Shanghai International Settlement Research Articles

The Chinese Political Novel: Migration of a World Genre by Catherine Vance Yeh

Reviewed by: The Chinese Political Novel: Migration of a World Genre by Catherine Vance Yeh Keith McMahon The Chinese Political Novel: Migration of a World Genre by Catherine Vance Yeh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015. Pp. xii + 429. $59.95. The political novel in China has come and gone. It was a global genre that began in Europe during the 1830s, reached China by the late 1890s, and disappeared during the early 1900s after it had performed its mission. It is a particularly advantageous genre to study in a cross-cultural light because of its shared traits and conditions of creation. Readers will recognize what Catherine Yeh is talking about from their knowledge of late Qing literature, but Yeh has gone further than anyone else in placing these novels in a truly inclusive global context, as her discussions of the political novel in England, Italy, the United States, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere show. As a world genre, it played a fundamental role in the “general process of transcultural interaction” (p. 6). Here, Yeh refers to the fact that the space of these works was the entire world, not just a single country. The novels merged heroes from all lands and held key terms and concepts in common, such as globe, compatriot, comrade, public enemy, development, science, and humanity, to name only a few (p. 128). It is exciting to be able to combine two such fruitful lines of inquiry: identifying both the shared traits and the features specific to a cultural context. A primary shared trait is the genre’s focus on political and social crisis and its “projection of a way out” (p. 162). The Chinese version of the genre mainly appeared during the decade of reform that was proclaimed in 1901 after the Boxer Uprising. When the Qing court announced the need for institutional reform, it was seen as inviting a discussion. Writers of political novels, being part of “a newly forming class of urban intellectuals” (p. 173), responded. Having a vibrant urban-centered public sphere was crucial. In China, the most prominent site of this public sphere was the Shanghai International Settlement, where most of the novels were written and published. Numbers are difficult to calculate, but Yeh counts as political novels 48 of 202 novels published in the year 1907. The three issues receiving the most attention in China, and in varying degrees elsewhere, were (1) what the state and society could do, that is, the agency of the nation and its [End Page 592] citizens; (2) the quality of a nation’s citizens in terms of their ability to establish and adhere to a constitution; and (3) the emancipation of women. In China and elsewhere, the political novel was essentially conservative in that it advocated reform, not rebellion and overthrow, although there are characters who promoted the latter. Another shared belief among authors and other promoters of these novels was that the political novel could generate thoroughgoing transformation. The status quo was anathema. Furthermore, reform should proceed in rational and progressive fashion. Authors debated and spelled out methods, within a novel and in response to other novels, to newspaper editorials and other such platforms, and to court politics. The political novel gained cachet in China because it appeared in similar settings elsewhere, particularly in neighboring Japan, and presented arguments that were seen as having objective validity and not as simply imported from outside. The credibility and popularity of the genre, both in translation and when written originally in Chinese, helped catapult novels in general into a new phase in Chinese history. Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) used the word xin 新 (“new” or “reformed”) to refer to the novels because they made a clean break from those he dismissed as the traditional novel, a form that he proceeded to characterize and critique. Even the giant Story of the Stone (Honglou meng 紅樓夢) came under fire. Liang and others shunned the sentimental novels that wrote of scholars and beauties, now characterized as weak men and shackled women who wallowed in romantic attachments. The new hero, whether male or female, avoided such self-absorbed relationships and instead embodied intellectual acuity, political commitment, and superior moral fiber...

Lessons in ambivalence: The Shanghai Municipal Council’s opium policies, 1906–1917

