Scents of China

NEW PUBLICATION:
Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell
By Xuelei Huang
Cambridge University Press, 2023
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009207065

DESCRIPTION:

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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

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

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

Xuelei Huang is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Edinburgh.