937. “shinianlai zhi weisheng”.
79
Ibid.
43

butchered and blended into qualified meat, which were “too many for the government to
calculate” (fang busheng fang)
80
. Essentially, it was still a problem of money. As early as
in 1933, the City Government noticed that “low income of the city’s finances” ( 市库空
虚 shiku kongxu) impeded the establishment of the butchery corporation, and it turned
to the “Banking Association” ( 银钱业商会 yinqian ye shanghui) for a 160,000 yuan
loan
81
. But most ironically, the problem was eventually solved by the coercive power of
Japanese invaders, and the collective butchery was first established in 1939.
Another major public health project where the City Government devoted a lot but
never gained much was the tap water system. Though more successfully established than
the united butchery, it never worked effictively. As mentioned before, before the
installation of tap water, Hangzhou’s citizens had to rely on natural sources of water like
rivers, wells, and rain, which were highly unstable according to weather conditions and
might go bad easily. Li Ruyan, the former head of the Hangzhou Tap Water Company,
wrote in his memoir about his institution in 1933:
“……. Even those [wells] not filled up are too briny to be potable……the city
rivers are the most disgusting, where boats come across, clothes get washed, human
wastes get poured, and all pollution comes around and accumulates here, leading to a
colony of bacteria……Looking for causes of mortality, food pollution covered half of
all.”
“Statistics have that Hangzhou’s population grows day by day…….and their

80
Ibid.
81
Anon. 1933. “shizheng xiaoxi sanyue lai zhi weisheng (sanyuefen): shizhengfu ni jian tuzaihang”. Hangzhou
shizheng jikan 1(2): 28-29.
44

houses cluster together like scales and combs ( 鳞比栉次 lin bi zhi ci), when an
accidental fire came out, without convenient water sources, it will become a crisis. Like
the huge fire in the eighteenth year [1929], which burnt up 50 to 60 thousand yuan at
once……”
82

According to official documents of the Hangzhou Tap Water Company, it was
originally proposed by Zhu Liuxian, head of the Zhejiang Department of Civil Affairs,
to the Provincial Government in August, 1928
83
. Since the beginning, Zhu’s
“Preparatory Committee of Hangzhou Tap Water Company” ( 杭州自来水厂筹备委员
会 Hangzhou zilaishui chang choubei weiyuanhui) was given high expectations by his
colleagues; where the first certain members included “leaders of the [Zhejiang] finance
department, leader of the water control bureau, the Hangzhou mayor, leader of the
Hangzhou works bureau”; as well as an American called H.A. Petterson (known by his
Chinese moniker Pei Tesheng), then a professor of water conservancy engineering from
the Beiyang University. The first estimated total expense of this project was 2,520,000
yuan, which Zhu decided to pay by governmental debts guaranteed with Hangzhou’s
land tax and the company’s own earnings
84
.
Zhu’s plan was approved by the Zhejiang provincial governor Zhang Jingjiang later
in November 1928; and put into practice beginning in May 1929. Originally, the
engineering team selected several possible sources of water, but none of them was

82
Li Ruyan. 1933. “Hangzhoushi zilaishui chang.” Shizheng jikan 1(1): 49-52.
83
Pan Biao. 2013. “Minguo Hangzhou zilaishui ye de guanshang juese jiqi chengbai.” Dangshi yanjiu yu jiaoxue 4:
94-101.
84
Zhou Xiangxian. 1937. “Hangzhoushi zilaishui chang shinian lai zhi gongzuo zhuangkuang”. Hangzhoushi zhengfu
shizhounian jinian tekan. 1-3.
45

perfectly plausible. For instance, Hupao, one of the major sources of directly drinkable
water in contemporary Hangzhou, was also once chosen for an impounding reservoir at
that time; but eventually abandoned for having too many temples and graves around
85
.
More importantly, some of the supposed water sources did not or just barely meet the
strict biochemical standard of the inspectors. Here is a table about some results of
chemical testing of water from different parts of Hangzhou
86
:
Table 5: Results of chemical testing of water from different parts of Hangzhou (part)
Water resource

