ABSTRACT
In publications of the Chinese Red Cross Society from the 1910s, 20s, and 30s, photographs of the grisly work of China’s Red Cross Burial Corps figure prominently. The specter of the dead and their proper treatment is raised again and again visually and textually to serve as a call to national philanthropic action. An anomaly in Red Cross agendas outside of China, these signature burial activities—and their representation through photography—were part of the work of an indigenously conceived and organized Chinese Red Cross Society formed in Shanghai in 1904. This chapter interrogates the photographic images of the dead in Chinese Red Cross publications, particularly in dialogue with the publications’ texts. Some scholars have mistakenly suggested that Chinese photographers did not focus on dead bodies. The photography of the Chinese Red Cross shows otherwise, and these dramatic images demand voice. How can we understand this new exposure of the dead? How was it meant to be experienced by viewers, potential Red Cross members, donors? In wartime, when the sight of actual corpses was a commonplace, how were these photographic images supposed to invoke charitable action? In deciphering what these images were meant to accomplish, this chapter reveals aspects of death in China on the eve of the modern era.
