Customer Reviews

New Shanghai: The Rocky Rebirth of China's Legendary City

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
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Pam Yatsko's book is a terrific contribution to the understanding of modern Shanghai - and China by extension. The reader is treated to a wealth of personal stories that Ms. Yatsko collected over her several years of living in Shanghai. While many writers tend to focus on the sensational, Ms. Yatsko examines what is really happening in people's lives and why. She has taken the Chinese economic policies that appear to most people as nothing more than news blips in the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, and shown how they have dramatically changed lives in modern China - bringing enormous rewards for some, significant hardship for others.

I have been visiting Shanghai since 1982 and have had an office in the city since 1995, so it is a particular pleasure for me to find an author who not only obviously shares my great love for the city, but who also chronicles the remarkable changes and array of paradoxes that define the city in such a compelling and engaging manner. So whether you are a business person looking to understand the business environment in Shanghai or an armchair traveler looking for insights into the rapidly changing culture of one of the world's largest cities, New Shanghai is a wonderful passport to the real world of Shanghai today.

Bryan Batson, President, The China Business Group, Inc., Boston, MA

I view "New Shanghai" through the prism of someone who worked in business in Shanghai during 1995-97 and has travelled there frequently from a base in Hong Kong during the last few years. Simply put, I can think of no more useful and interesting book for anyone who does any kind of business in Shanghai or just wants to understand the recent historic transformation of the city. Frankly, I can think of no more interesting or useful book about the metamorphosis of urban China. Among the things that makes this book great is the way Yatsko lets the city speak through the voice if its own people -- some chapters read like a more analytical version of one of Studds Terkel's great oral histories.

As a businessman, I found especially interesting the chapters on the quirks of the local economy, on the experience of foreign investors, and on the city's sputtering efforts to build its financial markets. In each case, her analysis is right on as she makes clear what is going both right and wrong. She observes, for example, that while the local economy has grown respectably in recent years, overly interventionist bureacrats have trampled Shanghai's efforts to build its own brands and to nurture technical innovation. On foreign investment, she offers us the condensed wisdom of most of the smartest people operating in Shanghai today. And on the capital markets, she recounts great tales of scandal and unfulfilled dreams.

Here and elsewhere this is a book filled with fun and revealing stories that show the real fabric of a city in the midst of revolutionary change. Some of my favorite tales come in the chapter on the return of the vices, where Yatsko tells all about her nocturnal explorations. We learn, for example, how kept women in China, known as "caged golden birds", keep themselves amused while the master is away by renting "little wolf dogs", or younger pretty boys with slick hair and cute suits.

Shanghai's re-emergence is a great tale, rich in heroes and villains and a bizarre mix of the city's spectacular visible, physical progress and its profound failures. I so wish this book would be read by all overeager urban and national leaders so that they could realize both what they should do to build their cities as well as the tragic consequences of trying to do too much.

I found "New Shanghai" not long ago as I was preparing to visit Shanghai after six years in the states, and was attracted to it immediately. Having lived in Shanghai most of my life, I have to say that the author knows about Shanghai better than I do. I'm only familiar with the life of my like, but the book has a broad coverage, from the upper class to the cultural underdogs. In particular, I liked to read Yatsko's interviews with various people, which added a sense of reality.

Yatsko has captured Shanghai's fastest socio-economic changes since it lost the luster as the most prosperous city in the Far East early last century. With her solid knowledge of economics and first-hand experience, the stories are credible and the analysis is insightful. Whereas "old Shanghai" has aroused most scholarly interest due to its relation to modernity, Yatsko's depiction of Shanghai's rebirth in the 1990s also offers a unique hindsight on its past.

Although I wish I could have read this wonderful book earlier, it's not so late in the sense that I now know more interesting places

I had noticed the name of Pamela Yatsko long before she published this book, since the Chinese authorities had translated and published her China-related reviews on the Reference News-a local media circulated among China's officials-from time to time. (I wish the writer had been paid for those translated reviews.)
Reading this book is a really enjoyable experience.Actually I was very surprised of her deep understanding of the city and China's culture. For example, the story of two old gentlemen and the Shanghai Museum: they took the blame first, then, the city take the pride of their success. It's just a typical way of making things happen!-under this government. And, frankly speaking, she just know much more of the night life here than I, a local Shanghaiese.
If you are thinking of China, whatever which aspect you are thinking of, I would recommend this book to you. You will know the place, know what's happening here, know how it has happen.

