early-Republican China as "merely transitional" or as a "modernity manque" (p. 4). It is often assumed that across the historical divides, the here and now is always more progressive than the there and then. Some studies of the thorny question of Chinese modernity have inherited their objects' tendency to favour dichotomized and teleological historical narratives, echoing Lu Xun's judgment that it is a pity that "the moment foreign things reach China they change their colour as if they had fallen into a vat of black dye."
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