The Cultural And Social Life In Modern Hankou Teahouse

Hankou is in the Yangtze River and Hanjiang River crossroads, and has been an important commercial town in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River from the Ming dynasty. Soon after the Opium War, Hankou changed from a traditional commercial town to a modern commercial city. And this change impacted modern Hankou's cultural and social life.As one of the city public life and entertainment space, the teahouse has become a kind of window and perspective in studying modern cultural and social life. This paper will analyze and reconstruct modern Hankou' cultural, social life based on the development of Hankou teahouse, accumulation and formation of teahouse culture, being transformed as a public space. And this paper will show modern Hankou history for a lively cultural history of life.The first teahouse in Hankou was found in the vicinity of the Back lake. After 1861, the number and size of the teahouse developed more rapidly. Some popular civilization or not civilization recreational activities such as gambling, playing chess, playing birds were also conducted at the teahouse. The teahouse became a Hankou persons' rich life space.The teahouse and the local art have one kind of natural relation. Many local arts after entering Hankou selected the teahouse as land of survival and spread. Many and varied acrobatics artistic forms appeared in the modern Hankou teahouse. Hubei songs, Hubei Huagu opera, the Peking opera, the storytelling, the rare book telling, the big drum, the shadow play, the puppet show had the teahouse as performance place. The benefit relations between the teahouse and the itinerant performer made the teahouse become the place of common custom culture preservation and dissemination.Many profession merchants carried on the transaction in the teahouse and formed the unique teahouse commercial culture. Republic of China time, Wuhan Blue Hong gang secret society controlled and influenced the teahouse, and formed the secret political characteristic gang culture of teahouse.The teahouse also becomes the place which each kind of powers wanted to control and transform. On the one hand is the traditional gang influence controlling, the majority of teahouses all were having the gang background. On the other hand, the Republic of China government and the political outstanding people diligently carry on the transformation to the teahouse, they hoped strengthens to the Hankou resident's enlightenment and the thought control. The teahouse industry had formed own management organization—Teahouse Industry Trade Association, wanted to form one kind of autonomy bourgeoisie public domain. But as a result of Chinese society's complex, this kind of public domain construction became one kind of fantasy.In a word, the discussion about Hankou teahouse previous generation this life, the teahouse culture, have enriched the Hankou history imagination. On the other hand , this discussion also provide the open field of vision and space for the rigorous scholarly research about modern China history.