BackgroundShanghai was considered to be a “capital of opium” in modern China, hence the history of opium in the city has received significant attention. In the Shanghai International Settlement, where Chinese and foreigners lived as neighbours, drugs were considered by the administration as both “trouble maker”, and important financial resource. This paper explores how the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC), the most senior governing body in the settlement, used its position to maximize political and economic profit from the trade and consumption of opium. MethodsThe paper is based on documentary analysis of records of the SMC board meetings and other related material stored at Shanghai Municipal Archives. Interpretive approaches were used to analyze the shifting SMC strategies on opium consumption, the competing power relations and the way they were negotiated between actors with a stake in the region, including semi-colonialism and world systems analysis. ResultsWith the dual purpose of preventing damage and enhancing municipal management, the SMC introduced a licensing system permitting the consumption and trade of drugs. However, the anti-opium policies of the late Qing government and the Anglo-Chinese 10 Year Agreement meant SMC had to shut down opium “houses” (opium dens) and “shops” (for the sale of opium to be consumed off the premises). ConclusionsOver almost a decade, the SMC shifted emphasis from political regulation of a social, recreational practice to maximizing financial benefit. In the process, SMC made full use of the opportunities it gained from a period of ambivalent Chinese and British power relations and local community rule.

The modern abattoir as a machine for killing: the municipal abattoir of the Shanghai International Settlement, 1933

The public abattoir emerged as an institution across the industrialized world in the mid-nineteenth century to centralize and control animal killing and meat processing, activities that had traditionally taken place in private slaughterhouses. The modern idea of the abattoir, however, is more than a place where animals are killed for human consumption. Designed to optimize a disassembling process that efficiently took apart the livestock into small pieces, the modern abattoir is one of the earliest building types where the production line was incorporated into the spatial layout. Modern abattoirs also separated livestock from people, and production from consumption, into special places removed from public view.This paper is concerned with the production of a public abattoir in 1930s colonial Shanghai. The Shanghai Municipal Abattoir, completed in 1933, was deliberately designed as a ‘machine for killing’, which applied production-line principles to the efficient slaughter of animals. The result of this functionalism was an extraordinary series of multi-storey concrete structures, dictated by the bloody business of slaughtering animals and processing their carcasses, set behind an art deco façade. In this paper we seek to tell the story of the production of a building that has previously been little researched, with most of the archival material in Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA) and the limited published material available only in Mandarin.

An Integrated Modern Industrial Machine — Study on the Documentation of the Shanghai Municipal Abattoir and its Renovation

The Municipal Abattoir was constructed in the former Shanghai International Settlement in 1933, which was recognized as the largest and most modern one in the Far East, and is now accorded ′Shanghai Outstanding Modern Architecture′. Its architectural space, originated from a unique design and construction process, is as complicated as a huge integrated machine. In order to understand the early influence of English colonial architecture design on settlements in China, this paper investigates a series of problems associated with the abattoir, such as the design process, construction techniques, material quality control etc. by studying many original documents. The abattoir represents the international level of Shanghai modern industrial buildings at that time. After being abandoned for a long period, the abattoir was renovated in 2008 and soon drew plenty of attention both here and abroad. A successful renovation effectively establishes a new contact between people and a site. This paper further explores the methods for reconstructing a creative platform from an industrial heritage.

The Urban Images of a Modern Sea Port City, Shanghai called “London of the East” - Focusing on the Shanghai International Settlement -

The Urban Images of a Modern Sea Port City, Shanghai called “London of the East” - Focusing on the Shanghai International Settlement -

A Protestant Church in Communist China: Moore Memorial Church Shanghai, 1949–1989 by John Craig William Keating (review)

