Spring 2007, Volume 17, No. 2

Hygienic Modernity: Beyond Rural Reconstruction?
--Lu Zuofu and the Public Health (Weisheng) Movement at Beibei" [i]

 

Zhang Jin
School of Literature and Journalism
Chongqing University

 

From 1927 to 1937, in Beibei near Chongqing, Lu Zuofu undertook full-scale rural reconstruction, which aimed to modernize a rural village. This was the second of his experiments with "Modern Group Life." At that time, Beibei was a very poor and isolated place ruled by the warlord Liu Xiang. After ten years of rural construction, Beibei changed greatly. In 1948, Beibei became Sichuan Province's "Model Experimental District". Who was Lu Zuofu? Was he really, as Mao Zedong said, one of "the four unforgettable persons in our national economy"? Why was Beibei not considered to be part of "the Rural Reconstruction movement" at that time? Is there any relationship between Beibei's hygienic programs and urbanization?

Lu Zuofu was born in 1893 in Hechuan County near Chongqing. In his youth, he accepted Sun Yat-sen's ideas of the Three Principles of the People (San Min Zhu Yi). In the fall of 1914, he went to Shanghai by ship for the first time, and he met China's famous educator Huang Yanpei there. This was a very important trip for him because it aroused his interest in the mass education movement. In 1915, he returned to Sichuan Province. At age twenty-three he became a journalist and editor of "Newspaper of the Masse" (Qun Bao). Showing his interests in political issues, he wrote many articles to criticize social backwardness and impoverished conditions. At the same time, he became a math teacher at a middle school in Huchuan County. In the spring of 1919, he worked as a editor, writer, and journalist at 《Sichuan Newspaper》 (Chuan Bao), a famous independent newspaper in Chengdu. In 1921, he was appointed as an education director in southern Sichuan Province by warlord Yang Sen. In this position he launched his first "mass education" experiment, a hygiene construction movement meant to "pay attention to individuals and public health." However this movement only lasted for about one year. In 1922, he visited Shanghai and met with Huang Yanpei again. During this time, he not only learnt from Huang's Schools, but also visited many factories in Shanghai, showing his great interest in business issues.

In 1924, he began his second mass education program in the center of urban Chengdu, but it was cut short because of fighting among Sichuan warlords. In 1925, at age thirty-two, he organized the Minsheng Company in Hechuan County, and then moved it to Chongqing. Actually Lu Zuofu considered the business of Minsheng Co. as a part of his "Modern Group Life" program. He trained its workers for "service to other people and society". Thus Minsheng Co. looked like much more like a social group than a big shipping business on the Yangtze River. Lu Zuofu said, Minsheng Co. was his educational project because it taught people how to imagine a modern and perfect society in the future.

In 1927, construction programs began at Beibei. In the spring of 1930, Lu Zuofu led a delegation to Shanghai to study how to undertake modern construction at rural Beibei. During this trip, he and his men visited the most urbanized cities in China, including Shanghai, Nanjing, Nantong, Qingdao, Dalian, Tianjin, Shenyang, Haerbing, Changchun, Beijing. Lu Zuofu said they "bring questions out, and want to get the answers back".

From 1929 to 1930, he was the director of Upper Yangtze River Navigation Section of Liu Xiang's government. In 1931, he began to unify the shipping business on the upper Yangtze River. With the help of Liu Xiang, Minsheng Co. grew very fast. In the fall of 1935, Lu Zuofu was appointed as the director of Sichuan Province Construction Bureau. In 1938, he was the deputy director of Nationalist Government Communications Department, and worked under that title for five years during the war. At the same time, under his leadership, Beibei's project developed very nicely and soon became the "modern window" or "Model of Modernization" of Sichuan province.

Lu Zuofu's thinking on "Hygiene construction" largely came from The Rural Construction.[ii] He believed that "Modern Group Life" (Xian Dai Jituan Shenghuo) might lead to a future ideal society, and he saw a connection between "Modern Life Style" and hygiene. Since people were always concerned about their properties, the local police organization is very important, he argued, because it can protect their private property. However, people did not realize that even if they were protected by police, they were still vulnerable to disease and dangerous epidemics. Diseases were more threatening than bandits were. At least we have some methods to handle bandits, Lu Zuofu said, but we have no idea how to prevent disease from spreading. From this perspective, he pointed out, "Building up public health (Weisheng) is more essential to our mission (Shi Ye) than policing (Zhi An) is".