standard
Li’ansi River Qiantang River
(around the dam)
City River (around
Qingtai Gate)
West Lake
color transparent Dark gray Yellowish green Light gray
odor odorless muddy Strangely muddy odorless
turbidity 6.0cm 1.3cm 8.6cm 5.7cm
Floating substance A little white Bluish gray; and
dust
Much bluish gray Yellow; and silky
flakes
Soluable
oxygen(mg)
5.23 5.3 5.16 9.76
Hardness(mg) 6.57 11.97 26.28 14.75
Escherichia coli 1cc 1cc 0.1cc 10cc
Besides, many other chemicals like hydrogen sulfide, nitric acid and ferric ions
were also tested. It proved that the Li’an River was the best source for tap water.
Nevertheless, since Li’an was relatively far from Hangzhou’s downtown, it will be an
unaffordable task either to build a reservoir there or to channel water from there to the

85
Anon. 1930. “Hangzhoushi zilaishui choubei qingxing (4): shuiyuan ji changji.” Zhejiang minzheng niankan II: 311-
330.
86
Huang Mingju. 1931. “yiyao zashi: Hangzhoushi zilaishui shuiyuan zhi huayan.” Yiyaoxue 8(1): 18-24.
46

city by underground pipes. Consequently, the Preparatory Committee chose the Tiesha
River, a tributary of the Qiantang flowing across the Qingtai Gate, for expediency; and it
cut down the budget to 1,500,000 yuan. The Tap Water Company formally opened up in
January 1931, as it had then built up all the primary infrastructures including:
“The main plant with inner intake [at the Qingtai Gate], Sedimentation tank, Sand
filter, Sand basin, Sand storage tank, clean water tank, chemical treatment room,
Sterilization room, connecting pipes, Drainage well; power voltage room, Water inlet
and outlet machine, mechanic center, as well as a relief reservoir at Ziyangshan……as
for the water pipe system, it has reached 35 km.”
87

On one hand, it was said that the tap water system “performed excellently” (jieguo
liangjia) in the first experimental water supply in Feburary 1931. When it formally
began to supply water in late 1931, 300 households had applied for installation, while
100 of them got the chance. But on the other hand, Li Ruyan acknowledged that despite
all those advanced equipments, his company paid highly to make the water clean enough
for daily use. For instance, they borrowed the Hangzhou Power Plant’s electric motor to
pump clear water from the Qiantang River during its wet season, to dilute sewage from
farmlands around the Qingtai Gate
88
. Meanwhile, at the beginning, the price of tap water
installation was about 30 yuan per household in October 1931, which was “too pricy for
people below the middle income, while too cheap for the rich” ( 富厚之家，愿不在

87
Anon. 1929. “Hangzhoushi zilaishui quanbu gongcheng jihua gaiyao shuomingshu.” Zhejiang daxue gongxueyuan
yuekan 18: 23-28.
88
Li. 1933. “Hangzhoushi zilaishui chang.”
47

此；中产以下，因而裹足 fuhou zhijia, yuan buzaici; zhongchan yixia, yiner guozu).
Moreover, up to 1937, there had been approximately 73.4 km of tap water pipes at total
around the city, supplying water to more than 3,000 households. Over 370 barber shops
and 17 bathhouses also enjoyed this service. For these people, tap water proved to be a
reliable proof of hygiene. As Li Suizhi said in 1933, the cholera outburst of summer that
year came from “polluted lakes and marshes” ( 污染之池荡 wuran zhi chidang); and
when people shifted to tap water, the epidemic “suddenly died off” (ji ximie)
89
. This
even led to a wave of installation after the plague incident. But at the same time, many
citizens still “held on to the old habits” ( 狃于旧习 niu yu jiuxi), resisting tap water and
clinging to drinking water from wells. In 1935, the New Life Movement required every
household and business to “self-examine” its own cleanliness. Examined items included
kitchen, bathroom, water sources and living or working environments, which were
categorized into three levels
90
:
Table 6: Results of the “self-examination”
Level kitchen bathroom Water source Living/working
environment
A Distant from
bathroom; spacious
and clean
Specific place for
defecation; no stain
on the floor
Clean around the
well/fountain
Spacious with good
lighting and airing
conditions
B Distant from
bathroom, but filthy
Filthy; without
container for waste
Murky well/fountain Spacious; without
sufficient light or air, but
still clean