Reviewed by: A Protestant Church in Communist China: Moore Memorial Church Shanghai, 1949–1989 by John Craig William Keating Franklin J. Woo (bio) John Craig William Keating. A Protestant Church in Communist China: Moore Memorial Church Shanghai, 1949–1989. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012. xii + 303 pp. Hardcover $85.00, isbn 978-1-61146-090-2. John Craig William Keating began learning Chinese at the age of eleven. He was with the first group of his university in Australia to study Chinese in Nanjing in 1982 and now holds an MA in Chinese studies and a PhD in Chinese history. He has lived and worked in China, traveling widely and visiting every province and autonomous region in the country, including more than 120 cities. He mentions that his wife is “Shanghainese” (p. 28), and they have four daughters (p. ix). Their home is in Melbourne, Australia, where Keating has taught Chinese language and history in private schools for almost thirty years. A Protestant Church in China is his historical study of one urban church in China, the Moore Memorial Church (MMC) in Shanghai, a project that has occupied him for more than a decade. This book required traveling, researching archival materials, and interviewing people who have had relationships with the MMC in China, the United States, and elsewhere. Keating has copiously read decades of books, journals, and many church publications on China. “What I am concerned with in this work,” Keating writes, “is not so much a study of the church itself, but rather what the church and the people involved in it can tell us about China. An in-depth study of this church can reflect more broadly on the nature of the relationship between Christian church and the government in China” (p. 3, emphasis added by reviewer). In short, his book is about churchstate relations in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a communist country. Keating researched archival material, both institutional and personal, much of which, he repeatedly claims, has never been seen by others (pp. 6, 7, 225). His contacts were face-to-face interviews, telephone conversations, faxes, or e-mails—all done between 1999 and 2006. Though the MMC dates its humble beginning to the year 1887, the bulk of Keating’s data is from 1921, when Sidney (1889–1978) and Olive (1890–1978) Anderson arrived as new missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. The Andersons are seen as the central leadership of the MMC, with its dynamic program of Christian nurture and social concerns, for the next three decades. Under the ethos of the International Settlement of Shanghai, a virtual Western paradise and also the headquarters of Protestant missions in China, their work went well. The social involvement and national consciousness of the MMC are represented by the Reverend Anderson testifying against the British police after the incident of May 30, 1925. The police had fired on a student crowd, killing ten people who were demonstrating in response to a Japanese cotton mill labor dispute. This incident resulted in the Japanese murder of the Chinese labor organizer. [End Page 281] The smooth operation of the MMC was interrupted by the Japanese encroachment on China, with refugees pouring into the safety of the International Settlement, thus intensifying the relief work of the MMC. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the Japanese invasion that conquered much of the eastern shore of China, including Shanghai, changed the situation considerably for the MMC. Sidney was among the Westerners imprisoned by the Japanese army; Olive and their children had already departed for America. The main focus of the book, however, is the Communist period, which includes the three Maoist decades of revolutionary fervor (1949–1979) to the period of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms and disclosures of the country to the world (1979–1989), with implications for present-day China. In the four decades of the MMC’s history, Keating provides scores of names of Chinese and Western church workers related to the MMC as well as a wide assortment of China specialists who had written either superficially or in-depth about China and its churches in different periods of history. From these writers...

Venereal Disease Prevention, Moral Welfare and Civilized Image: The Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee and the Anti-Prostitution Campaign in the Shanghai International Settlement, 191824

This paper focuses on the Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee (renamed the Shanghai Moral Welfare League in 1920), which was founded on May 16, 1918, following a decision made by seventeen foreign religious and secular charities of the Shanghai International Settlement. In 1919–24, the Municipal Council of the Shanghai International Settlement declared a five-year timeframe for gradually shutting down all the brothels under its administration. The few previous studies of this topic by European and American scholars mainly concentrated on the aspect of venereal disease prevention and the prohibition of prostitution, as well as the construction of gender, but they paid little attention to the Moral Welfare Committee as a primary advocate of this reform. As such, this event has been misrepresented as yet another story about the modernization and spiritual salvation of Chinese society by Western municipal authorities and moral reformers. However, the Committee, created by foreign moral reformers in Shanghai, was primarily focused on white males with venereal diseases and white prostitutes, in order to reestablish an image of the Western Christian countries as civilized in Chinese eyes. Underlying this effort was a strong sense—among foreign communities in China at that time—of superiority over Chinese society in both civilization and morality. However, this arrogance was rife with insecurities; foreign reformers lacked necessary confidence in their civilized image and in their capacity to set themselves up as a model for the moral discipline and salvation of the Chinese people.

PROCESS OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND PLANING OF URBAN FACILITIES IN SHANGHAI INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT CONDUCTED BY JAPANESE