Lu Zuofu suggested that "Mass hygienic education" was an efficient way to improve Beibei's sanitation and prevent the outbreak of contagious disease. He declared that sanitation and health were the most urgent tasks for the administration (modernization) of Beibei. He proposed that first of all we should establish rural hospitals. The purpose of these hospitals was to cure sufferers and to let the poor have chance to see doctors for free. These kinds of hospital should be set up in every village to provide medical treatment and small pox vaccination, especially for children.

Lu Zuofu pointed out that "Paying attention to health (Jiang Weisheng) is a key method for preventing disease." How can we deal with our "private hygiene" or "individual health"? Lu Zuofu reasoned that it would be necessary to depend on educated people to promote individual hygiene. "Public health will require hygienic examinations and the construction of a medical infrastructure". As for "public hygiene", Lu said we should first take steps to make food sanitary, streets clean, and garbage and sewage disposed of. In order to prevent disease, Lu Zuofu called for "Personal hygiene" and health education. He said that hospitals were the proper places to provide sanitary science. Unhygienic and other bad habits should be prohibited immediately in order to prevent disease. Lu Zuofu thought that our hygiene construction would not be accomplished until all citizens had adopted healthy habits.

According to Lu Zuofu's design, a massive health project was carried out in Beibei. Many steps were taken by local health administrators to make the environment healthy in order to prevent disease. Even young students were mobilized in these hygiene movements. In order to adopt a health life style, residents were educated to put aside their unhygienic lifestyle and pay attention to personal hygiene. Local media took the lead on health propaganda for fighting disease, and so on. Local government also led an education movement to promote knowledge of health among Beibei's citizens.[iii] Various campaigns of "Weisheng construction" swept through Beibei promoting a healthy baby competition, healthy children competition, and healthy senior (jian kang lao ren) competition. Local hospitals promised to serve all of Beibei's residents. Lu Zuofu believed that the more knowledge about the hygienic sciences people acquired, the more likely it would be that rich people would donate money to establish hospitals. In the course of this hygienic movement, hospitals acted as centers for educating the population. Here are the slogans from <Jialing River Daily>[iv]

There should be hospitals where people live.

Our responsibility is not only curing the disease but also preventing diseases.

Doctors serve for all patients no matter what their social classes.

The purpose of war is to kill people while the purpose of doctors is to give birth to people.

The rich will pay for their medicine, while the poor can get medicine without paying.

The local police keep people's properties safe, while the doctors defend people's lives.

We hope the sick will see a doctor, and we even hope no one will be sick.

Our goal is to cure people, not to make a profit.

 

During the course of Beibei's hygiene movement, people became more concerned about their physical health and more willing to see the doctor than before. They also became actively involved in local hygienic campaigns. Local residents took interest in the exhibitions on methods for disease prevention and knowledge of the human body. More important, they cared about public health issues, such as the prevention of disease and cleanliness. The term "Weisheng" came to mean not only cleanliness and health, but also a new lifestyle for the people of Beibei.

Beibei's rural reconstruction was highly regarded by both local citizens and "Down River People." Beibei became known to the outside world for its cleanliness and health. It was called the "Human Pure Land". While Liu Xiang instituted Chongqing's urbanization,[v] Lu Zuofu mobilized the mass "Weisheng" movement. Liu Xiang wanted Chongqing to be "like Shanghai" and called it "Little Shanghai." He wanted to end the criticisms of Chongqing as "backward" and "poor" because of its dirty and smelly air, unhealthy people, and unclean drinking water during the war. Even though Lu Zuofu's Beibei was under Liu Xiang's military control, Liu Xiang gave Lu Zuofu freedom so that Beibei could become a special model that would be known to the outside world.

Hygienic construction was only part of Lu Zuofu's project. He also paid much attention to the education of local people as citizens in Beibei's public life. "Public Health Construction" and "Pay attention to individual hygiene" movements played a key role in Beibei's programs. By reconsidering Beibei's model, we may rethink urbanization theory and its relevance. Can we say this movement led by Lu Zuofu achieved a "sanitation revolution"? Did Lu Zuofu's "Hygiene construction" result in "Hygienic Modernity"?[vi] Where did Lu Zuofu's ideas on "public and individual hygiene" come from? All these questions need to be studied further.

Doctor Zhang Jin is a Professor and associate Dean at the School of Literature and Journalism, Chongqing University. His research interests are: Chongqing Urban History Lu Zuofu and Upper Yangtze Shipping Business History Mass Media and Republican Chongqing Society "Down River People" and Chungking Images of Urban Chungking