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Antonia Finnane, How to Make a Mao Suit: Clothing the People of Communist China, 1949–1976, Cambridge University Press, 2023. 386 pgs.
I have used Antonia Finnane’s Changing Clothes in China (2007) many times in my research, and, as a non-specialist, I’ve always found it to be the most useful book available on the subject of twentieth-century Chinese clothing. With her new publication, How to Make a Mao Suit, Finnane has provided us with another volume that will no doubt prove indispensable for researchers in many fields of Chinese studies. From what Finnane tells us at the beginning of her book, it seems she was able to make some important and exciting personal connections in China and elsewhere on her long journey to collect material for the project. Finnane was even in China during the Mao era, as a student in 1972 studying Chinese as an undergraduate (see the photograph of her as a young woman in China [272]) and again in 1976–77.
The book is impeccably written and by the end of each chapter the reader is left thirsting for more. Finnane’s research took her in search of material not only in the archives of Beijing and Shanghai, and the dependable resources of newspapers and magazines, but also to “paper patterns, pattern books, instruction manuals, commercial leaflets and brochures…” (18). It’s interesting to note that this was just the sort of ephemera that was turning up in book markets a few years ago, as a result of widespread relocations in cities such as Shanghai, when many possessions that had become superfluous were being discarded due to shortages of space in new high-rise homes. Such material, so useful to the scholar of Mao’s China, often ended up in paper-recycling depots, where it was subsequently acquired by market vendors, who are almost certainly some of the same people who have been selling it online in recent years.
Finnane notes that research on clothing of the Mao era is “still at a nascent stage” (11), but points to one scholar in particular, Bian Xiangyang, as having provided the most comprehensive Chinese account (focusing on Shanghai) of Mao period clothing published to date (13).[1] With her own book, Finnane has gone some considerable way to filling the existing gap in English-language scholarship.
Finnane informs the reader that her book is a history of how the clothing system during the Mao years (1949–1976) came into being. She asks some specific questions, “…what the clothes were, who made them, how they were made, and what they meant to the people who wore them” (2). She expands on this by asking additional questions, including: “within what institutional settings were they made?” and “what tools were used to make them?” Finnane’s research addresses all these questions in a methodical and thorough way, and by doing so, opens up all sorts of new areas for others to explore. The book is formed of nine chapters, each of which takes a very specific view of the subject in hand. Chapter 1, “The Red Group Tailors and the Zhongshan Suit”, introduces what is perhaps the main focus of the research, showing how the Zhongshan suit came first to be associated with Sun Yat-sen (aka Sun Zhongshan) in the 1920s, and with Mao Zedong after 1949, when it became known in the West as the “Mao suit”. As with all stories in the book, this is told in a compelling and captivating manner. In Beijing, the Zhongshan suit became standard clothing for CCP cadres, continuing a tradition that had begun in the Republican era. The tailors who had been responsible for this in the early period, known as the Red Group (紅幫), could trace their origins to mid-nineteenth century Ningbo, and specialised in making clothing using traditional Western tailoring methods (28). Though greatly reduced in number after 1949, some Red Group tailors in the capital specialised in making Zhongshan suits for high-level cadres, including Mao (49–50). As astutely observed by Finnane, “…the textile and apparel industry in Mao’s China was, even if by default, a modernising one. It established a deep gulf between present and past. After Mao, there was no going back to the time of the long gown” (20). She points out that Mao wearing the Zhongshan suit at the ceremony for the founding of the PRC in October 1949 was a significant event (even while some of his comrades who joined him on the platform still wore long gowns) and the start of a “fashion” (my word) that would last for the entire Mao period, as a symbol of Chinese identity (5–7).
In Chapter 2, “Notions and Sewing Tools”, Finnane introduces another of the main focuses of the study, by looking at the specialist tools used in the making of garments. Any one of the many tools discussed in the book might usefully have a full-length study devoted to it, and in Finnane’s hands each of their histories makes for surprisingly gripping reading. These histories up to now, with the possible exception of the sewing machine, have all but been ignored in academia. The manufacture of pins and needles, during the Republican and Mao eras, is one of these stories that in Finnane’s hands becomes quite simply enthralling reading (62–63).
At all times, Finnane’s analysis introduces much information concerning the Republican era that is essential to our understanding of how objects and their uses changed and developed, up to, and during, the second half of the twentieth century.
