The nine essays in this volume reexamine the "hundred days" in 1898 and focus particularly on the aftermath of this reform movement. Their collective goal is to rethink the reforms not as a failed attempt at modernizing China but as a period in which many of the institutions that have since structured China began. Among the subjects covered are the reform movement, the reformers, newspapers, education, the urban environment, female literacy, the "new" woman, citizenship, and literature. All the contributors urge the view that modernity must be seen as a conceptual framework that shaped the Chinese experience of a global process, an experience through which new problems were raised and old problems rethought in creative, inventive, and contradictory ways.

Rebecca E. Karl is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies and History at New York University.

Peter Zarrow is Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academica Sinica, Taipei.

Richard Belsky is Associate Professor of History at Hunter College, City University of New York.

Tze-ki Hon teaches history at the State University of New York at Geneseo.

Hu Ying is Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of California at Irvine.

Joan Judge is Assocate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Xiaobing Tang teaches modern Chinese literature and culture in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Timothy Weston is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Seungjoo Yoon is Assistant Professor of History at Carleton College.

Other HUP Books by Rebecca E. Karl

• China's New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition

Other HUP Books by Richard Belsky

• Localities at the Center: Native Place, Space, and Power in Late Imperial Beijing