89
Li. 1933. “liunian lai zhi weisheng”.
90
Li. 1937. “Shinian lai zhi weisheng”.
48

C Close to the
bathroom; filthy
No specific
bathroom; waste
spread around in the
open air
Well/fountain close to
bathroom; washing
clothes around
Reclusive and dark; wet
floor; garbage piling up
inside
Clearly, most of the examined households and businesses seemed to lack tap water
access, as all their water sources were called “jing” (well/fountain) in the document. It
turned out that among the 37,782 households, only 4,509 fell into category A, while
12,222 become unqualified (level C). Besides, it seemed more difficult for the Tap Water
Company to sell their product to teahouses than other businesses. As written by Li:
“Their tea water is often murky, their equipments unclean……the waterwheels in
their tea orchards, considering convenience, carry water not from the [West] Lake, but
from the waterway near the old Yongjin Gate [they did not use tap water piped from the
Tiesha River as suggested by the Government]. Though close to the Lake, the river was
surrounded by clusters of houses whose dwellers wash clothes in it……”
91

Such descriptions lead me to another related issue: regulation of food and drink
providers. These included restaurants and diners, teahouses, cold drink and soda sellers,
farmers’ markets and individual farmer vendors who sell foodstuff. Generally speaking,
like the two projects mentioned above, the Hangzhou City Government’s control over
these industries was put on the agenda and into action since it came into being; but
eventually produced a half-decent outcome only when it succumbed to Japan. Records
showed that as early as in 1927, the Hangzhou Bureau of Health had already published
several sets of hygienic doctrines for food and drink sellers, some of which were

91
Li. 1937. “Shinian lai zhi weisheng.”
49

incredibly complete and integrated. Here’s part of one document about a ban on
restaurants:
*Things below are not allowed for sale:
Animals that died of diseases; rotting seafood; eroded vegetables; unclean dairy
products; raw or cooked foodstuff that has changed color or odor; moldy or corrupted
candies or desserts; raw or cooked foodstuff colonized by flies or other bugs; food
contained in stained or unclean vessals……
*Bowls, plates, chopsticks and other tableware should be washed with hot
water……
*Containers for soy sauce, vinegar, yoghurt or other condiments should be clean
and sealed off tightly, in case of dust or bug infiltration…….
*Restaurant owners and employees should always keep their body clean and get rid
of skin diseases; they should wear unstained white or blue clothes; they should not be
naked even during hot summers.
*Meat or other foodstuff should be washed in specific water vessels; remnants of
foodstuff like fur, bones scales etc. should be dumped into public trash bins, rather than
dumped into rivers, spread around the street or piled in the house.
*All restaurants, diners or food vendors should go under inspection and guidance
of hygienic patrollers; if questioned, answer honestly
92

To some degree, the part about what should not be sold resonated with the taboos
by Xu Ke. But while the latter only warned against behavior of an individual, the former
saw from the perspective of society and politics, and emphasized on the power of law
enforcement by the government. As mentioned above, this had been one key feature of
the modern conception of “weisheng” or hygiene. Moreover, although the Bureau of
Health only existed for two months, succeeding institutions not only inherited, but also
kept perfecting the rules and principles it set for all aspects of public hygiene, including