The story of the Zhongshan suit and the many variations on it continues in Chapter 3, which is entitled “Making Zhifu”. Finnane uses the Chinese term zhifu throughout the book, instead of its English translation, “uniform”, in an effort to dispel the widespread mistaken belief, still popular in the Western imagination, that all Chinese people wore the same clothes during the Mao era (10). It is however true that everyone had to wear the appropriate zhifu for their job, and those doing the same job would inevitably wear the same zhifu, the dress guidelines for each job having been formalised by the authorities, but there was considerable variation between workplaces. This chapter foregrounds Finnane’s excellent use of archives.
In Chapter 4, “Sewing Like a Girl”, Finnane continues by stressing how tailoring had never been a job for women during the Republican era, and even in the 1950s, Zhongshan suits mostly continued to be made by men. With regard to this, Finnane tells us that men formerly learned their trade in apprenticeships, and that after 1949, women learnt to use sewing machines in newly established sewing schools (127). This saw a significant rise in women seamstresses in the early years of the PRC, with “the sewing industry in the 1950s [becoming] pointedly feminised”. Eventually, men were actively discouraged from working with sewing machines (112–113), and the development of the sewing industry in China in the 1950s was heavily dependent on the availability of female labour (132).
Ration coupons occupied “a central place in narratives about clothing in the Mao era” (p. 134). These are introduced in Chapter 5, “Rationing”. Ration coupons of all sorts were introduced partly as “a socially progressive policy directed at the equitable distribution of basic necessities” and were required for the purchase of everyday goods, including cloth, grain, cooking oil, rice, and flour. As Finnane says, “rationing not only limited consumption…[it actually] directed consumption in certain directions” (135).
Something that is apparently well-known in the fashion world and in clothing academia, but was previously unknown to me, is the fascinating story of the campaign to “dress up nicely” of 1956, followed by a backlash to it in 1957, with a call for restraint and economy (141). As Finnane puts it, 1956 was “the year of splurge”, and 1957 became “the year of thrift”, when duo (quantity), kuai (speed), and sheng (economy) were promoted (145). The story of the years that followed, during the shortages of the Great Leap Forward, as told by Finnane, also makes for gripping reading. To my knowledge, a shortage of cloth, although an obvious corollary to a shortage of food at a time of famine, has not been discussed at any length in the standard history books, but is covered here by Finnane. During this period, there were pattern books that instructed people not only on how to make clothes, but also on how to save cloth, and therefore money (157). To do this, people were encouraged to unpick, recut, and reuse old clothes (158). Surely this is one of the reasons so few garments (qipao and changpao) survive from the Republican era.
The next chapter is “The Time of the Sewing Machine”. Research into the history of the sewing machine is a well-trodden path in studies from many different geographical perspectives and is introduced here as a central part of clothing manufacture in Mao-era China. Finnane informs us that in China before 1949, most sewing machines were imported, Singer being a good example, but within fifteen years there were factories in almost every Chinese province. The ubiquity of the sewing machine worldwide changed the face of sewing and tailoring, and Finnane tells us how it ended up dictating what was worn. As she says, “…a machine once used as an aid in sewing ended, in China as elsewhere, by changing what was sewn” (162). Domestic brands competed with the most popular foreign model, Singer, but eventually Xiecheng, makers of the Butterfly brand, were exporting to all parts of the world (183–184). Other domestic sewing machines were produced, which carried the sort of brand names that could be found all over China at the time. Having briefly looked into this, I found it intriguing to note that the brand names “Red Flag”, “Leap Forward”, and “Liberation”, had all been additionally associated with the motor industry. The “Flying Dove” (飞鸽牌) sewing machine (so named in English by its manufacturers), is easily confused with a famous bicycle brand of the same name, which is commonly known in English as “Flying Pigeon” (飞鸽牌) (183).
In Chapter 7, “Pattern Books I: Origins, Authors, Readers”, Finnane tells the reader, “…along with sewing machines came pattern books” (194), and the compilation and worldwide production of sewing guides and pattern books “were linked to the mass production of sewing machines and the rise of sewing schools” (197). Pattern books are nominally the focus of two chapters. Chapter 8,“Pattern Books II”, takes the discussion further and concentrates on the thorny question of “How to Take a Measurement”. In the making of traditional Chinese clothing, tailors/seamstresses had measured the clothes rather than the body of the wearer (225). This was due to the nature of Chinese-style clothing, but when Western-style tailoring became the norm, which required closer contact between wearer and maker, the problem of measuring between sexes arose (226). From what I understand, there was never the situation in China, before or after 1949, in which tailors/seamstresses took the measurements of the opposite sex, but surely this must have been the case throughout the twentieth century in many countries around the world, including the UK.
