The railway invention propelled the rediscovery of the world!

For a long time, railways and trains, as the most dazzling products of modern technological civilization, have naturally been regarded as symbols of modernity. The railway was born to rediscover the world. It has changed the way we feel time and space and reshaped our grasp of the world. It plays a valuable role in the social economy and penetrates the field of history and culture.

Chronically-structured, RAILWAY MODERNITY IN CHINA, traces the naming story of the railway from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China: the visuals and images in the Dianshizhai Pictorial (點石齋畫報), the debate between the Wusong Railway (吳淞鐵路)and the Westernization Movement (洋務運動), Sun Yat-sen’s (孫中山) railway planning and national construction, the six different aspects of railway travel and literary writing during the Republic of China, the railway experience and literary expression of modern subjects and strangers, under the theme of time and space, cultural imagination relating to railways and trains, rethinking many issues of modernity.

Li Siyi used the railway as a method, an opportunity, and a key to understanding Chinese modernity. Li explores the railway adaptation after its entrance into China from 1840 to 1937, tracing its impact from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China and how the experience connects with the modern imagination. When the railway becomes the intermediary between man and the world, how do "China" and "modern Chinese" use language cognition, visual perception, and event discourse to be parallel and indispensable in such a "human-railway-world." Smoke takes shape in illustrating this division.

The story about the railway is endless. There is a cave with culture and thought behind it, which is worthy of in-depth study. Because whether it is railways or modernity, we don't know them in a self-righteous way.