Chen Diexian (1879–1940) was a polymath, or, as Eugenia Lean introduces him, “a cosmopolitan man of letters, industrialist, and practitioner of science” (1). He left a large corpus of writings covering a broad array of topics from fiction and poetry, politics, and economics, to physics and chemistry. Chen, however, is perhaps best known as an entrepreneur. In 1918, he founded the Association of Household Industries, which manufactured among other things a variety of cosmetics products, such as soap, toothpowder, face powder, and face cream. In the decades before and after World War II, the “Butterfly” brand name was well known throughout the Chinese-speaking world. As an industrialist and scientist with a knack for writing, Chen makes for a particularly attractive and useful subject of scholarly analysis. Vernacular Industrialism in China, although not a biography of Chen Diexian, sheds light on the diverse aspects of his life and career.
