When were they made? 1920-30s? 1950-60s?
And where? Beijing? Tianjin? Somewhere else?
UPDATE: Another three-dragon vase was discovered by an eBay vendor. See August 17, 2015 post for more pictures. This vase has what is likely a pre-1950 country of origin stamp.
 |
| Ginger jar |
 |
| Base of figural jar |
https://nzchinasociety.org.nz/edgar-snow-on-indusco-gung-ho/
https://nzchinasociety.org.nz/gung-ho-cooperatives/
Below are Edgar Snow’s comments from the book, on the ‘Gung Ho or Indusco’ movement, as well as his recollection of Rewi Alley.
“Among non-party patriots of all descriptions, real faith persisted that a progressive government representative of varied opinion and worthy of the people’s spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice would emerge during the war. Out of such faith grew the most original and hopeful experiment of the ’united front’ period – the Chinese Industrial Co-operative organisation (Gung Ho, or the Work-Together Movement, Indusco). It provided work and an education for tens of thousands of Chinese and proved indeed to be the forerunner of what ultimately became the largest producers’ co-operative movement in the world.
“I vividly remember the setting in which the idea was born. The war had passed from Shanghai on the Yangtze River Valley. Behind it lay the ruins of a nation’s industry. Except for the tiny oasis of the International Settlement, everything for miles seemed a desert of rubble, charred timbers and twisted iron, beneath which many bodies still lay. Over 70 per cent of China’s pre-war industry was concentrated in a little triangle bounded by Shanghai, Wushi [Wuxi] and Hangchow [Hangzhou]. By early January 1938, all that plant had fallen to the Japanese, for whom the immobilization of China’s industry and labour was a main objective of “total aggression”.
“Indusco set up several hundred small factories, workshops, power plants, transports and mines. We had our own training schools, war veterans and war orphans vocational centres, printing and publishing houses, lunch rooms, clinics, nursery schools and character-study schools for illiterate worker-members and their children. Indusco became a reasonably sound prototype of a democratic, co-operative society, producing a wide variety of goods of war value. Some mobile co-operative units functioned far behind the Japanese lines in North China.
 |
| The triangular Indusco sign appeared far and wide; some mobile co-operative units functioned far behind the Japanese lines in North China. Here two customers bow to each other in front of a co-operative savings bank displaying the Indusco symbol. |
History of Gung Ho
The Early Years
The Gung Ho movement has a long history. In 1938, Rewi Alley, Peg and Edgar Snow, and some other friends in Shanghai together set up an International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. At that time, the Japanese invaders had already captured most of China’s industrial cities and looked to occupy all of China in the near future. Rewi’s plan was to establish small producer cooperatives throughout China that could contribute substantially to the war effort at the same time as they advanced the ideals of cooperation that Rewi and many others espoused as the hope for China’s economic future.This became a nation-wide civil movement with the biggest influence in China Gung Ho movement history.
The Chinese name for “China Industrial Cooperatives” was Zhongguo Gongye Hezhoushe. This was abbreviated as Gong He (the first characters for the two words for “Industrial Cooperatives”), or “Gung Ho”, as it was then written. Rewi adopted this as the logo for the movement, and it can be translated as “working together”, which was a perfect slogan for the movement as a whole.
I have two items with the same mark. Any ideas on the true origin?
ReplyDelete