INTRODUCTION TO LINGLONG MAGAZINE

Linglong (Elegance), a pocket-size women’s weekly, was published between 1931 and 1937 in Shanghai, at a time when anti-Japanese feelings were running high and when, quite accordingly, and in preparation of the war that broke out full-scale in 1937, women’s role in society, too, was changing rapidly. Shanghai’s elegant women, those whom Linglong addressed, were well-educated and well-off. They were open-minded and broadly interested: hungry for gossip about glamorous foreign movie stars as well as the newest Shanghai fashions, about admirable foreign scientific discoveries as well as the latest Shanghai department store opening; they were eager for advice on how to kiss and how to be happy without a man, on how to sew a fashionable qipao and how best to fight Japanese aggression, in short, about actions and situations which their mothers would never have dreamed of.

The first issue of Linglong (known in English as Linloon Magazine) came out on March 18, 1931 and the price was listed as seven hundredths of an ounce of foreign silver, or twenty-one copper coins. Its chief editors were two men and one woman: Mr. Zhou Shixun (entertainment), Ms. Chen Zhenling (women’s features), and Mr. Lin Zemin (photography).

So far as is known, no library contains a complete run of the magazine; the most extensive holdings in China are those which were preserved in the Shanghai Technical Library, with a few issues also held by the Anhui Provincial Library. Columbia University's Starr East Asian Library is the only library outside China to hold a nearly complete set which is available online (http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?ANX0496). The small Heidelberg holdings are presently being digitized to fill up some of the gaps in the Columbia holdings.