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Chinese Theater Collaborative

Card one of The Western Wing cigarette cards (back)

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The Western Wing
西厢 (~1920s)

Set of 20 Cigarette Cards

LINKS TO THE CARDS

The collection at the New York Public Library.

INFORMATION

Title: The Western Wing 西厢
Style: 1920s
Artist: Unknown
Publisher: Hwaching Tobacco Company 华成烟公司

INTRODUCTION

Beginning in the late 19^th century, in the U.S., so-called cigarette cards, that is, illustrated cards that were inserted into cigarette packets, served two purposes; they were marketing devices that encouraged repeat purchases to collect attractive images and acted as “stiffeners,” that is, structural supports for otherwise flimsy packaging. The name “stiffener” was noted for its double meaning, as cigarette cards were principally marketed to men and often contained sexually suggestive images of women. The North Carolina tobacco magnate James Duke (1856-1925) was a pioneer of the form, and it was the Duke Tobacco Company that first introduced cigarette cards to the Chinese market in 1885 (Gao 240). Duke’s firm went on to merge into the American Tobacco Company and later became the British American Tobacco Company, firms that successively controlled large shares of the Chinese tobacco market. Following the cards’ introduction and use by the foreign manufacturers, they “quickly became an important advertising component for every serious tobacco manufacturer active in China” (Gao 244). This commercial practice remained common until the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese war in 1937, when paper shortages made it impossible to reliably source raw materials. After the PRC was founded in 1949, cigarette cards were tainted by their association with the decadent bourgeois culture of pre-revolutionary China and their production was discontinued.

Even though Chinese consumers initially did not take to Western imagery included on cigarette cards, there was a homegrown industry of collectable images of attractive women: a courtesan culture that had by the late 19^th century come to include a market for photographs of its most popular entertainers (see Gao). The affinity for courtesan photography was quickly picked up by the cigarette card industry. As if to underscore this close relationship between an intoxicating print culture and tobacco, packs of cigarettes (with cards) were sold in “tobacco-and-paper convenience stores” (烟纸店 yanzhi dian) that traded in both products (Chen 128). While images of alluring women were one of the most common genres of cigarette cards, other material, including traditional drama, was also adapted to this form. Companies appealed to smokers with sets of cards that could be collected, sometimes with images of famous characters from fiction and drama, and sometimes, as in the case of this module, narrative sequences that illustrated the action of a famous drama or novel.

Cigarette cards were small, collectible pictures, miniature objects that invite a special relation with their viewers. Tucked into cigarette boxes, then perhaps the consumer’s pocket, cigarette cards were characterized by a kind of hiddenness. Though not always illicit, they were unfailingly intimate things, little pictures that fit in the palm of one’s hand, invited attention, and incited visual (and perhaps erotic) pleasures. Unlike calendar posters, for example, which were another popular advertising form used by cigarette companies, cigarette cards could not be enjoyed by a several people looking on at once but were rather meant for private contemplation. The poet and literary critic Susan Stewart has written on the miniature as a “fantasy structure,” a “world of arrested time” whose “stillness emphasizes the activity that is outside its borders” (67). “And,” she continues, “this effect is reciprocal, for once we attend to the miniature world, the outside world stops and is lost to us” (67). Despite this absorption, however, Stewart argues that the miniature also creates a separation between its “lived reality” and the observer, who is always “trapped” outside the world of the miniature (66). The cigarette card is thus a perfect object of desire, a world hidden away inside a package of cigarettes that tempts and absorbs its viewer but never grants entry to its illusive realm.

This module considers an adaptation of The Western Wing that underscores the hidden pleasures and tempting boundaries of the cigarette card. The set features twenty numbered cards and was printed by the Hwaching Tobacco Company 华成烟公司 that had been founded in Shanghai in 1917. A 2007 blog post by a collector describing a similar set of cards, however, suggests that the images may have been pirated from a more elaborate set printed by British American Tobacco (for more details, see Yan). The Hwaching Western Wing cards are not the typical voyeuristic images of seductive beauties lounging in luxurious spaces that are often associated with the cigarette card. However, the original drama had thematized forbidden looking and boundary crossing both in the story itself and in associated woodblock illustrations. In this set of cards, that theme is so accentuated that it is a perfect example of the kind of visually mediated pleasures that such cards could offer.

THEME: Peeking into Miniature Worlds

The illustrations on the twenty cards that comprise the Hwaching Western Wing have a landscape orientation and the cards measure only several inches in width. Each card has a colored lithographic illustration on one side and a branding imagery featuring an image of the Hwaching factory on the verso.

Each card’s illustration features an iconic moment from the drama and is labeled with both a number and a title that identifies the scene. For example, the initial card, reproduced below in higher resolution, reads "Western Wing Act 1: A Startling Beauty" 西廂之一驚艷 Xixiang zhiyi “Jingyan” (fig. 1.1).

