Coolness, leisure, and power : the development of Mokanshan summer resort in modern China, 1890–1937

The concept of "coolness" (清涼) embodied fundamentally different bodily and cultural experiences in Chinese and Western traditions. With the introduction of Western-style summer resorts by foreign missionaries in the 1890s, these divergent understandings converged and clashed in new spatial forms. This study examines Mokanshan (莫干山), located in Zhejiang province and recognized as one of the Republican era’s “Four Great Summer Retreats” (民國四大避暑地), as a paradigmatic case of transnational leisure. Initially developed by missionaries as a health-oriented retreat, a transnationally managed enclave, and a nostalgic “overseas home” for expatriates, Mokanshan reflected a hybrid model of modern leisure shaped by foreign institutions. Following the 1911 Revolution, rising nationalist sentiment gave way to escalating contestation over the resort’s control and meaning. Chinese authorities asserted sovereignty through administrative reform, transportation integration, and tourism investment, while local elites pursued symbolic sinicization—challenging Western dominance through landscape transformation and vernacular reinterpretation. Despite the missionaries’ attempts to negotiate their position, Mokanshan was formally nationalized in 1927 under the Nanjing regime. Figures such as Huang Fu (黃郛, 1883–1936) reimagined the site as a space of elite political retreat, fusing Neo-Confucian ideals of self-cultivation with modern notions of leisure and reclusion. By tracing three distinct phases of Mokanshan’s development—missionary management (1890s–1911), transitional contestation (1911–1928), and state administration (1928–1937)— this study argues that summer resorts served as microcosms of China’s modern tourism and leisure transformation. Mokanshan’s evolution from a foreign-dominated resort to a nationalized political retreat demonstrates how globalized leisure practices were neither passively adopted nor uniformly rejected, but rather reconfigured through dynamic negotiations among transnational actors, local elites, and state institutions. As one of China’s earliest and most prominent modern resorts, Mokanshan also offers a critical case to the global study of summer retreats and leisure culture.