Shanghai Reader Zhonghua Yu

I worked in business in Shanghai during 1995-98 and continue to travel there often. I have yet to come across a more interesting or useful book about Shanghai's metamorphosis and the changes taking place in urban China in general. Although Shanghai and China are fast moving targets, the book provides a spot-on snapshot of the issues facing Shanghai at the millennium and has helped me make sense of this fascinating yet perplexing city. The author really captures the successes and failures of fin de siecle Shanghai well. Also, there's lots of anecdote to make the book a lively read-the chapter on vice is particularly fun. I recommend it for anyone who is interested in understanding what's beneath Shanghai's glittering surface.

I succeeded Pamela Yatsko as the Far Eastern Economic Review's Shanghai Bureau chief. I have just finished her book, and just wanted to tell other readers that I thought it was an excellent look at the changes Shanghai has undergone and the challenges the city faces. My favourite sections of the book were about the development of Shanghai's stockmarkets--price manipulation and insider trading being the norm--and the gaps in the city's social safety net, particularly healthcare. It is a wonderful and lively book about a wonderful city. I heartily recommend it.

Pam Yatsko's book offers some very insightful analysis of Shanghai's recent success and current challenges. I lived and worked for multinational companies in Shanghai from 1992-1996, a period of truly dramatic change, and just last month I returned to Shanghai on a business trip for the first time in nearly four years. Despite all the dramatic incremental superficial transformation, I was left with the sense that not much had changed since 1996, and reading Pam Yatsko's book after the trip helped me pinpoint why. Throughout the book Ms. Yatsko has used the analogy of "hardware" and "software" to describe the areas in which Shanghai has excelled and those in which it still has far to go. The topics she has chosen to analyze in depth in order to prove some of her points are especially apropros and interesting: the financial industry, arts and culture, vices such as drugs and prostitution, the haves and have nots, and the experience of foreign business people, to name a few. In order to report on these topics, she has gone where most of us cannot go, and gained access to people that most foreign business people would never have the opportunity to talk to. I agree with many of her points not only about how far Shanghai has come but also how much further it needs to go to be fairly compared with Hong Kong (or even, in some instances, with Beijing), even though Shanghai is one of my favorite cities and I think it may only be a matter of time before it successfully deals with some of the challenges outlined by Ms. Yatsko.

In my opinion, this book would be excellent preparation for any non-Chinese nationals who are moving to Shanghai to live or work, as well as providing thought-provoking reading material to government officials and private business people in China- they should read this book, if they dare!

As a Shanghainese who is sick of the feverish optimism about China nowadays, I was deeply skeptical when I first opened this book. It turned out to be the best book on China I have seen so far. The book, especially its second chapter on the financial market, is full of coolheaded analysis and down-to-the-ground reliable facts. Sometimes, it even shames me for not knowing Shanghai as well as this foreigner does. I recommend the book as a very reliable source of information for those interested in Shanghai and as a book to keep some authentic memory of Shanghai for those overseas Shanghaineses.

Pamela Yatsko's book on Shanghai is much more level-headed, business-like and less reliant on personal anecdotes compared to books written by other journalists on Asia (such as China Wakes by N.Y. Times reporters Kristof and WuDunn). Although "New Shanghai" does contain some interesting "field work" and interviews made easier through Yatsko' s personal connections in Shanghai.

I especially appreciate the way the information was given with an appropriate mixture of open-source/public information, empirical data and personal experiences - a balanced view of both the social and political aspects of the life of the city of Shanghai through a detailed description of the bureaucratic mechanisms that influence events; not to mention the discrepancies that often arise between the public perceptions and private experiences of people who had to deal with myriad regulations and changing societal norms that are an integral part of their work.

It's important that Yatsko states unambiguous opinions about Shanghai, and by extension China, and then backs them up with facts on the ground. Because these opinions do not always conform with the prevailing wisdom on a potentially powerful China and the China trade, they help to instill a somewhat contrary, but much needed, dose of skepticism in the current state and direction of socio-economic development in China.

As someone who spent time in China, I found "New Shanghai" to be one of the most balanced books on the country that I have read. It gives a fascinating yet realistic picture of what is going on in Shanghai. I particularly like the way the author uses the stories of real people and events to support her analysis. It made me feel like I was there again--only this time with an even deeper understanding. Plus, its a fun, easy read. I highly recommend it.