“The China Pictorial”, was a monthly illustrated magazine founded in July 1930 printed by Eastern Publishing Co. and distributed by the New China Publishing Co. It ranks amongst the most important Chinese language pictorial magazines to be published in Shanghai and covers a wide range of current affairs and cultural issues, with sections on “Famous Paintings”, “World Science”, “Film”, “Cartoons”, “Serial novels”, “Scenery”, etc. and it reflects the political, economic, artistic, and social life of Shanghai and the rest of China during the Republican period.
The editor-in-chief was Hu Bozhou (dates unknown), the text editors were Zhou Shoujuan (1895-1968), Yan Duhe (1889-1968) and others, and the art editors were Hu Boxiang (1896-1989) and Lang Jingshan (1892-1995), etc. Each cover features an Oriental beauty painted by Hu Boxiang (brother of Hu Bozhou) who had been trained in Chinese traditional painting, Western lithography, watercolour and photography. Other editors include Zhou Shoujuan (1895-1968, aka. Eric Chow), a Chinese novelist, screenwriter, editor, and translator of English texts. He was a director of the Oriental Fine Arts Society, and in 1928 co-founded the China Photography Society. He also worked with W.A. Pennell in the advertising department at the British American Tobacco Company in Shanghai.
In the inaugural issue Yan Duhe, one of the most influential editors in the history of modern Chinese journalism, extolls the transformative power of photographs and concludes: “Through the power of pictures I want to contribute the three categories of ‘truth’, ‘goodness’ and ‘beauty’ from the world of literature and arts to our readers as much as possible.”
Extremely rare. Only two sets in OCLC (Australian National Library; Stanford).