And what a startlingly beautiful scene! The card (fig. 2) is exquisitely crafted and colored. We see precisely rendered ornamental detail in the women’s patterned robes, the architectural details on the temple in the background, and the multicolored flowers on the tree on the left. This adaptation of Western Wing is thus inaugurated with a conflation: yes, Yingying 鶯鶯, furthest left, is lovely, but the so is the cigarette card itself. The title is of course a reference to the young woman as she appears to Student Zhang 張生, but if we are a little more playful in our interpretation, jingyan 驚艷 can also literally mean “startling color,” that is, the visual impression produced by this card. By enlarging the image (fig. 1 vs. fig. 2), we are also playing with the visual relation between the beautiful card and its viewer. Looking at the larger image allows us to see the scene in greater detail and spend more time gazing into it, much like we could if we picked up a small card and examined it closely. Our first encounter with the cigarette card Western Wing is therefore already a “peek” into a miniature world that beckons us to bring it closer to our eyes.

The theme of peeking continues on the next card, “Western Wing Act 2: Renting an Adjacent Room” 西廂之二借厢 Xixiang zhiyi “Jiexiang” (fig. 3). In the image, Student Zhang is seated across from the abbot and arranges to rent a room in the temple adjacent to Yingying’s temporary quarters. Through the window on the left, we see the maid Hongniang 紅娘 peeking in and listening to the conversation.

The scene is narratively significant in that it sets up Student Zhang as a resident in the temple and allows him to pursue Yingying. The image, however, is notable because the maid’s presence at the window highlights our own act of “peeking” into another space. She stands at the edge of a window, while we look onto the scene printed on the card. Like Hongniang, who lingers just outside the frame of the window, we too encounter an enclosed, framed space to which we do not belong but that nevertheless interests us greatly. While in the first card, we may have identified with Student Zhang, who stared dumbstruck at Yingying, here the gaze is no longer “male” and carnally desirous, but rather associated with a female servant whose keen eyes will help develop the narrative by facilitating the romance between the two lovers.

A closer look at panel three (fig. 4) further underscores the gendered gazes of the two characters. Student Zhang stands on the left side of the image. He leans over a low fence that separates him from Hongniang and Yingying, who is praying in the garden. On his side of the fence, the wall and ground is quite plain, while the two women on the right stand in a lush, colorful garden. Again, we might interpret Student Zhang here as a proxy for the viewer who leans in closer in order to enjoy the visual opulence and sensual beauty in the adjacent garden.

And again, as in the first card, Hongniang looks back at Student Zhang. He is seduced by the visual pleasure, but Hongniang’s gaze suggests instead attentiveness. Her look, in other words, functions as the narrative engine of the play, already anticipating what might happen next. Student Zhang, in turn, is dazzled by the scene in front of him and appears suspended in a rapturous moment. The cards demand both types of attention from their viewers. Each one is both an individual set piece (a realm onto itself) and a piece of a narrative that needs to be sustained from card to card. The temporality built into the cards through Hongniang’s gaze is especially important because the cards are presumably acquired one by one and in a random order. A smoker must continue to buy cigarettes to get the whole story and the story must be visually seductive and narratively captivating enough to merit further purchases from that particular brand.

Given the attention to looking evident in these first cards, it is not surprising that peeking in appears also in the card that pictures the play’s most scandalous and titillating moment, the scene in which Yingying and Student Zhang have sex in his chamber. The scene is featured on card thirteen, “Western Wing Act 13: An Exchange of Letters” 西厢之十三酬简 Xixiang zhishisan “Choujian” (fig. 5).

Yingying and Student Zhang are pictured by his bed; she is bashful while he holds out his hands towards her. Between his gesture and their location at the bed, it’s obvious that the two are about to consummate their relationship. Although the card doesn’t go so far as to show the two in the act, the illicit nature of their tryst is highlighted by the presence of a voyeur. A figure is visible behind the window lattice on the right side of the frame. Again, such an onlooker, gazing in from just beyond echoes the viewer of the card. In this case, a viewer familiar with the text may assume that the figure is Hongniang, since she just arranged the meeting between the lovers and appears frequently as a voyeur to the sex scene in other Western Wing illustrations. Yet as drawn, the figure is also relatively anonymous—it could be any one of us vicariously enjoying pleasures that lie beyond our grasp.

A final striking moment of peeking in appears in the following card, “Western Wing Act 14: Hongniang Interrogated” 西厢之十四拷红 Xixiang zhishisi “Kao Hong”(fig. 6). It illustrates Hongniang’s punishment and interrogation at the hands of Madam Cui 崔夫人, Yingying’s mother.

Suspicious about her daughter and Student Zhang (who have indeed just had sex), Madam Cui beats Hongniang into a confession about the romance with a thorn-laced rod. In the drama, the scene is a showcase for Hongniang (or rather, the actor playing her). The maid’s song not only gives poetic vent to her emotion, but also convinces the older woman that the couple should be married as initially promised. As such, this pivotal moment allows for the play’s happy ending (which is realized in the cards when Student Zhang triumphantly returns after passing the imperial exams in the final cigarette card of the series).

Hongniang’s famous interrogation scene is explicitly marked as a significant moment that is worth watching. To the left of the card, Yingying stands just at the threshold of the door and looks in as her mother beats the maid. As before, the gaze here functions in two ways. On the one hand, Yingying’s look is narratively substantiated, since, after all, the result of this beating has direct bearing on her marital future. Yingying’s presence at the threshold, however, is also yet another metanarrative gesture. Like the cards’ viewers, she stands just outside the action, looking in on an exciting dramatic moment and an elaborate setting.

Images of the complete set with translated titles are featured below.