This essay examines the creation of Yingxi fiction and the role of elegant gatherings at the Great World Entertainment Center during early Republican China. Yingxi fiction, crafted by the traditional scholar Lu Dan’an, emerged after he viewed imported silent films. Lu Dan’an meticulously recorded the films' content and adapted them into fictional texts, aiming to introduce these stories to those who could not afford to watch the films. The process of creating Yingxi fiction not only unveils the hierarchical dynamics within these sophisticated gatherings but also illustrates how traditional Chinese novelists assimilated Western culture and cinema. By employing theoretical frameworks such as Cultural Field, Vernacular Modernism, Aura, and Mechanical Reproduction, this essay interprets the Chinese literati's struggle against the forces of modernism.

In the first half of the 20th century, the Sino-French Institute of Lyon (Institut franco-chinois de Lyon, IFCL, 1920–1946) fostered the growth and rise of a group of intellectuals from Republican China. Their experiences in Lyon and France not only provided a source of exotic inspiration for their literary creation, but also compelled this generation, born and raised up in radical social revolutions, to delve more deeply into questions of individual and national choices. Focusing on Su Xuelin苏雪林’s Thorny Heart棘心(1929) and Xu Zhongnian徐仲年’s My Beauty Faraway彼美人兮(1946), this study analyzes how sentimental writing in these two autobiographical novels serves as a medium to explore how Republican-era “overseas students literature” and its authors sought to challenge traditional sentimental norms through distinct paths, i.e., by embodying sacred religious love and by exploring sensual, transnational romance. Much like the divergent paths Su Xuelin and Xu Zhongnian took in the 1950s and beyond—in Taipei and Shanghai, respectively—their differing interpretations of the progressivist thought during the May Fourth Movement has been already foreshadowed in their novels. For instance, Su Xuelin’s Thorny Heart (1929) tells the story of Xingqiu’s encounter with Catholicism during her time at the Sino-French Institute. Xingqiu perceives religion and universal love as a striking contrast to the selfish character traits she associates with the Chinese people, viewing it as a potential remedy for the “mal du siècle” afflicting modern individuals. Su Xuelin’s depictions of natural landscapes and her highly reserved comments on urban life reveal her ambivalence toward the May Fourth rationalism and its underlying “modernity”, suggesting thus a certain rebellion against these ideals. In contrast, Xu Zhongnian’s My Beauty Faraway (1946) recounts his romance with a French woman, Louise, their marriage, and his eventual return with her to China. Xu Zhongnian dedicates extensive passages to the flourishing scenes of Shanghai during the treaty-port era, even illustrating the narrator’s contributions to the “localized cosmopolitanism”. In sum, on the basis of emotion, body and faith, these two novels illustrate the representative ways in which late Republican-era students studying abroad imagined the “France” and the “world”. Su Xuelin and Xu Zhongnian’s reflections on national fate also highlight this generation’s efforts to act as “mediators”, particularly in terms of how to “internalize” foreign influences and “recreate” a new subject of self.

This study examines how gender boundaries are constructed through the travel writings of women exploring China’s Northwest frontier，1903 -1936. Women's participation occupies a special position in the modern movement of China’s Northwest. Their writings and practices not only reflect new ways of thinking and planning about nationalism and femininity but are also filled with tension due to the delineation and crossing of national boundaries.

On the one hand, beginning with the first wave of female liberation in the late Qing, diverse voices have emerged, leading to ongoing reflections about the ideal image of new women. On the other hand, the different development processes between countries and regions reflect various clues of modernization—one of the most significant topics in the twentieth century. The Northwest frontier, characterized by the intertwining of different authorities, thus came into public view. Consequently, the call for women to venture into the Northwest frontier represents not only an experiment in women's liberation and national transformation but also serves as material to the interactions that cross national boundaries.

Focusing on three cases—the exploration of a female aviator (Lin Pengxia’s Northwest Journey 西北行), an emissary (Liu Manqing’s A Mission to Tibet 康藏軺征, and a spy (Ichinomiya Misako’s Mōko Miyage 蒙古土産)—this study shows the blended picture of travel writing. Although these women came from varied educational and personal backgrounds, their journeys were influenced by Confucian gender frameworks and nationalist discourse, which guided their entry into pivotal historical moments.

The Northwest, as an unevenly governed frontier, provided these female travelers with opportunities to challenge gender norms, transgress identity boundaries, and rewrite female destinies. However, they repeatedly drew back into prevailing gender structures, co-opted by national narratives.

What narrative patterns emerge that continually reintegrate these women into traditional gender frameworks? How do female travelers construct the heterogeneous “otherness” of the frontier? In what ways do their observations about frontier women reflect the intersection of historical and contemporary challenges faced by women? How were their images constructed—by themselves and the media—and subsequently absorbed into the discourse of nation-building?

Through addressing these questions, this study seeks to illuminate the complex interactions among gender, travel, and nationhood. By using the doubly “marginal” perspective of women in the Northwest, it further aims to reconsider the “centered” discussion of modernity.

During the transformative period from late Qing to Republican China, children—regarded as symbols of the nation’s future and core strength—began to attract significant public attention. As a result, discussions about children’s school education and daily lives persisted throughout the Republican era. The “discovery of the child” took on entirely new meanings in the 1920s and 1930s. While extensive research has examined textbooks across various disciplines, less attention has been paid to pedagogical resources, such as supplementary learning materials. This study addresses that gap by focusing on several extracurricular geography learning materials published during the Republican period: Grand Domestic Travel (1926) and The Travels of Zhen’er (1934) and Little Travel Notes (1939). It explores how first-person, child-centered narratives functioned within the framework of educational commercialization, specifically investigating how these narratives mobilized children’s emotions, fostered national consciousness, and disciplined bodily behaviors. This study argues that geography learning materials offered school-age readers diverse perspectives for understanding China by traversing various boundaries: urban and rural, national and local, Han and other ethnic groups, self and other, and child and adult. At the same time, these materials pioneered innovative methods for cultivating modern children.