The New Machines In The Imperial China: A Study On The Media Value Of Sewing Machines In The Late Qing Dynasty

In the mid-19 th century,after the Opium War,the country was opened wide,and the narrative of ideas,culture,capital,technology and race began to flow between different regions of China and the West,while new machines carrying western civilization poured into old China first,opening a historical topic about tradition and western style,conservatism and innovation.In today’s society,the topic of cultural conflict and traditional structure still frequently enters the center of the topic,and the ideological and cultural invasion of western countries by means of media has never stopped.The repressive restrictions on China’s media by western countries,led by the United States,also show their short-sighted image.Therefore,the social implantation of new media and heterogeneous media should be taken care of reasonably from the perspective of communication.Sewing machines,as the carrier of goods production,capital symbols and cultural output,were first advertised and sold in Shenbao in the 11 th year of Tongzhi since Qing Dynasty(1872).From the perspective of global grand narrative,sewing machine is a metaphor about the global flow of materials,technology,cultural customs and ideas.The change of lifestyle brought by new machines is the exchange and integration of civilizations around the world.From the audience’s microscopic point of view,sewing machines have influenced the lives of ordinary people in China,created a new living environment and values for the audience,and infiltrated the culture.In the process of completing the "pure mechanical function",the sewing machine has an important connection with China’s clothing habits,wearing styles,social atmosphere,ideological innovation and ideological changes.At this special time node in the late Qing Dynasty,in this contradictory land of China in the late Qing Dynasty,sewing machines have important media value and strong modern enlightenment significance.Under the background of "hard" impact and "soft" awakening of ideology,sewing machines were introduced into the late Qing society,and "new machines" formed value disputes in the social environment of "old China",providing issues for the times.During the embedding process of sewing machine in the late Qing Dynasty,it showed different media roles and had different media values.From the aristocratic perspective,sewing machines,on the one hand,satisfy the user’s status symbol with its rarity,on the other hand,connect the late Qing Dynasty and the world with the attributes of new media and foreign media.From the perspective of women,sewing machine endowed women with skills in mechanical function and improved the efficiency of garment making,but as a new social discipline,it still manipulated women’s bodies,and women in the late Qing Dynasty did not get real freedom.From the commercial perspective,the change of appellation from "foreign goods" to "foreign goods" also shows the change of audience’s attitude towards foreign media in the late Qing Dynasty,and the high efficiency of sewing machines also laid the foundation for the development of modern industry and commerce.The value disputes caused by sewing machines are mainly divided into three groups: conservatives,neutrals and radicals.Each group has a heated debate on the social implantation of sewing machines based on their ideology and status.In the end,the sewing machine guided a series of value innovations in the implantation of society,mainly including westernization of life,weakening of culture and globalization of the system,which had a far-reaching impact on the audience’s thoughts and social changes in the late Qing Dynasty.The research conclusion shows that the social impact of the "new machine" sewing machine on "old China" in the late Qing Dynasty,that is,its media value,is mainly reflected in four aspects: first,it promotes equality in the choice of cloth and the standard of clothing,breaks the class privilege and stimulates the sense of equality.Secondly,as a life medium favored by women,it provided limited freedom for women in the late Qing Dynasty,but gave them new shackles of discipline to a greater extent.Thirdly,the sewing machine led the modern fashion.From the innovation of the garment system and the wider social innovation,"old China" began to blend into the "new world".Finally,as a foreign medium,the western cultural thought of sewing machine deconstructs the traditional culture of China,and the western consciousness quietly invades.Therefore,the introduction,embedment,value dispute,value innovation and value influence of sewing machines in the late Qing Dynasty are systematically discussed,and the social scene laid out after foreign new media entered China is outlined.In the dispute among all parties,sewing machines completed the ideological innovation of the audience in the late Qing Dynasty and shaped a new social and cultural trend.In the process,"old China" began to integrate into the "new world",but the problem of dissolving traditional culture continued until the present society.The new "new" and "old" problems have stepped onto the historical stage again.The discussion of sewing machines in the late Qing Dynasty also brings useful thoughts to the social implantation scale of contemporary new media and foreign media.