Annotation

Although Xiaoshuo Xunbao was branded as a fiction magazine, fiction only accounted for around half of its contents, with the rest made up from poetry, zawen (miscellaneous writings), satires and jokes, notes on strange events, gossip, lyrics,  true accounts drawn from social life, Cantonese ballads, Southern tunes and opera scripts. The variety of content and its light-hearted nature points to an effort to producing a publication with mass appeal, with everything from satirical pieces targeting everyone from young ladies favouring ‘free love’ to scammed brothel-goers and investigatory articles scrutinising unregulated prostitution in Guangzhou to a sentimental essay mourning Sun Yat-sen, analyses of face-reading and descriptions of strange customs in foreign countries. Its prose throughout was written using simple classical Chinese.