Chapter 9 asks “What Should Chinese Women Wear?” Finnane informs us that the term “Strange Clothing and Outlandish Dress” was commonly used during the Republican era but was found most widely in the years 1964 to 1983, at a time when people were discouraged from wearing things that didn’t conform to the rather conservative requirements of the time, something that became more difficult for the authorities to control during the last days of the Cultural Revolution and into the Reform era.[2]
This is a book brim-full of new research. So much material is covered in it that I have no doubt that Finnane could make each chapter into a full-length study of its own. However, there are two things not covered in the book that I would have liked to have known more about, even if these were quite deliberate omissions by Finnane. First, she does not discuss headwear in any depth, apart from brief mention of the duck-billed hat (259–260). Something that has always struck me about Chinese attire during the Republican era, is the distinct lack of hats worn by women. Unlike what can be found in magazines in the West such as Vogue, in China women are rarely seen wearing any sort of hat (other than sunhats) in the fashionable magazines of the time (for example Liangyou). By contrast, during the Mao era, both men and women can often be seen in images of the time wearing caps. Perhaps headwear might be included more in Finnane’s next book.
Secondly, another thing that is noticeable by its absence, is a discussion of clothing accessories. During the Mao period, jewellery was not worn (at least that is my understanding) but in the first few years of the Cultural Revolution, the wearing of badges out of respect for Chairman Mao, was ubiquitous. This of course is not part of the story of “How to Make a Mao Suit”, but badges were an important part of the dress code for several years in the late 1960s, and to a lesser extent during the 1970s. These badges are now popular collectibles in China and around the world, as is that other indispensable accoutrement of the time—The Quotations of Chairman Mao.
Mao’s quotations were found on almost every object at the time, big or small, from household crockery and utensils to household bills, from the walls of buildings to Mao badges. Most relevant to this discussion is their appearance on published material, such as sewing booklets and pattern books. One example, published in 1971, as illustrated by Finnane, carries the slogan “Serve the People” across the top of its front cover (208). My own experience of this slogan in China that touches on the subject of sewing, was when in the last cold weeks of autumn 2011, a crucial button on the front of my coat fell off. I went in search of a needle and thread and walked much of the length of Huaihai Lu in Shanghai, in what turned out to be a futile pursuit. Eventually, I came across a women’s outfitters and thought maybe I could buy a needle and thread there, but (perhaps fortunately) the shop assistants took pity on me, and one woman volunteered to sew the button back on for me, something that took all of just a few seconds. I asked her how much I owed her, but she wouldn’t accept payment, and simply said, in a friendly but serious tone: “Chairman Mao told us to Serve the People, you are the people, so it is something I am bound to do.” Some would struggle to see how me, an Englishman, could be one of “the people”, but viewed more broadly from the perspective of Mao, who instructed the people of the world to unite, perhaps I do fall into this category after all.
How to Make a Mao Suit is a splendid book. It will no doubt prove indispensable to the China-focused clothing specialist and will certainly be hugely valuable for scholars working on the clothing histories of other geographical regions. It is also one of those rare academic books that is written in a style that will appeal widely to the general reader. Above all, it will attract China specialists of all sorts, including those working on all aspects of the Mao era, but will also be of great interest to scholars of the Republican era, and the late-Qing dynasty.
[1] Zhongguo jinxiandai Haipai fuzhuangshi 中国近现代海派服装史 (History of Shanghai-style Clothing in Modern and Contemporary China) (Shanghai: Donghua daxue chubanshe, 2014).
[2] Finnane adopts the approach that the Cultural Revolution lasted from 1966 to 1969, rather than from 1966 to 1976 (p. 241n59).
How to cite: Bevan, Paul. “Impeccably Written: Antonia Finnane’s How to Make a Mao Suit.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 16 Aug. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/08/16/mao.
Paul Bevan is a Sinologist, researcher, literary translator, and lecturer. From 2020 to 2023 he was Departmental Lecturer in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford and Retained Lecturer in Chinese at Wadham College. From 2018 to 2020 he worked as Christensen Fellow in Chinese Painting at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He is currently a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His research focuses on popular fiction and the visual arts as they appeared in periodicals and magazines published in Shanghai during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Paul’s most recent book is a translation of Murder in the Maloo: A Tale of Old Shanghai (Earnshaw Books, 2024). He has written two monographs: A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938 (Brill, 2015), and Intoxicating Shanghai: Modern Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during Shanghai’s Jazz Age (Brill, 2020). John A. Crespi’s review of the latter calls attention to the translations embedded in the book: “Featured within the book’s densely informative analyses are translations of four modernist short stories. [These] in themselves contribute significantly to modern Chinese literary studies…”. [All contributions by Paul Bevan.]