Scents of China
A Modern History of Smell

A pioneering cultural history of smell in China from the High Qing to the Mao period.

Xuelei Huang (Author)

9781009207041, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 August 2023

309 pages
23.6 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.65 kg

In this vivid and highly original reading of recent Chinese history, Xuelei Huang documents the eclectic array of smells that permeated Chinese life from the High Qing through to the Mao period. Utilising interdisciplinary methodology and critically engaging with scholarship in the expanding fields of sensory and smell studies, she shows how this period of tumultuous change in China was experienced through the body and the senses. Drawing on unexplored archival materials, readers are introduced to the 'smellscapes' of China from the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century via perfumes, food, body odours, public health projects, consumerism and cosmetics, travel literature, fiction and political language. This pioneering and evocative study takes the reader on a sensory journey through modern Chinese history, examining the ways in which the experience of scent and modernity have intertwined.

A note on the text
Introduction. The cesspool and the rose garden
Part I. A Sniff of China: 1. Aromas of the red chamber
2. China stinks
Part II. Smellscapes in Flux: 3. Deodorizing China
4. Re-perfuming China
Part III. A Whiff of Alterity: 5. The bouquet of Eros
6. The politics of smell
Epilogue. The smell of winter white cabbage.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]