92
Anon. 1928. “xiuzheng Hangzhoushi qudi caiguan guize.” Zhejiang minzheng yuekan 7: 30-36.
50

food hygiene. For instance, it was written in a 1928 treatise for teahouses that “polluted
water from rivers and trenches” ( 河沟污浊之水 hegou wuzhuo zhi shui) should not be
used for tea water “for spatial expediency” ( 贪图近便 tantu jinbian)
93
. Meanwhile, they
never ignored enhancing the power of enforcement. As shown in the 1937 work
summary, there were more than 20 health chiefs ( 卫生组长 weisheng zuzhang) and
more than 10 health inspectors ( 卫生稽查 weisheng jicha) in the Department of Health
then
94
. Actually, these numbers were far less promising than the hundreds of Shanghai
95
.
But considering the average expense of training an official and the difficulties a citizen
had to fulfill the standard then, these were not small numbers. Another governmental
command by Mayor Zhao Zhiyou also illustrated the rigorous rules a health inspector in
ROC Hangzhou should obey. For example, he should never have any “violent behavior”
( 粗暴行为 cubao xingwei) when communicating with the party; but rather should
“persuade politely” ( 妥善劝导 tuoshan quandao). If he failed in his mission ( 怠忽职务
daihu zhiwu) or broke the law ( 违法舞弊 weifa wubi), he might not only be fired, but
even be sent to the judicial office for punishment
96
.
However, despite all these records showing the Hangzhou City Government’s
interest in regulating the city’s food market, the latter had not always been as “hygienic”

93
Anon. 1928. “xiuzheng Hangzhoushi qudi chaguan guize.” Zhejiang minzheng yuekan 7: 36-40.
94
Li. 1937. “Shinian lai zhi weisheng.”
95
Ibid.
96
Zhao Zhiyou. 1933. “Hangzhoushi zhengfu ling mi zi di yiyisi hao.” Shizheng jikan 1(2): 57-59.
51

as the former expected it to be. Interestingly, statistics about epidemics showed that in
the early 1930s, mortality due to food-borne diseases like cholera, dysentery and typhoid
went down a lot. But this did not mean there were fewer cases of these diseases
97
.
Rather, there were still tens of people who got infected in every summer and fall and just
got cured afterwards. As shown in the cases of butchery, lack of finance could explain
the health institutions’ impotence in finishing large-scale hygienic infrastructures. But
even though in some cases they did establish such systems successfully, it was still not
so easy to introduce them to some ordinary citizens; because the City Government’s
expectation might violate their personal demands to some degree. Besides the tap water
company, this was more vividly illustrated by another case: the farmers’ market and
street vendors. The first officially-built farmers’ market in ROC Hangzhou dated back to
1927. When the Bureau of Health established the so-called Experimental Hygienic
District ( 卫生试验区 weisheng shiyan qu) at the Hubin New Business Zone ( 新市场
xin shichang), it was opened up at Longxiangqiao. The market cost 5,865.5 yuan at total,
including 1,640 for road renovation
98
. Also, like other facilities and industries, it was
governed with strict rules by health institutions since the beginning. Besides prohibition
of sellers with epidemics, mental illnesses or alcohol addiction and sales of corrupted or

97
Anon. 1932. “shizheng xiaoxi sanyue lai zhi weisheng: fading chuanranbing tongji.” Hangzhou shizheng jikan 5: 5-
10.
98
Chen Qihuai. 1928. “gongdu cheng shengzhengfu: wei xingqiu longxiangqiao xiao caichang pang renxinglu ji
fanxiu dongpolu dengchu zai lin shiyefei nei kaizhi chaochu yusuan qingshi zun you.” Shizheng yuekan 1(2): 16-17.
52