This research purposes to clarify the process of urban growth of the Shanghai International Settlement from view of urban development conducted by Japanese in the Modern Period, and to analyze the character of urban structure of the Shanghai International Settlement. As well known, Meiji Japan was just a new-rising country in East Asia. Undoubtedly, the Japanese political and economical power in Shanghai was so weak in presence or influence that it could not compete with the British one directly. For Japan at that time, however, “Shanghai Advancement” was an important issue, because it meant that Japan would rank with the great powers in East Asia. So, in what manner did Japanese success in advancing into Shanghai? To solute this problem, the authors analyzed the activities that conducted by Japanese. Those are (1) Civil survey of the Wang Poo River, (2) Inspection of the Shanghai, (3) Drawing up the Basic Strategy, (4) land development. It is found that in order to provide their urban facilities, Japanese just adapted their directions closely to urban development trends of British ones. For example, immediately after new roads constructed, Japanese firms bought their new lands along the new road. Thus, it took more than 40 years from 1890s to 1930s for Japan to establish their urban functions in Shanghai International Settlement. Finally, the Japanese spread consisted of Western (Seibu), Central (Chubu) and Eastern (Tobu). It is thought that this structure was initially planned in the Basic Strategy convenient in the Meiji Era.

A newspaper for China?: power, identity, and change in Shanghai's news media, 1872-1912

In 1872 in the treaty port of Shanghai, British merchant Ernest Major founded one of the longest-lived and most successful of modern Chinese-language newspapers, the Shenbao. His publication quickly became a leading in China and won praise as a department store of news, a forum for intellectual discussion and moral challenge and an mouthpiece of the public voice. Located in the International Settlement of Shanghai, it was free of government regulation. Paradoxically, in a country where the government monopolized the public sphere, it became one of the world's most independent newspapers. As a private venture, the was free of the ideologies that constrained missionary papers published in China during the nineteenth century. But it also lacked the subsidies that allowed these papers to survive without a large readership. As a purely commercial venture, the foreign-managed Shenbao depended on the acceptance of educated Chinese, who would write for it, read it and buy it. This book sets out to analyze how the managers of the Shenbao made their alien product acceptable to Chinese readers and how foreign-style newspapers became alternative modes of communication acknowledged as a powerful part of the Chinese public sphere within a few years. In short, it describes how the foreign Shenbao became a newspaper for China.

“Home Afar”: The Life of Central European Jewish Refugees in Shanghai During World War II

Since its opening to the West in 1843, Shanghai had served as destination for four waves of Jewish immigration. The first Jews to settle in China were Sephardim from Baghdad, who migrated eastward in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Sassoons, Kadoories, Hardoons, Ezras, and Abrahams became wealthy merchants, and soon acquired British citizenship. The second group consisted of Russian Ashkenazim who escaped the pogroms and the civil war following the Bolshevik Revolution. They were considered as the 'middle class' of the Jewish community in Shanghai. The third group of German and Austrian (and in smaller numbers Hungarian, Czechoslovakian and Romanian) Jews, numbering over 15,000, barely escaped the Nazi terror in the late 1930s. The fourth group consisted of about 1000 Polish Jews, including the only complete European Jewish religious school to be saved from Nazi destruction, the Mirrer Yeshiva. The International Settlement of Shanghai seemed a viable option for the desperate refugees; this in spite of the fact that the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, and the Japanese, allies of Nazi Germany, occupied parts of the city. Nevertheless, in contrast to the German plan of Entjudung, the Japanese wanted to make use of alleged Jewish wealth and influence for the benefit of Japan's New Order. The official Japanese policy towards Jews stated that although Japan should avoid actively embracing Jews who had been expelled by her allies denying Jews entry would not be in the spirit of the empire's long-standing advocacy of racial equality. As a result of this policy, between the fall of 1938 and the winter of 1941, about 20,000 refugees travelled to Shanghai, their temporary home afar. During the three-year period between 1938 and December 1941 most newcomers managed more or less to integrate into Shanghai's economy, despite the fact that they had come to Shanghai out of political necessity, and not for the economic prospects. Following the outbreak of the War in the Pacific and the Japanese occupation of all sections of Shanghai, the economic situation of the refugees significantly worsened. Furthermore, as stability in Shanghai was the most important priority for the Japanese, on February 18, 1943 the military authorities issued a proclamation about the establishment of a restricted area - or ghetto, as the refugees used to call it - for stateless refugees in Hongkou, where they were confined until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. The end of the war opened up the possibility for the refugees of leaving Shanghai. However, when they were informed about the Holocaust in Europe, most did not want to return to their homeland. Many of them left for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America, and after 1948, thousands of Jews went to live in the newly established State of Israel.

Open Doors: Vilhelm Meyer and the Establishment of General Electric in China

On one level, this is an intriguing account of expat life in Shanghai's International settlement in the early 20th century. On another level is charted the introduction and growth of new western technologies and companies in China. And the backdrop to these stories is early 20th century China itself: the hopes, fears, turmoil and grandeur of the age.

Writing for Faulkner, Writing for Herself: Estelle Oldham's Anticolonial Fiction

Before estelle oldham married William Faulkner in June 1929, she had spent nearly eight years in the Pacific and Far East as a participant-observer in two American colonial cultures. In June 1918, her first marriage to the Mississippi lawyer and entrepreneur Cornell S. Franklin brought her as a new bride to what were then called the Hawaiian Territories. But despite his excellent Southern connections, the business community in the “Paradise of the East” had little room for a bright yet arrogant young man with no capital. Thus, in December 1921, Estelle Oldham Franklin, her husband, and their four-year-old daughter sailed for the more open markets in the International Settlement of Shanghai, then China's largest treaty port. Oldham hated Shanghai; she refused to continue playing the role of Southern Belle hostess she had assumed so willingly and graciously in Honolulu, and, like her husband and many other colonials, she had become an alcoholic. Summarizing her life in Shanghai, she once told her daughter, “I don't think I took a sober breath for three years.”

How China's Nationalism was Shanghaied

Previous articleNext article No AccessHow China's Nationalism was ShanghaiedLucian W. PyeLucian W. Pye Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 29Jan., 1993 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2949954 Views: 70Total views on this site Citations: 28Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (1979-1995), which is continued by The China Journal (1995-present). Copyright Australian Journal of Chinese AffairsPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Zhongbin Huang, Zesen Yang, Tianguang Meng National Identity of Locality: The State, Patriotism, and Nationalism in Cyber China, Journal of Chinese Political Science 80 (Jun 2022).https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-022-09820-4Fengguang Liu, Dan Han, Dániel Z. 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Memorandum on Recent Changes in the International Settlement of Shanghai

Memorandum on Recent Changes in the International Settlement of Shanghai

Memorandum on Recent Changes in the International Settlement of Shanghai

Memorandum on Recent Changes in the International Settlement of Shanghai

The Feetham Report: A New Plan for Shanghai

Shall the International Settlement of Shanghai be returned to China to become the prey of Chinese politics and civil disruption, or shall it be held in trust through a plan of Sino-foreign partnership until such time as China shall be able to preserve and protect its wealth and trade? This is the question now brought to the attention of Chinese and foreigners by the recently published report of Judge Richard Feetham, of South Africa, after eighteen months of intensive study of the problem. The report represents the most significant step yet taken toward solving the question of the future status of the International Settlement, the most important of all foreign concessions and settlements in China. For the first time in the history of the Settlement, China and the foreign powers have before them an adequate study of its development, and a definite plan upon which to base an agreement for future action.The International Settlement is a foreign controlled and governed area on Chinese soil, located on the Whangpoo River and serving as the chief center for the vast trade and commerce of the Yangtze valley. Together with the French Settlement and the Chinese Municipality, it forms a part of the modern city of Shanghai. The International Settlement is an outgrowth of the British Settlement established in 1843 when Shanghai was first opened to foreign trade. Other foreigners were admitted to the original British area, and in 1863 the British and Americans pooled their interests after the French had set up a separate settlement of their own. The amalgamated British and American Settlement, extended in 1899, became the International Settlement of today, containing some eight and three-fourths square miles of land on which reside over one million people. In population, the Settlement is truly international. Although the Chinese comprise over ninety-five per cent of the total, more than forty different nationalities are to be found among the foreign residents. For seventy-three years, however, the Settlement was governed wholly by foreigners in spite of its over-whelming majority of Chinese residents, and it is only since 1928 that the Chinese have had any official voice in Settlement affairs.

The International Settlement of Shanghai

The International Settlement of Shanghai Justice Feetham Justice Feetham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 10, Issue 3, May 1931, Page 351, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/10.3.351 Published: 01 May 1931