With the new printing technologies’s appearance occuring a boom during the first half of twentieth century, Liangyou (The Young Companion) arguably turned out to be the most influential magazine at that time, or even could be considered as the most unique in the history of Chinese modernity. Founded by Wu Liande in 1925, being self-promoted as “the most attractive and popular magazine in China”, a year later, during February 1926 a first episode of Liangyou has been published.
The company combined the offset printing technology with photography for its cover portraits: the black-and-white photograph were first shot at a studios, before the artists painted the colors and would be printed afterwards. The topic of graphic arts based on two main categories: commercial (posters, advertisements) and social (cartoons, woodcuts and art periodicals), with the face of woman appearance on most of their cover, variable from neighborhood students to famous movie stars.
It was the longest-running Chinese-English bilingual monthly pictorial magazine, until 1945, with a total of 174 episodes, and therefore become an invaluable source material to capture every aspects of the kaleidoscopic life in Shanghai. This periodical not only served as a visual realm at that time, but also as “a good companion” – “to its ten thousand readers in their everyday negotiations with modernity and all its consequences.
Wu Liande (1900 – 1972), the founder of the magazine and the first editor of “The Young Companion”, from episode 1-4.
Sun Yat-sen Memorial Special Issue
8th Anniversary Special Issue
References:
- Paul G. Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen, Yingjin Yang – Liangyou, Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926 – 1945 – 2013 – Chapter Introduction https://books.google.com.vn/books?id=55yXCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
- Dany Chan and Michael Knight – Shanghai Art of the city – 2010 – Chapter Shanghai Graphic Arts 1910 – 1949, page 137, 138.
- “The Young Generation”, Wikipedia – Last edited by 5th April 2020 – Pictures of Wu Liande and covers of two special magazine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Companion