polluted produce; the rules also emphasized regulations of acquiring places in the
market by individual farmers. For example, locations for different types of produce were
arranged in a quite fixed fashion like this
99
:
Table 7: Distribution of selling places in the Longxiangqiao Farmers’ Market
pork beef mutton fish shellfish
vegetables tofu pickles egg poultry
seafood fruits condiments games disserts
For every kind of produce, the total number of sellers allowed to enter the market
was directly decided by the Bureau of Works and certified by the City Government
itself; so was the rental price for each seller, which was directly charged by the Bureau
of Finance. Moreover, every seller allowed to enter the market was given a bronze
medallion ( 铜牌 tongpai) for certification, which was regularly inspected by the
market’s managers and police officers. But he was never allowed to sell his place or
certification to other farmers; nor was he able to change places without allowance from
the Bureau of Works
100
. At the same time, private capitalists were also granted contracts
for farmers’ markets, which were of course established and run according to guidance of
governmental health institutions
101
. On the surface, these actions seemed to benefit the
city’s foodstuff trades as a whole, since they brought a whole set of modernized market

99
Chen Qihuai. 1928. “fagui: Hangzhoushi zhengfu ling mi zi dierhao: zi zhiding Hangzhoushi xiaocaichang guanli
guize gongbu zhici.” Shizheng yuekan 1(11): 15-17.
100
Ibid.
101
Zhou Xiangxian. 1930. “Hangzhoushi shangren chenban xiaocaichang zanxing Guize.” Shizheng yuekan 3(7): 19-
20.
53

norms to the previously unrestricted industry. But parties of them, especially street
vendors of foods, might not always think so. Until 1937, there had been 18 collective
farmers’ markets at total in Hangzhou, including 8 officially owned ones; which had 955
places for individual sellers. The so-called “vendors’ market” ( 摊贩市场 tanfan
shichang), which was just established in October 1937, even got 1,511 registered users
in only two months
102
. Although these seem to prove the efficacy of the City
Government, a protest from a vendor in the Shanghai-based newspaper Dagongbao
provided a totally different picture:
“Dear Editor:
“We are vendors from the vendors’ market of Hangzhou’s Third district, who have
been dying for survival. The City Government is now forcing us to work within the First
[Farmers’] Market at Jingtingqiao; because the landlord [the merchant contracting for
the vendors’ market] is taking back the land. But our businesses have been slack
recently, earning 1-2,000 yuan per day. By contrast, a half-table [the smallest unit of
selling place] in the First Market charges 120,000. I hope the City Government could
help us find a place for survival.
“(By A Bao, a vendor from the third district)”
103

Although the protest came a decade later in 1947, and the amount of money it
mentioned was exaggerated due to the hyperinflation then; it might be hypothesized that
similar things had already happened many times before it, since there had already been
commands that street vendors should move into certificated farmers’ markets in 1929
104
.

102
Li. 1937. “Shinian lai zhi weisheng.”
103
Anon. 1947. “Hangzhou sanqu de tanfan buyuan qianfang jingtingqiao.” da gongbao(Shanghai) 5(2): 10.
104
Zhu Jiahua. 1929. “Zhejiangsheng zhengfu minzhengting zhiling di erlingqiyiba hao.” Zhejiangsheng minzheng
yuekan 24: 212.
54

Actually, just one year later, even the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Civil Affairs
warned the City Government against foodstuff vendors around its farmers’ markets
interrupting traffics
105
. In that sense, “A Bao’s” protest proves that despite the City
Government’s expectation of regulating food hygiene by banning and controlling sales
of foodstuff, it always overestimated the actual economic affordability of each ordinary
seller in practice. Besides, whether the Bureau of Works was able to maintain the rules
of the markets effictively is also doubtable, as there was a time when the provincial
leader Zhu Jiahua commanded Mayor Zhou Xiangxian to investigate the places as
susceptible sources of river pollution
106
.

