Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures 1918--1939. ASIN: 0517570254.
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Colorful and Insightful Tour of Shanghai in Its Multicultural Heyday.,
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This review is from: Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures 1918--1939 (Hardcover)
In 1842, Great Britain's victory over China in the First Opium War opened Shanghai to foreign development and created a unique form of government that would give rise to both the spectacular successes and failures of the "most international metropolis the world had ever seen." Shanghai was a free city, where no visa or passport was required for entry. Foreign citizens whose governments had treaties with China benefited from "extraterritoriality" and were not subject to Chinese law but to the laws of their homelands. The city had fewer constraints. Unfettered by colonial law or obligations, Shanghai was governed by a Municipal Council of businessmen. It became the largest port in the Orient. In 1895, Japan brought industry to the city. By the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai was a city of over 3 million people, the cultural center of China as well as a haven for "the dispossessed, the ambitious, and the criminal" from all corners of the globe.
That is the heyday that Harriet Sergeant writes about in "Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures 1918-1939". An economic center since the 1840s and an industrial center since the 1890s, Shanghai was as much a Chinese as a foreign city by the 1930s, a cultural center and hotbed of political thought. White Russians fleeing Bolsheviks had brought European arts to the city. Chinese academics and artists fleeing warlords or Nationalists brought both radical and traditional culture. It was the pride before the fall. In August 1937, China and imperial Japan went to war in Shanghai. The city never recovered from the destruction of its industries and effective occupation by Japan. In 1941, Japan seized it officially. In 1949, Mao's Communists marched in. But those who lived in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s, when the city's legend was bested only by its reality, tend to recall it with awe. That persistent allure inspired Harriet Sergeant to seek out memories of that time -Chinese, Western, and Japanese- on three continents. The memories of Shanghainese (Chinese residents) and Shanghailanders (foreign residents) bring the amazing contrasts and collaborations of Shanghai to life. A section is dedicated to each of 3 major populations: The White Russians, The British, and The Chinese, describing the history, experience, and impact of each population in Shanghai, from the lowliest paupers to the most extravagant wealth. The reminiscences of former residents from all walks of life never fail to fascinate. The author's astute assessment of the Shanghai businessman, the city's driving force, displays uncommon insight. The stories of Shanghai's populations are punctuated by chapters describing the city's battles in which the outside world encroached on its stubborn independence: the onslaught of Nationalists and subsequent purge of communists in 1927, the street battles between the Japanese and Chinese armies in 1932, and finally the arrival of the inevitable war in 1937. In her exploration of Shanghai between the wars, Harriet Sergeant presents a portrait of an extraordinary city and the people who made it tick as well as Shanghai's perspective on the world. China and Japan are viewed through Shanghai's eyes, not the other way around. Harriet Sergeant researched this book in the 1980s, so her occasional comments on modern Shanghai, though interesting, are dated. That leaves me to wonder what she would think of the city today, since Shanghai has enjoyed a renaissance. "Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures" is a fairly rigorous but thoroughly enjoyable story of one of the world's great cities when its absurd independence and stunning heterogeneity made all things seem possible.
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