Sincere’s twenty-fifth anniversary arrived when the company was booming. It had expanded to numerous Chinese cities, and it also Kang out catalogs and received mail orders from many other places. It had established factories in Guangdong, in Hong Kong, and elsewhere, and also had a large shipping department, a division that sold both commercial insurance and life insurance; its entertainment offerings, lessons and religious services for employees, and participation in various public charities made it a social and cultural force as well. The enormous (640 pages), picture-filled, volume it published to commemorate that anniversary both reflected and reinforced that high profile; it is hard to imagine a private business doing something comparable today.
Much of the volume, unsurprisingly, features content created by the company itself: a list of its stores, employees, and products, reports on the development of its various divisions, financial statements and the like. But the volume was much more ambitious than that, and presented the company as part of a much bigger story. There were, for instance, multiple essays by outsiders about the development of the Chinese economy, Chinese manufacturing, and Chinese fashion over the previous 25 years, along with suggestions about where these fields might be headed in the future.
Another, fictional, contribution imagined that it was 1950, and painted a singularly optimistic picture of where Sincere in particular, and Chinese business in general, would be by that time. Notably, it was written by Zhou Shoujuan: at the time, one of China’s most popular poets and short storywriters. Focusing mostly on his characters’ quests for love and personal fulfillment, Zhou often reached a larger audience than the era’s more politically and socially-oriented writers, though the latter (Lu Xun, Mao Dun, etc.) are far more famous today. (Zhou, being somewhat out of step with the kind of art that the CCP favored, had a hard time during the Cultural Revolution, and committed suicide in 1968.) In addition to his poems and stories, Zhou was also a prolific translator of English literature into Chinese, the editor of several magazines (including the literary supplement of Shenbao, China’s most important newspaper), and later a screenwriter for the emerging Chinese film industry. In short, he was one of the major literary celebrities of his era, and his presence in this volume speaks to how much more it represented than just a business congratulating itself; like the company, it was a major cultural phenomenon.
Sincere’s political connections were also prominently displayed, mostly in the form of pages upon pages of congratulatory messages and calligraphy. Sun Yatsen, the Chinese Republic’s founder and friend of Sincere’s Ma Ying-piu, died just about the time this volume came out, and is not represented, but many other major figures of the 1911 Revolution, the Nationalist Party, and the early Republic were. The count includes at least 3 past and future presidents of the Republic, numerous provincial governors, the mayors of Shanghai and Guangzhou, a host of cabinet members, an ambassador to the United States, and other dignitaries. And though Nationalist figures predominated, they were not alone; the bitterly anti-GMD Zhang Zuolin, who at the time controlled all of Manchuria, was just one of several anti-Nationalist leaders who also sent congratulations. In all likelihood, this reflected both Sincere’s widespread presence – it had, for instance, stores in both Yingkou and Harbin, two of Manchuria’s important cities – and Ma Ying-piu’s caution about alienating those who did not share his politics. Despite his strong ties to Sun Yat-sen, he served only briefly in the anti-warlord provisional government that Sun established in Guangzhou in 1917, and he declined Sun’s invitation to serve again in 1921.
Numerous businesses, civic organizations, native place groups, newspapers, and so on also sent greetings. Interestingly, however, there are no such messages from members of the government of Hong Kong – Sincere’s birthplace and headquarters – though the company generally maintained good relations with them, too. It is possible that at a moment when Anglo-Chinese relations were unusually tense – 1925 was the year of the May 30 movement, and of a massive strike and anti-British boycott in Hong Kong and Guangzhou – it seemed best not to advertise these ties.
One of the most intriguing figures represented in the volume is the philosopher and politician Kang Youwei (1858-1927), who wrote an essay on the significance of Sincere for Chinese society in general that served as a kind of keynote for the volume. Originally trained as a traditional Confucian, Kang came to prominence when he led a group of exam candidates who protested the 1895 treaty that was imposed on China after the Sino-Japanese War. He then became a central figure in the Hundred Days movement of 1898, when the Guangxu Emperor briefly authorized radical reforms. When a military coup ended those efforts, Kang fled the country with a price on his head.
While more radical than Sun Yatsen on some issues – for instance, he called for complete male/female equality, and hoped to eventually see a worldwide socialist government – Kang insisted that these positions emerged from a proper reading of Confucius. He also insisted that at this point in its historical evolution, China still needed a (constitutional) monarchy, not a republic. For years, he propagandized and raised funds for his vision among the same groups of overseas Chinese that Sun frequented (since neither could safely set foot on the mainland until the Qing fell). He and Sun were therefore long-time rivals, though they shared a number of goals, including the industrialization and democratization of China. His exact relationship to Ma Ying-piu is unknown, but the two were certainly well-known to each other. Though increasingly seen as eccentric and impractical, Kang remained a highly respected figure, both within China and among diaspora businessmen; his contribution to Sincere’s anniversary volume is a testimony both to the company’s stature as more than just a business, and his own as more than just a politician or intellectual.