105
Anon. 1930. “zhengdun Hangzhoushi xiaocaichang zhi jingguo.” Zhejiang minzheng yuekan 32: 113-114.
106
Zhu Jiahua. 1929. “Zhejiangsheng zhengfu xunling di yiersisiling hao.” Zhejiang minzheng yuekan 21: 150-151.
55

Chapter 4: Conclusion
At the beginning, both the Hangzhou City Government and its Bureau of Health were
founded by open-minded revolutionaries who studied abroad or broke away from
traditional Chinese ideologies. In their minds, public hygiene, including food hygiene,
was something unheard of in pre-modern China but fundamental for its transformation
into a modernized civilization. To realize their ideal of “integral modernity”, Jin
Baoshan and his successors fabricated elaborate plans made of both substantial
infrastructure and intangible political systems, which were supposed to be scientific and
effictive. Definitely, they learned more about the Western conception of “hygiene”,
which emphasized more on governmental regulation and scientific methodology rather
than personal self-discipline and pre-modern ideologies, from Japan, the US or other
Western predecessors. But in practice, they always had to succumb to poverty and
convention. Not only were the administrators themselves restrained by lack of finances
in many cases, but also were the ordinary citizens too poor and too short-minded to
afford and adapt to the substantial changes the ongoing reforms brought to them. From
1927 to 1937, those policies, doctrines and facilities the City government promised to
benefit all , such as the tap water company and the farmers’ market system, turned out to
serve only a portion of citizens who could pay the price. Those unaffected by this
limited attempt at “bio power” still lived the way they did in late Qing.
56

In many ways, the regrettable outcomes of Hangzhou’s food hygiene policies in
that decade represented the common situation faced by most local-level reforms in
contemporary ROC treaty port cities: while the original initiators had ambitions of
copying experiences from the advanced West, their successors will eventually
compromise with the backwardness of China, in terms of both economy and ideology.
Although since early ROC, Hangzhou had been making itself a tourist destination where
the “old” met the “new”, as to cater to the more developed outside world and find its
own unique way of modernization; the unsatisfactory condition of food hygiene shown
in governmental documents then suggested that it had never been the “paradise on
earth” as propagandized by itself, especially to those ordinary citizens too frugal to
enjoy Westernized foods or other boons of the capitalist world system.
Moreover, retrospectively, this piece of history still mirrors what’s happening
today. In The International Development of China, Sun Yat-Sen proposed to establish
three major ports ( 大港 dagang) in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin, which were
connected to seven major railways stretching into the border provinces of Yunnan,
Xinjiang and Tibet
107
. Fortunately, thanks to the burgeoning economy, most of these
plans have already been realized by the PRC after the 1978 Reforms. However,
comparing to building of shipping hubs and railways, food hygiene seems to be a more

107
Sun Wen. (1919)1940. Shiye jihua. Qingnian shudian.
57

complicated issue to deal with. For instance, according to Shi Hongbao, it was common
for resigned Green Camp soldiers to hunt wild animals and make them into bacon for
sale during the winter, which were called “black bacon” ( 乌腊 wula) then
108
. Even
during the ROC period, selling game in farmers’ markets was legal
109
. But until now,
many a most threatening kind of pathogen in China has been known as originating from
wild animals illegally hunted, sold and eaten; which indicates that there are still gray
zones outside the seemingly integrated governmentality of contemporary China’s local
governments.

108
Shi. 1858. xiangwei zayong.
109
Chen. 1928. “xiaocaichang guanli guize”.
58

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中醫古籍出版社

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Asset Metadata

Creator Liu, Xizhu (author)

Core Title Food, hygiene, and modernity of Hangzhou (1927-1937)

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Publication Date 11/13/2020

Defense Date 11/09/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag food hygiene,Hangzhou,hygienic modernity,OAI-PMH Harvest,ROC

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Birge, Bettine (committee chair), Goldstein, Joshua Lewis (committee member), Sheehan, Brett George (committee member)

Creator Email xizhuliu@usc.edu,xizhuliuus@163.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-394849

Unique identifier UC11666535

Identifier etd-LiuXizhu-9111.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-394849 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-LiuXizhu-9111.pdf

Dmrecord 394849

Document Type Thesis

Rights Liu, Xizhu

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA