Teaching Resistance: The Shanghai Children's Summer Health Camp and the Pictorial Press, 1934–1938

Abstract: This article examines the adaptation of the summer camp—originally developed in North America—in the context of Shanghai in the years leading up to the Second Sino-Japanese War. It focuses on the Shanghai Children's Summer Health Camp, a hygiene program aimed at strengthening the nation by providing biomedical corrections to children's physical flaws, that was established in mass media as a model for families to emulate at home. In strengthening their bodies through medical intervention, Chinese children could build their resistance to both germs and Japanese imperialism. I argue that detailed visual press coverage of the camp framed hygienic habits and monitoring of children's health as a way for women and children to practice biomedical mobilization to contribute to the war effort. It instructed readers in scientific childrearing methods and in seeing the body of the Chinese child as a subject of public health.