不澈底的重建 (An Incomplete Reconstruction), Beiyang Huabao no. 116
A cartoon of a city wall flying the Nationalist (Kuomintang) sun flag, being rebuilt by labourers from a pile of bricks stamped with the labels 'warlords', 'old bureaucrats' and 'old politicians'. The title calls the rebuilding 'incomplete'. The Nationalists' own epithets for their enemies are stamped onto the building material, and the label does the arguing in place of any evidence.
- Date
- August 27, 1927
- Period
- Interwar
- Made by
- Beiyang Huabao (Beiyang Pictorial News), Tianjin illustrated paper; cartoon credited to Xinru (心如)
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- China
- Medium
- Cartoon
- Issuer type
- Media
- Regime
- Beiyang Government
- Leader
- Zhang Zuolin
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- Elections and party politics, War and the military
- Event
- Northern Expedition
- Techniques
- Name-calling
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (from Beiyang Huabao, as reproduced in Kwong Chi Man, 2017), retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (published 1927, before 1931; Commons page cites PD-China, term expired)
Xinru (心如), Beiyang Huabao no. 116, 27 August 1927, Tianjin; via Kwong Chi Man, War and Geopolitics in Interwar Manchuria (Brill, 2017), p. 128, and Wikimedia Commons.
Text on the object
[Title, vertical, read right to left:] 不澈底的 / 重建 [Labels stamped on the bricks:] 軍閥 / 舊官僚 / 老政客 [Caption line, right to left, between triangle marks:] 黨軍致敗之道 [Artist credit, right to left:] 心如作 [English line under the drawing, added by the reproducer, not on the original:] "It is why the Nationalists failed."
[Title] An incomplete reconstruction. [Brick labels] Warlords / old bureaucrats / old politicians. [Caption] The way the Party Army came to defeat. [Credit] Drawn by Xinru. (The English line is already English.)
Read from a 500 px reproduction. The first character of 舊官僚 is small and is a best reading; 黨軍 (literally 'party army') is the Nationalist National Revolutionary Army. The small emblem near the title and the writing on the wall gate are not legible.
